i5 3230M vs i3 3210, is it true they equally powerful?

Solution
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The i5 3230M is a Dual-Core with 4 Threads. The i3 3210 is also Dual-Core with 4 Threads.

Laptop CPUs tend to be a little less powerful than desktop CPUs. So it seems possible that they perform about the same.

If you're going to be playing games, the i3 3210 will be useless alone, as it has an Intel HD 2500 iGPU, so you would need a discrete GPU in order to get decent performance. The i5 3230M has an Intel HD 4000 iGPU, which will be quite a bit better, but still slower than an intel HD 4000 on a desktop computer, and of course you can't upgrade the GPU on a laptop, so you'll need to buy a laptop with better graphics if you wish to play games.


Hi,

The PC VS Notebook is not about the CPU alone.

the Notebooks are portable but are bad for games and heavy work and replacement parts (like keyboard breaking from heavy work) .. and they are not for heavy rendering being Videos or 3D they will heat up and become very noisy very fast.

in Desktops , you can add any Gaming card you want ... Most games depend on GPU not CPU , and it makes a lot of difference regardless of CPU ..

you can Add a lot of Harddisks , SSD and so on , and you will use at least 21 inch Monitor ...

Picky a Notebook ONLY if you want to move your PC around too much .. or take it with you when you travel.
 
The i5 3230M is a Dual-Core with 4 Threads. The i3 3210 is also Dual-Core with 4 Threads.

Laptop CPUs tend to be a little less powerful than desktop CPUs. So it seems possible that they perform about the same.

If you're going to be playing games, the i3 3210 will be useless alone, as it has an Intel HD 2500 iGPU, so you would need a discrete GPU in order to get decent performance. The i5 3230M has an Intel HD 4000 iGPU, which will be quite a bit better, but still slower than an intel HD 4000 on a desktop computer, and of course you can't upgrade the GPU on a laptop, so you'll need to buy a laptop with better graphics if you wish to play games.
 
Solution
They are very similar. The Core i3-3210 is slightly faster as a pure CPU. The Core i5-3230M has a significantly faster built-in GPU, but that doesn't matter if the computer has a dedicated graphics card. The Core i5-3230M uses less power, obviously.

It's only natural for laptop parts to be weaker than desktop parts, which is why an upper midrange laptop Core i5 matches a mainstream/budget desktop Core i3.
 
No, the i3 has an iGPU too. Just a slower one. It's not a pure CPU, those disappeared more than a decade ago, when cache moved on-die.

It doesn't even match - the i3 is 3.2GHz, while the i5 is 2.6GHz, and up to 3.2 if you're using one core with spare TDP.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/71053,72164

I'm somewhat confused about Intel's specs for the i3 though. I'm fairly sure it's PCIe3.0, and doesn't have ECC support.
 

No, they didn't include PCIe 3.0 support for the Core i3s and below. Differentiating feature for the Core i5s and above. What's with the necro anyway?