i5 - are higher numbers always better?

fatw41

Honorable
Dec 30, 2012
43
1
10,530
I've been looking at a few different laptops recently and doing my best to compare deals. However I swear sometimes it seems as though manufacturers purposely make it difficult to compare the spectrum of products.

Question: with respect to i5 cpus, are higher numbers always better? How do I actually compare one cpu to another?

My specific example - i5-3230M versus i5-3210M

The system configured with the 3210M is marginally more expensive than that with the 3230M which is where my confusion stems from.

Thanks.

 

Estix

Honorable
Apr 12, 2012
250
0
10,810
Notebookcheck is an excellent resource for comparing mobile processors and GPUs.

In general, higher model numbers are... more premium, but not necessarily faster, as the suffix (M,U,T,K,S, etc) does tend to matter.

For reference:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i5-3230M-Notebook-Processor.84823.0.html
^3230M
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i5-3210M-Notebook-Processor.74458.0.html
^3210M

The difference between the two is 100MHz, or roughly 4%-3% or so, not enough that you'd notice :)