Intel Core i5-8250U vs Intel Core i7-7500U

Core i5-8250U vs Core i7-7500U specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-8250U beats the Core i7-7500U in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-7500U in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i5-8250U has significantly more cores with 4 cores compared to the Core i7-7500U that has 2 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-7500U. Our comparison shows that the Core i7-7500U has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Core i5-8250U. Also, the Core i7-7500U has a slightly higher turbo speed. Both these chips have an identical TDP (Thermal Design Power). 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 i5-8250U has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.