i7 vs i5. Whats the difference?

[ajdroidx]

So, I have been doing some random computer related thinking about building another. I am now bouncing between a fairly high end i7 chip and the i5 varient. The i5 is cheaper, slightly slower clock speed, I think by about 100mhz base. And the threaded.

I know the i7 is hyperthreaded which, I guess reads that while it has 4 physical cores, the hyperthreading adds another 4 virtual cores. I doubt its that simple though. Looking at the i5 it don't appear to have hyperthreading.

Is that the only difference? The hyperthreading?

 

[pbf98]

I found this article on PC magazines site, it compares i5 to i7 and tells what differences there are, and they did mention hyperthreading.

Comparing Intel Core i5 vs i7 | PCMag.com


Hope this Helps

 

[SUroot]

My dual core i5 has HT.

Difference is cost. Meaning quality and ability is the real difference.

 

[pbf98]

My dual core i5 has HT.

Difference is cost. Meaning quality and ability is the real difference.

In reading the article I found out that i5 only support up to 4 streams, and ht is creating a virtual core for each existing core. Therefore HT is available on Dual core i5 only.

Core i5 uses Hyper-Threading to make a dual-core CPU act like a four-core one, but if you have a Core i5 processor with four true cores, it won't have Hyper-Threading. For the time being, Core i5 tops out at handling 4 streams, using four real cores or two cores with Hyper-Threading.

Turbo-boost clock speeds are also set higher on i7s

 

[SUroot]

In reading the article I found out that i5 only support up to 4 streams, and ht is creating a virtual core for each existing core. Therefore HT is available on Dual core i5 only.

Intel Processor Comparison

All the i7's have twice the threads as cores. All the i5's have twice the threads as cores.

Turbo-boost clock speeds are also set higher on i7s

This is not always the case. When I compared my 2nd Gen i5 to 2nd gen i7's, I could boost further. Generally you are right, but not always.