Intel Core i5-3550 vs Intel Core i7-3720QM

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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Intel Core i7-3720QM

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 298.95

$ 99.95

$ 199.00 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

2119 points

0.33% slightly better overall score

2112 points

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

3894 points

11% slightly better gaming score

3499 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1620 points

1701 points

5% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1555 points

1632 points

4% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

27.36 points

42.68 points

56% significantly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1939 points

2033 points

4% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

644 points

6% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

602 points

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1924 points

1978 points

2% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

645 points

10% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

586 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

26% slightly higher clock speed

2.6 GHz

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.7 GHz

2% slightly higher turbo speed

3.6 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

77 W

45 W

71% significantly lower TDP

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

703rd of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2012 May

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1333

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i5-3550 vs Core i7-3720QM benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-3720QM beats the Core i5-3550 in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i5-3550 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores but the Core i7-3720QM has more threads. Our comparison shows that the Core i5-3550 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-3720QM. Also, the Core i5-3550 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-3720QM outputs less heat than Core i5-3550 thanks to a significantly 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.