Compare i3, i5 and i7 processors

Intel releas­es three fam­i­lies of Intel Core proces­sors — i3, i5 and i7. And they dif­fer not only in the last dig­its in the names. CPU spec­i­fi­ca­tions also vary.

Let’s fig­ure out what the dif­fer­ence is between the i3, i5 and i7 proces­sors, until the m3 and i9 became mas­sive and did not com­pli­cate the task.

What is the difference between i3, i5 and i7 processors in simple words

Speak­ing as sim­ply as pos­si­ble, the CPU fam­i­ly shows, first of all, its per­for­mance. The num­ber at the end does not indi­cate the num­ber of cores, it sim­ply demon­strates the class of the chip.

In par­tic­u­lar:

1. Intel Core i3 — solu­tions “office lev­el”. They are suit­able for com­put­ers on which it is planned to work main­ly with doc­u­ments and surf the Inter­net. i3 con­fig­u­ra­tions can pull some games, but maybe very old and unde­mand­ing to hard­ware;

2. Intel Core i5 — solu­tions “home lev­el”. On them, with equal suc­cess, you can edit video record­ings, “sit” on the Inter­net, and edit large doc­u­ments. In addi­tion, they are well suit­ed for use in the office, if the employ­ee has to deal with com­pu­ta­tion­al­ly inten­sive data­bas­es;

3. Intel Core i7 — solu­tions “pro­fes­sion­al lev­el”. They pro­vide max­i­mum per­for­mance, which is enough for games, and for pro­gram­ming, and for every­thing else you want. And they sup­port over­clock­ing.

Thus, the per­for­mance of the CPU grows accord­ing to their price. And now let’s take a clos­er look.

Number of cores in i3, i5 and i7 processors

The num­ber of cores deter­mines the per­for­mance of the CPU in most resource-inten­sive tasks. So, dual-core chips can cal­cu­late two com­pu­ta­tion threads simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, four-core ones — four, and four-core ones with Hyper-Thread­ing tech­nol­o­gy — already eight.

1. i3 mod­els are almost always dual-core, except for the most recent ones. Some mod­els in the fam­i­ly sup­port Hyper-Thread­ing to dou­ble the num­ber of com­pute threads, some do not. How­ev­er, the actu­al num­ber of cores on the i3 is always two.

2. Mod­els i5 in most cas­es are quad-core. No, of course, the com­pa­ny also has a line of Core i5 lap­top and ultra­book chips with two cores, but then they sup­port Hyper-Thread­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Quad-core chips of this fam­i­ly in most cas­es do not sup­port Hyper-Thread­ing, but they do not need it.

3. Mod­els i7 in most cas­es are quad-core with sup­port for Hyper-Thread­ing, which pro­vides eight com­put­ing threads at once. Thanks to this, appli­ca­tions with sup­port for mul­ti­proces­sor con­fig­u­ra­tions start instant­ly. In addi­tion, the Cof­fee Lake line­up, which is cur­rent at the begin­ning of 2019, has a six-core i7 that sup­ports 12 com­put­ing threads.

Speak­ing of com­pu­ta­tion­al threads, Let’s look at some cas­es in which they are real­ly need­ed:

1. Soft­ware devel­op­ment. The pro­gram­mer spec­i­fies the code that will issue instruc­tions direct­ly (or indi­rect­ly) to the proces­sor. The larg­er and larg­er the pro­gram, the high­er the load on the chip, respec­tive­ly. Debug­ging appli­ca­tions on low-pow­er con­fig­u­ra­tions like i3 is a task for at least patient ones;

2. Devel­op­ment of three-dimen­sion­al mod­els. Of course, in this case, it is main­ly the video card that “boots”, but at the same time, the CPU also “takes part” in the process of cre­ation;

3. Devel­op­ment of draw­ings. Espe­cial­ly in the lat­est ver­sions of Auto­CAD, Com­pass and oth­er CAD sys­tems;

4. Work in 1C and book­keep­ing in spe­cial pro­grams. The hold­ing of any doc­u­ment requires the revi­sion and pro­cess­ing of all oth­er records. Sim­i­lar­ly, you need a pow­er­ful CPU;

5. Online Games. In them, the CPU is respon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing the behav­ior of char­ac­ters on the map and in the field of view;

6. Offline games. In them, the CPU works togeth­er with the video card and facil­i­tates its “labor” in cal­cu­lat­ing the behav­ior of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — for exam­ple, non-play­er char­ac­ters or oppo­nents.

In this way, if you plan to engage in seri­ous devel­op­ment, then pow­er­ful mul­ti­proces­sor con­fig­u­ra­tions are required — i5 and i7. And for the office and i3 is enough.

Clock speed of i3, i5 and i7 processors

The clock fre­quen­cy is, in fact, the speed of the proces­sor. And it’s worth men­tion­ing right away that it’s some­what point­less to com­pare these chips by this para­me­ter. The i7 mod­els may have a low­er clock speed than the i3, but they will still be “faster”.

The whole secret is in the cores and com­pu­ta­tion­al threads. But it’s still pos­si­ble to do some analy­sis. Take for exam­ple the Cof­fee Lake line, released at the end of 2018:

1. Intel Core i3 8350K — four cores, four threads, stock clock speed 4.0 GHz;

2. Intel Core i5 8600K — six cores, six threads, stock clock speed 3.6 GHz;

3. Intel Core i7 8086K — six cores, twelve threads, stock clock speed of 4.0 GHz.

It can be seen that the clock fre­quen­cy of i7 (the most expen­sive and pow­er­ful in the line) and i3 (the cheap­est, respec­tive­ly) are the same. And the i5 is com­plete­ly low­er than its com­peti­tors. But the secret is in mul­ti­thread­ing.

