Intel Core i5-3550 vs Intel Core i7-2600

Compare Intel Core 4 core CPU vs Intel Core 4 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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CPU Comparison

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Intel Core i7-2600

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 298.95

$ 226.37

$ 72.58 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

2119 points

2539 points

19% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

3894 points

3984 points

2% slightly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1620 points

2108 points

30% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1555 points

2031 points

30% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

27.36 points

38.63 points

41% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1939 points

2047 points

5% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

644 points

5% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

608 points

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1924 points

2040 points

6% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

645 points

5% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

610 points

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

100% significantly more threads

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.3 GHz

3.4 GHz

3% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.7 GHz

3.8 GHz

2% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

77 W

23% slightly lower TDP

95 W

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB

Identical

32 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

702nd of 1,089

619th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2012 May

2011 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1333

DDR3-1066

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i5-3550 vs Core i7-2600 comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i7-2600 is faster than the Core i5-3550. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-3550 in all gaming tests too.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores but the Core i7-2600 has more threads. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i7-2600 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i5-3550. Also, the Core i7-2600 has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i5-3550 CPU outputs less heat than a Core i7-2600 CPU because of its 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.