Intel Core i5-8500 vs Intel Core i3-1215U

Core i5-8500 vs Core i3-1215U comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i3-1215U performs better than the Core i5-8500. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-8500 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores but the Core i3-1215U has more threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i5-8500 has a significantly higher clock speed than the Core i3-1215U. Despite this, the Core i3-1215U has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i3-1215U outputs less heat than Core i5-8500 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 i3-1215U has significantly more L2 cache than the Core i5-8500. The Core i3-1215U also has slightly more L3 cache.

Modern CPUs generally have more logical cores than physical cores, this means that each core is split into multiple virtual cores, improving efficiency for parallel workloads. For instance, the Core i5-8500 has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.