Which family an Intel Core CPU falls into is based on a collection of criteria involving their number of cores, clock speed (in GHz) and cache size, the number of Intel technologies they integrate also plays a role. Intel’s Core i7 CPUs don’t have seven cores nor do Core i3 have three cores. They’ve got nothing to do with the number of cores in each CPU nor the speed of each. If you're building your first PC, the main thing you need to keep in mind here is that the 3, 5 and 7 attached to each family of Intel Core processors are simply meant to be indicative of their relative processing power. We’re not going to go to deeply into those and how they compare to Intel's Core proecessor, since this article is specifically focused on the difference between Intel’s Core i3, Core i5 and i7 CPUs - but they do merit a mention. If you want to boil things down to something plain and simple, then generally speaking, 'most' Core i7 CPUs are better than most Core i5 CPUs, which are in turn better than most Core i3 CPUs.īelow that, you’ve got fare like the Intel Celeron and Intel Pentium processors. Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 - the difference in a nutshell Thinking of building a new PC around Intel’s high-end Core i9 processors? Check out our guide to Which Intel Core CPU is best here. No matter who you are, you’ll want to know whether an Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 CPU is the right choice for you and this buyer's guide is here to help. But with the advent of Intel’s new Coffee Lake, Ice Lake and Whiskey Lake CPUs, there’s a whole new generation of PC buyers facing the same familiar decisions. Kaby Lake processors and whether Google’s mesh node Wi-Fi system lives up to the hype.

In the past, we’re analysed what the difference between an Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 CPU was for things like Intel's 7th gen.

Dual core 4th generation processor