Intel Core i5-6500 vs Intel Core i9-10980HK

Core i5-6500 vs Core i9-10980HK specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-6500 beats the Core i9-10980HK in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i9-10980HK in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-10980HK has significantly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i5-6500 that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-6500. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-6500 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-10980HK. Despite this, the Core i9-10980HK has a significantly higher turbo speed. The Core i9-10980HK outputs less heat than Core i5-6500 thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption. The cache sizes of these CPUs are different. Indeed, the Core i9-10980HK has significantly more L2 cache than the Core i5-6500. The Core i9-10980HK also has significantly more L3 cache.

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. For instance, the Core i5-6500 has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.