Benchmark Results: SiSoft Sandra 2012
In a diagnostic like Sandra 2012, Hyper-Threading gives the two Core i7s a clear advantage, even though they’re not running all that much faster than the next-lowest finisher, Core i5-3570K. From there, optimizations for power affect performance on a fairly gradual scale.
The effects are similar in the Multi-Media module, where the two Core i7s achieve superior integer and floating-point performance.
Intel has a habit off stripping off features from lower-end SKUs, and we’ve seen AES-NI serve as one of those differentiators that Intel drops. Fortunately, the Core i5s all retain their hardware-accelerated AES, so each contender achieves performance in-line with memory bandwidth.
And as we might have guessed from the Cryptography result, all of our numbers are fairly even (as we’d expect from a common memory controller operating at a consistent data rate).