Intel Core i5-3550 vs Intel Core i5-650

Core i5-3550 vs Core i5-650 comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-3550 performs better than the Core i5-650. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-650 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i5-3550 has significantly more cores with 4 cores compared to the Core i5-650 that has 2 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-3550 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i5-650. Also, the Core i5-3550 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i5-650 outputs less heat than Core i5-3550 thanks to a slightly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

The more cores a CPU has, the better the overall performance will be in parallel workloads such as multitasking. Many CPUs have more threads than cores, this means that each physical core is split into multiple logical cores, making them more efficient. For instance, the Core i5-3550 has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.