Intel Core i7-8550U vs Intel Core i5-3230M

Core i7-8550U vs Core i5-3230M comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-8550U performs better than the Core i5-3230M. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-3230M in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i7-8550U has significantly more cores with 4 cores whereas the Core i5-3230M has 2 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-3230M. Our comparison shows that the Core i5-3230M has a significantly higher clock speed compared to 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 i5-3230M CPU because of its significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

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. Indeed, the Core i7-8550U has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.