Intel Core i5-4330M vs Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550

Core i5-4330M vs Core 2 Quad Q9550 comparison

In our benchmarks, the Core 2 Quad Q9550 beats the Core i5-4330M in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i5-4330M has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core 2 Quad Q9550 has significantly more cores with 4 cores compared to the Core i5-4330M that has 2 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Core 2 Quad Q9550 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i5-4330M. A Core i5-4330M CPU outputs less heat than a Core 2 Quad Q9550 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 i5-4330M has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.