Intel Core i7-8550U vs Intel Core i5-2500K

Compare Intel 8th Generation Core i7 4 core CPU vs Intel Core 4 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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Intel Core i5-2500K

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 969.00

$ 133.55

$ 835.45 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

2085 points

2325 points

11% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

3523 points

4281 points

21% slightly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1671 points

1776 points

6% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1597 points

1704 points

6% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

43.52 points

26% slightly higher Blender score

34.51 points

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

2622 points

38% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

1893 points

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

878 points

39% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

629 points

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

100% significantly more threads

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

1.8 GHz

3.3 GHz

83% significantly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

4 GHz

8% slightly higher turbo speed

3.7 GHz

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

33% slightly more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB

Identical

32 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

706th of 1,089

654th of 1,089

Family

The product line

8th Generation Core i7

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2017 August

2011 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4-2400

DDR3-1066

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i7-8550U vs Core i5-2500K benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-2500K performs better than the Core i7-8550U. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-8550U in all gaming tests too.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores but the Core i7-8550U has more threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i5-2500K has a significantly higher clock speed than the Core i7-8550U. Despite this, the Core i7-8550U has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i7-8550U CPU outputs less heat than a Core i5-2500K 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 i7-8550U has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.