Intel Core i3 / i5 and i7.

[deba]

Dear All,

I have purchased a Sony VAIO Laptop E series VPC EB16FG.Its running Windows 7 Home Premium and has Intel i3 Processor.

Kindly let me know how many cores does the Intel i3 has as the Windows Task Manager is showing 4 Cores but Intel site says 2 cores only.

What is the basic difference between these three new Intel processors ?

Kindly discuss.

Thanks.

 

[asliarun]

Dear All,

I have purchased a Sony VAIO Laptop E series VPC EB16FG.Its running Windows 7 Home Premium and has Intel i3 Processor.

Kindly let me know how many cores does the Intel i3 has as the Windows Task Manager is showing 4 Cores but Intel site says 2 cores only.

What is the basic difference between these three new Intel processors ?

Kindly discuss.

Thanks.

Intel's "i" series of CPUs are all derived from the Nehalem microprocessor architecture that supports hyperthreading. Basically, what this means is that Nehalem is so "wide" or has so much spare processing power that it splits each core into two virtual cores. This is why your OS (Win7) sees 4 cores instead of two cores. This is done to better utilize the spare CPU capacity, as 4 cores (even if they are virtual) will be better able to simultaneously process 4 threads compared to two cores.

You will see a performance increase due to this architecture feature if you are running multiple applications or if you are running a single heavy-duty application that is multi-threaded - is able to spawn multiple processing threads to parallellize the workload.

Note that since these are virtual cores and not real physical cores, even for most multi-threaded workloads, you will only see a 20-50% performance jump (instead of 60-95% jump in the case of physical cores). But hey, you get the virtual cores for free!

 

[kapvin]

Dear All,

I have purchased a Sony VAIO Laptop E series VPC EB16FG.Its running Windows 7 Home Premium and has Intel i3 Processor.

Kindly let me know how many cores does the Intel i3 has as the Windows Task Manager is showing 4 Cores but Intel site says 2 cores only.

What is the basic difference between these three new Intel processors ?

Kindly discuss.

Thanks.

it has 2 cores. each core has hyper threading, so Windows "sees" 4 cores.

i3 & i5 have integrated HD graphics & audio built right into the CPU. i7 has many models - i7 7xx which have 4 cores, 8xx which have 4 cores & hyperthreading - all use 1156LGA socket ( P/H55/57 chipsets) and are interchangeable.

the i7 9xx fit in a different socket (afaik 1366lga).

here's a roadmap for all intel processors, so you can see which processor relates to which one

 

[deba]

Very Helpful Reply .....Thanks.........