The Intel Core i7 8086K is capa­ble of run­ning twelve dif­fer­ent tasks simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at 4.0 GHz, while the Intel Core i3 8350K can only do four at the same fre­quen­cy. So in the same sit­u­a­tion i7 will show itself three times faster than i3.

But there is one more “but”, and its name is Intel Tur­bo Boost.

Turbo Boost i3, i5 and i7 processors

Intel Tur­bo Boost Tech­nol­o­gy tem­porar­i­ly increas­es the proces­sor’s clock speed by speed­ing up one or more cores. The chip can oper­ate in this mode for a lim­it­ed peri­od. But if a dif­fi­cult task is thrown at him, Tur­bo Boost can help.

And i3 fam­i­ly proces­sors do not sup­port Tur­bo Boost. In gen­er­al, even the newest ones.

Chips i5 and i7 — sup­port. More­over, sup­port can be imple­ment­ed in dif­fer­ent ways. Let’s turn to the above chips of the Cof­fee Lake fam­i­ly:

1. Intel Core i5 8600K at a stock clock speed of 3.6 GHz can “over­clock” up to 4.3 GHz on one core or up to 4.1 GHz on all six cores;

2. Intel Core i5 8600 (with a locked mul­ti­pli­er) at a stock clock speed of 3.1 GHz can be over­clocked to 4.3 GHz on a sin­gle core, and does not sup­port mul­ti-thread­ed Tur­bo Boost at all;

3. Intel Core i7 8086K at a stock clock speed of 4.0 GHz can over­clock up to 5.0 GHz on one core or up to 4.3 GHz on all six;

4. The Intel Core i7 8700T (the small­est mod­el in the fam­i­ly) can over­clock up to 4.0 GHz on a sin­gle core at a stock clock speed of 2.4 GHz, and does not sup­port mul­ti-thread­ed Tur­bo Boost.

All in all, in any case, i7 are more pro­duc­tive than i5 from the same seg­ment and much more pro­duc­tive than i3. How­ev­er, the top i5 may well be faster than the min­i­mum i7.

But the clock fre­quen­cy is a para­me­ter that is need­ed first of all when per­form­ing resource-inten­sive tasks and with syn­thet­ic loads. There is anoth­er fea­ture that affects the speed of the chip — the amount of cache mem­o­ry.

Cache memory processor i3, i5 and i7

When talk­ing about the proces­sor cache, first of all we mean the L3 cache. It is on it that all the data nec­es­sary for the oper­a­tion of the chip is stored, as well as the results of some cal­cu­la­tions. Cache mem­o­ry is need­ed so that the proces­sor access­es less RAM and hard disk.

Let’s imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion. The proces­sor receives a huge num­ber of instruc­tions that it needs to exe­cute. The chip does not have time to phys­i­cal­ly com­plete them all and forms a queue. The ques­tion is where to place this queue?

There is the first option — place­ment in RAM. The proces­sor, after exe­cut­ing some Com­mand 1, access­es the RAM, receives Com­mand 2 from there, exe­cutes it, again access­es the RAM, receives Com­mand 3, and so on until it turns blue. These calls and receipts take a huge amount of time, which makes the com­put­er run very slow­ly.

The sec­ond option is to place instruc­tions in the mem­o­ry of the proces­sor itself. Then they are received much faster, so that the com­put­er works much more “fast”.

It is the L3 cache that is this very proces­sor mem­o­ry. And, obvi­ous­ly, the big­ger it is, the bet­ter.

Speak­ing about the chips of the Cof­fee Lake fam­i­ly, we can dis­tin­guish the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics:

1. Intel Core i3 — 4–8 MB depend­ing on the revi­sion;

2. Intel Core i5 — 9 MB;

3. Intel Core i7 — 12 MB.

It is self-evi­dent that the i7 mod­els will store more com­mands in mem­o­ry and there­by increase the over­all per­for­mance of the com­put­er.

Conclusion

1. In gen­er­al, the Intel Core series includes high-per­for­mance proces­sors that show excel­lent per­for­mance. But the i7 has the max­i­mum, and the i3 has the min­i­mum and suit­able only for “aver­age users”. You need to choose a proces­sor based on your tasks.

2. For a home com­put­er where movies, web pages and doc­u­ments will be viewed, a high-per­for­mance i7 will be overkill. Enough i5 or i3. But for a work­sta­tion that will be used to devel­op some­thing, the speed of i5 / i3, in prin­ci­ple, is not enough.

3. At the same time, it is worth not­ing that proces­sors are not the only com­po­nent that deter­mines the speed of a com­put­er. The main thing is bal­ance. A com­put­er with a top i7, but with 2 GB of RAM and a slow hard dri­ve on SATA I will work slow­ly and sad­ly; and on i3 with fast RAM and PCIe SSD, you can even run rel­a­tive­ly “heavy” games or work with Auto­CAD (at the very least, but it will work out — the expe­ri­ence of the author of the mate­r­i­al).

4. When assem­bling a com­put­er, if the bud­get allows, install bal­anced com­po­nents in it — top-end for i7 and aver­age for i5 and i3. And then he will please with his speed of work.