i3 vs i5 is their a big diffrence?

i3 vs i5 is their a big diffrence?

 

Core i5s have Turbo Boost, which allow them to overclock themselves to a certain limit. For example, a Core i5-520M at 2.4 GHz stock would be able to overclock itself to 2.93 GHz.
Core i3s do not.
That's a pretty substantial difference.

 

For the majority of people, it wouldn't make a significant difference in their day-to-day computer work.

 

Isn't the i5 a quad? And the i3 dualcore? IMHO that's the biggest and more relevant difference between the two.

 

dual/quad core is only a relevant difference for software which is able to take advantage of quad cores.

Turbo Boost is unproven in the 'real world'. Unless OS level tasks like disk access are able to take advantage of it, it's a non-factor.

Having said that, software gets more multi-threaded all the time *and* if the day-zero cost of a quad core is insignificant *and* if there are no other considerations such as battery life, heat, weight/portability of the machine, then get the quad core.

 

I mean the most I do would be a youtube video in Hd,Maybe some downloads and home video burning maybe some light video editing

 

The i5 would speed up the video editing part but the i3 is adequate for the rest and since flash 10.1 is coming out too which will pass flash video tasks on your gpu, the kind of cpu you have will become irrelevant.

 

No, only i7 has a quad version. i3 and i5 and dual core.

 

The i5 is a dual core with hyperthreading (so, 4 threads). The i3 is a dual core with no hyperthreading, so only 2 threads.

How is Turbo Boost unproven? The majority of games are still single-threaded. The turbo features of the processor should be easily seen in those cases. Most any single-threaded load (assuming the rest of the system is relatively idle, which is quite common) should see a boost from the turbo feature.

 

And just to confuse things, i7 also has dual cores in its line up...

 

Core i3 has hyperthreading.

 

There are i7 Arrandale (2 core) and Clarksfield (4 core), then there are the i5 (2 core with hyperthreading, so 2 real and 2 theoretical cores) and the i3 which I believe is the same as i5 yet less powerful.

 

Intel has comprehensive information on all of their processors. It would be a good idea to start there (or maybe even Wikipedia), then come back with specific questions (this applies to those that answer questions incorrectly too).

Core i3

Corei5

I think the biggest difference beyond clock speed is that the i3 lacks Turbo Boost.

 

Its really confusing but, the cpus are...

Core i7 720qm (Clarkdale quad)
Core i7 (Arrandale, Dual Core)
Core i5 (Arrandale, Dual Core)
Core i3 (Arrandale, Dual Core)

All have hyperthreading.

 

Well I guess the Intel idea is that while we are confused about the Intel naming conventions and reserach about it, we would eventually forget what AMD does

 

Turbo boost is not so interesting with dual core, it only clocks itself up significantly when its running a single thread.

 

Which quite frequently occurs

 

Indeed. another thing people don't get a feel for, yet, is the speed at which turboboost balances. when ever, even just for some millisecond or two, only one core is used (due some parallelization-issues like stalling, blocking, idling, waiting for the other job to finish, what ever), it immediately boosts that part.

that enhances the snappiness of the computer similar, how an ssd enhances it: by reducing the bottlenecks. the small blocking moments, where you click something and it doesn't react immediately are almost ALL of them singlethreaded. all of those get a speed boost on the i5, which feels awesome.

one point in case: scrolling of zoomed pages in firefox was not smooth on my quadcore @ 2.4ghz. it's smooth on my new i5, as it goes to nearly 4ghz, and is thus has around 66% more speed in that specific case.

true, if the scrolling would be 100% parallelized, the quadcore would be smoother. but software will NEVER be 100% parallelized. in this case, it could. in others, it can't, ever. there, turboboost will always help.

 

Scrolling of zoomed pages is not unsmooth on my p8700 :/

Any background task going on would stop it activating. I am calling placebo here.

 

Acer Aspir e5740 's tests are more than good enough (with i3 and 5650) buying the more powerfull g.c. with i3 gives more game performance I suppose. İ5 will be better but g.c. will make much more difference. For example 5740 beats easily 5940 with i7 and 4650 ddr3.

 

i know much about placebos. and no, background tasks (at least in win7) don't get shifted off to other cores.

and, background tasks interfering with your cpu is a placebo thing mostly anyways. they normally don't eat cpu for more than some millisecond each second, so they're not even in the 1% cpu usage normally.

so, no, it is a real thing, and i can prove it by watching the cpu reclock dynamically while doing such singlethreaded things like scrolling.



as i stated, i scroll with zoomed pages (ctrl-mousewheel). they scroll much slower than non-zoomed pages.

i know placebos, and i know how to test if it is one or not. this gain is real. an i5 + an intel gen2 ssd == about the most snappy affordable system existing. the most responsive one.

an i7 would deliver the same responsivness but more parallel number crunching speed (say for 3d rendering software), a ramdisk would have even lower latencies than an ssd, but you can't really pay that.

 

Whoops, my bad. The i3 doesn't have Turbo. That's what the difference is.

 

I mean, yeah, it's not terribly important. But remember that some Arrandales can go up three bins even if two cores are in use. Of course, this requires that the processor doesn't use it's full TDP already. Note that the TDP is for CPU + GPU combined. So when the integrated graphics is mostly idle, there's a chance you see a three-bin increase in clock on Arrandale.