Intel Core i5-4310M vs Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650

Core i5-4310M vs Core 2 Quad Q9650 benchmarks

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core 2 Quad Q9650 is faster than the Core i5-4310M. Despite this, the Core i5-4310M has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core 2 Quad Q9650 has significantly more cores with 4 cores compared to the Core i5-4310M that has 2 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core 2 Quad Q9650 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i5-4310M. A Core i5-4310M CPU outputs less heat than a Core 2 Quad Q9650 CPU because of its significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i5-4310M has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.