[SOLVED] I5 3rd gen or i3 8th gen

[Georgeislonely]

I was wondering if the i5 3rd gen is better than the i3 8th gen and why it is worse or better

 

[Supernova1138]

They both have the same core/thread count with 4 cores and 4 threads. The 8th generation i3 is newer and has a number of architectural improvements over the 3rd generation processors making probably about 15-20% faster clock for clock, and the i3 would be clocked higher than a stock clocked i5 from 3rd gen. About the only drawback an 8th gen i3 has is it can't be overclocked, so a 3570k might be able to close the gap somewhat if you overclock it.

Other than that the 8th gen i3 does have advantages to being on a more modern platform eg. DDR4 RAM support, M.2 support for high speed SSDs.

If you already have a 3rd gen i5 CPU and are asking about upgrade options, you'd probably want to go a bit higher end than the i3, 4 cores and 4 threads isn't that great anymore unless you just want a system that can do basic tasks or run lightweight or older games.

 

[jeremyj_83]

The 3rd gen is very old at this point in time. With the incremental IPC improvements, the 8th gen will be a good 15+% faster at the same clock speed. Both are quad core as well so the multi-threaded performance will be higher on the 8th gen as well.