What's the difference between i3, i5 and i7?

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ChaoticWolf

ChaoticWolf

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Feb 2, 2016
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I have an i3 inside my rig. My friend says that an i3 and an i5 are the same performance as an i7, its just that the i5 and i7 can have more GPU's. Is this true, or is the i3 weaker? He could be wrong though. I'm sure he is. Because we would be seeing a lot more i3's and i5's in some PC's because people want to pay less and they just want one GPU
 
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geofelt
The number of discrete gpu's you can have is a function of the motherboard; the cpu has nothing to do with it.
If friend is talking about the number of compute elements in the integrated graphics included with the cpu, that is another question.
Generally, the latest generation of processors will have mote capable graphics capability which is partially because of more included graphics processing elements.
If you will use a discrete graphics card for gaming the integrated capability is irrelevant.

As to performance, there is a distinction between multithreaded capability and single thread capability.
Multithread applies to apps that can use all the cores/threads you have.
For such apps, generally, I5 is stronger than i3, and i7 is...
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Tzn

Tzn

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i3 has 2 physical cores and 2 virtual named hyper-threading, i5 has 4 physical cores, i7 has 4 physical cores and 4 virtual. Some i5 can be dual core too. This is a short and poor explanation but it is easy to understand.
 
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freakout918

freakout918

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It depends on the model number. Generally for the desktop processors the Intel i3 has 2 physical cores with 4 threads whereas an i5 has 4 physical cores with 4 threads and an Intel i7 has 4 physical cores with 8 threads. So the i3 is weaker than an i5 and an i5 is weaker than an i7 (i3<i5<i7).
Also the difference between an i3 and an i5 is much more significant than between the i5 and i7.
[Note: its a complete different story for laptop/mobile Intel i-series processor]
 
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G

gondo

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Depending on which generation of CPU, the I3, I5, I7 will differ significantly by the number of cores as already stated. Also the I7 will have higher frequencies than an I5 and an I5 more than an I3. I5, and I7 have unlocked CPUs for overclocking.

The number of GPUs is a factor of the chipset and motheboard not the cpu. With skylake a Z170 based motherboard is better suited to multiple GPUs vs an H110 which supports none.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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The number of discrete gpu's you can have is a function of the motherboard; the cpu has nothing to do with it.
If friend is talking about the number of compute elements in the integrated graphics included with the cpu, that is another question.
Generally, the latest generation of processors will have mote capable graphics capability which is partially because of more included graphics processing elements.
If you will use a discrete graphics card for gaming the integrated capability is irrelevant.

As to performance, there is a distinction between multithreaded capability and single thread capability.
Multithread applies to apps that can use all the cores/threads you have.
For such apps, generally, I5 is stronger than i3, and i7 is stronger than i5.

OTOH, if your application is single threaded, as many games are, the issue is not so clear.
Most games can effectively use only 2-3 threads so I7 is not particularly helpful.
Moreover, the single thread performance of a i3 may well exceed the single thread performance of i5 or i7.
For example, the passmark rating of a I3-6320 is 6073 total, and 2245 single threaded.
A I5-6400 is 6547 total but 1826 single threaded.
A I7-6700 is 9959/2138.


 
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boju

boju

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'If gamer influenced' having the contagious core bug influence your choice, titles out and about can be sensitive to the amount of cores with some of these games having exceptions for dual cores + extra threads albeit at a performance hit. It is safer to be a quad now to be fair, since FarCry 4 and GTA 5, anything less is just drama. i3's single thread performance is great but when developers bring out restrictions its not worth an i3 for gaming purposes alone.
 
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