Intel Core i7-6600U vs Intel Core i5-2500

Compare Intel 6th Generation Core i7 2 core CPU vs Intel Core 4 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

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Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 2749.00
$ 135.87
$ 2613.13 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

1166 points
1975 points
69% significantly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

2340 points
3663 points
56% significantly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

858 points
1502 points
75% significantly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

820 points
1441 points
75% significantly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

Want to compare your processor against the Core i7-6600U and the Core i5-2500? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

23.09 points
26.26 points
13% slightly higher Blender score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

2
4
100% significantly more cores

Threads

Number of logical processing units

4
Identical
4

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

2.6 GHz
3.3 GHz
26% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.4 GHz
3.7 GHz
8% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

15 W
533% significantly lower TDP
95 W

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

12
16
33% slightly more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

2
Identical
2

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB
Identical
32 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

908th of 1,089
725th of 1,089

Family

The product line

6th Generation Core i7
Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2015 August
2011 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4-2133
DDR3-1066

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

No
No

Core i7-6600U vs Core i5-2500 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-2500 beats the Core i7-6600U in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-6600U in all gaming tests too.

In terms of the number of cores of each of these CPUs, the Core i5-2500 has significantly more cores than the Core i7-6600U. Indeed, the Core i5-2500 has 4 cores compared to 2 cores found in the Core i7-6600U. But they both have the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Core i5-2500 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-6600U. Also, the Core i5-2500 has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i7-6600U CPU outputs less heat than a Core i5-2500 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 i7-6600U has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.

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