What's the difference...

between a 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 and a Quad core 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 ?

Basically i'm buying an iMac, and the only difference between the top 2 options is that, and the graphics card, but which processor out of these 2 is best :) ?

+rep fro any help :)

I'm no processor expert, but the i5 contains more capabilities such as Hyper Threading, Turbo and other jargon features I can't quite explain- whilst the i3 has less capabilities, but performs more operations per second (hence the higher GHZ number).

Hang on for a real expert to advise you in here, but I'd say based on what it can do I would choose the i5.

aahh ok, i was on the intel website and nothing made sense to me :L Thanks anyway, +rep

isnt the i5 version when you can turbo boost it, in other words overclock it? Without a 3rd party app

I don't know if it helps, but the pages on the intel website are:

intel i3
and
intel i5

I read through them and nothing makes sense to me, which is why i felt the need to post this :L

i5 got more cores...

i3 is 2 core'd whereas i5 got 4 core'd.

You can overclock the i5 to 3.6 GHZ.. (Dont trust me on this) but the i5 is better as it got double the cores in i3..

ooh, just looked and i could also get a 2.93 GHz quad core i7 if that would be any good :L ?

EDIT: Just checked rapidshare, and the i5 has a "max turbo frequency" of 3.46 GHz, and the i7 a max turbo frequency of 3.6GHz ?

i7 is 6/8 cores I think..


Search up max turbo frequency, you get a better answer by someone else explaining it rather than me.

The more cores is the better, ideally I would go for i5 unless your planning to encode many blu-ray movies.

i3 = 2 cores
i5 = (generally) 4 cores
i7 = a couple of 2 cores, mostly 4 cores, some 6 cores.

Just pick the i5, you won't be using the i7 unless you're into video editing, gaming or something CPU intensive.

I'd go for the i5 if I were you. The i7 would just be overkill and a waste of money unless you need the extra power for intensive things like gaming etc.