What is a Core i3, Core i5, or Core i7 as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2015-05-07
·
887 words · ~4 min read
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I love Intel as much as anyone. They make cool products, they engage in lots of community stuff,
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and I mean, heck, they're even a major sponsor of my other channel. But man,
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when it comes to confusing product naming schemes, I think Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 takes the cake.
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I mean, great question! What is a Core i7-4790K? What the heck does all of this even mean?
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We'll get to that, but first a bit of background about why we need product names for processors.
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Wouldn't it be simpler to just label them with how many gigahertz they run? I didn't call it a day.
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Simpler, sort of, but at times actually even more confusing. For example, when the Pentium 4 launched,
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an equivalently clocked Pentium 3 was actually faster because it could do more work with each
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cycle. As a customer, I would expect the product with the higher number to be the better one,
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and therein lies the problem. Not all megahertz and gigahertz are created equal,
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and rating products that way is
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about like rating the performance of a car based on what RPM the engine runs at. It's not actually a real
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indication of how fast the processor is, but it happened. Now, one of AMD's attempts to move away from this started in the early
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2000s with their PR or
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performance rating naming scheme, where their processors were given a four-digit model number that enthusiasts believe was based on the performance
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AMD felt that they delivered compared to an Intel CPU of that clock speed, but this fixed nothing.
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They were still,
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indirectly naming according to clock speed, and it wasn't until Intel introduced the Core series, a line of CPUs that
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dramatically outperformed their predecessors at much lower clocks, that the megahertz war ended because Intel
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needed to shift their marketing away from frequency. So here's what we have today.
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Other than the very bare-bones Pentium SKUs, a Core i3 will be your most basic option, with two processing cores and
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hyper-threading. More about this feature here. For better multitasking,
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it will have a smaller cache, it'll consume less power, and it'll generally perform worse than a Core i5,
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but it'll cost less, which leads us to the Core i5.
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I wish I could say it was as simple as, well, Core i3s have two cores, and Core i5s have four cores.
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The number of cores equals n minus one, where n is the number after the little i.
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But it's not. Mobile Core i5s have two cores and hyper-threading, while desktop ones,
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mostly, have four cores and no hyper-threading.
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But, what they all have in common is improved onboard graphics and turbo boost.
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More about this feature here. For temporary performance enhancements, when your system needs a little bit more oomph.
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And with oomph in mind, Core i7s. Number one, all Core i7s have hyper-threading for heavy workloads, and number two,
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that's the noise your brain is gonna make as I finish my explanation here.
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A Core i7 can have anywhere from two processing cores in an Ultrabook, all the way up to eight in a workstation.
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It might support anywhere from two sticks of memory, all the way to eight, and it can have a TDP anywhere from around 10 watts,
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all the way to a hundred and thirty watts.
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So there is a ton of variety here.
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And that's for a reason.
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Core i7s tend to have more cache, faster turbo boost, and better onboard graphics than the lower tier processors.
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And I guess, other than that, the best summary I can give is this.
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A Core i7 represents the best thing Intel could build for a given use case, with the biggest drawback being the higher price tag.
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So, when you boil it down, that's all the i-whatever numbers represent.
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They did better best within a given segment. Beyond that, on their own, they're pretty much meaningless.
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The numbers and letters afterwards sort of mean something, if you use the guide from before.
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But the safest way to shop is to dig around in Arc, and look at the features,
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core counts, and clock speeds of the CPUs you're comparing, to figure out how they stack up.
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With the good news being that as long as you compare within one brand, and within the same product generation,
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those metrics will actually mean something.
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Speaking of mean, Fractal Design is back buying up
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all of my advertising inventory for the sole purpose of making me do stupid crap on camera for y'all,
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instead of talking about the great quality and clean Scandinavian design of their PC cases, power supplies, and cooling products.
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Mind you, I don't know who to be mad at at this point, because it was you, not Fractal, who posted
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let's make them do the sponsor spot on Helium on their Facebook page. I mean, thanks a lot, guys!
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I mean, genuinely, thanks for watching, guys. Like or dislike the video accordingly,
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leave a comment with suggestions for future Fastest Possibles, and as always,
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don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already.