Intel Core i7-7660U vs Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550

Core i7-7660U vs Core 2 Quad Q9550 benchmarks

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i7-7660U is faster than the Core 2 Quad Q9550. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core 2 Quad Q9550 in all gaming tests too.

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 i7-7660U that has 2 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core 2 Quad Q9550 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i7-7660U. A Core i7-7660U 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 i7-7660U has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.