were older i intel series cpus more alike?

[adarw]

so if we look at i series, older series all have 4 cores so was the difference in performance lower than today's difference?

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, adarw said:

so if we look at i series, older series all have 4 cores so was the difference in performance lower than today's difference?

Greater.  There was only really one 4 core before the stuff though before that they were all dual and single cores. At least at consumer level.

[adarw]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Greater.  There was only really one 4 core before the stuff though before that they were all dual and single cores. At least at consumer level.

im talking about like 4th and 5th gen.

[flibberdipper]

They didn't all have 4 cores though? Desktop Pentium's were 2C/2T, i3's were 2C/4T, i5's were 4C/4T, and i7's were 4C/8T. Then on the mobile front, Pentiums were still 2C/2T, i3's and i5's were both 2C/4T, and most i7's were 4C/8T (with a few of the meme U-SKU 2C/4T's thrown in to remind us that Intel is still dumb).

[adarw]

2 minutes ago, flibberdipper said:

They didn't all have 4 cores though? Desktop Pentium's were 2C/2T, i3's were 2C/4T, i5's were 4C/4T, and i7's were 4C/8T. Then on the mobile front, Pentiums were still 2C/2T, i3's and i5's were both 2C/4T, and most i7's were 4C/8T (with a few of the meme U-SKU 2C/4T's thrown in to remind us that Intel is still dumb).

oh ok that makes more sense lol

[YoungBlade]

Hyperthreading actually makes a pretty big difference. The performance improvement varies between applications, but it's generally around 30-40%. So the i5 and i7 may have had the same core count, but between the higher clockspeeds and hyperthreading support, it was decently faster.

 

For the CPUs today, the i5 has 6 cores and the i7 has 8 cores, which is a 33% increase, plus the i7 clocks a bit higher.

 

So the difference in performance is actually still about the same.