Core i5-3550: specs and benchmarks

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Aggregate performance score

Core i5-3550
2012
4 cores / 4 threads, 77 Watt
3.02

Core i5-3550 provides poor benchmark performance at 3.02% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.

Summary

Intel started Core i5-3550 sales 29 April 2012 at a recommended price of $205. This is an Ivy Bridge architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 4 cores and 4 threads, and is based on 22 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3700 MHz and a locked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA1155 processor with a TDP of 77 Watt and a maximum temperature of 67 °C. It supports DDR3 memory.

Primary details

Core i5-3550 processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in the ranking1642
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation0.56
Market segmentDesktop processor
SeriesIntel Core i5 (Desktop)
Power efficiency3.71of 100.00 (Ryzen Z1 Extreme)
Architecture codenameIvy Bridge (2012−2013)
Release date29 April 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$205of 17,906 (Xeon Platinum 8280L)

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance per price, higher is better.

Detailed specifications

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores4 (Quad-Core)
Threads4
Base clock speed3.3 GHzof 4.7 GHz (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed3.7 GHzof 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS)
Bus rate5 GT/s
L1 cache64 KB (per core)of 80 KB (EPYC 9965)
L2 cache256K (per core)
L3 cache6 MB (shared)of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X)
Chip lithography22 nmof 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Die size160 mm2
Maximum core temperature67 °Cof 110 °C (Atom x7-E3950)
Maximum case temperature (TCase)67 °Cof 105 °C (Core i7-5950HQ)
Number of transistors1,400 millionof 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X)
64 bit support+
Windows 11 compatibility-

Compatibility

Information on Core i5-3550 compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration1of 8 (Opteron 842)
SocketFCLGA1155
Power consumption (TDP)77 Wattof 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P)

Technologies and extensions

Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i5-3550. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensionsIntel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX
AES-NI+
AVX+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)+
Turbo Boost Technology2.0
Hyper-Threading Technology-
Idle States+
Thermal Monitoring+
FDI+

Security technologies

Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT+
EDB+
Secure Key+
Identity Protection+
Anti-Theft+

Virtualization technologies

Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.

VT-d+
VT-x+
EPT+

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i5-3550's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.

Supported memory typesDDR3
Maximum memory size32 GBof 6 TiB (EPYC 9124)
Max memory channels2of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221)
Maximum memory bandwidth25.6 GB/sof 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9124)

Graphics specifications

General parameters of a GPU integrated into Core i5-3550.

Integrated graphics cardIntel HD Graphics 2500
Quick Sync Video+
Clear Video HD+
Graphics max frequency1.15 GHz
InTru 3D+

Graphics interfaces

Available interfaces and connections of Core i5-3550's integrated GPU.

Number of displays supported3

Peripherals

Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.

PCIe version3.0of 5.0 (Core i9-12900K)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i5-3550. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

i5-3550 3.02

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

i5-3550 4800

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

i5-3550 642

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

i5-3550 1910

Cinebench 10 32-bit single-core

Cinebench R10 is an ancient ray tracing benchmark for processors by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. Its single core version uses just one CPU thread to render a futuristic looking motorcycle.

i5-3550 5191

Cinebench 10 32-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 10 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R10 using all the processor threads. Possible number of threads is limited by 16 in this version.

i5-3550 17762

3DMark06 CPU

3DMark06 is a discontinued DirectX 9 benchmark suite from Futuremark. Its CPU part contains two scenarios, one dedicated to artificial intelligence pathfinding, another to game physics using PhysX package.

i5-3550 6405

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 11.5 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R11.5 which uses all the processor threads. A maximum of 64 threads is supported in this version.

i5-3550 6

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R11.5 is an old benchmark by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version loads a single thread with ray tracing to render a glossy room full of crystal spheres and light sources.

i5-3550 1.56

TrueCrypt AES

TrueCrypt is a discontinued piece of software that was widely used for on-the-fly-encryption of disk partitions, now superseded by VeraCrypt. It contains several embedded performance tests, one of them being TrueCrypt AES, which measures data encryption speed using AES algorithm. Result is encryption speed in gigabytes per second.

i5-3550 2.7

WinRAR 4.0

WinRAR 4.0 is an outdated version of a popular file archiver. It contains an internal speed test, using 'Best' setting of RAR compression on large chunks of randomly generated data. Its results are measured in kilobytes per second.

i5-3550 3375

x264 encoding pass 2

x264 Pass 2 is a slower variant of x264 video compression that produces a variable bit rate output file, which results in better quality since the higher bit rate is used when it is needed more. Benchmark result is still measured in frames per second.  

i5-3550 33

x264 encoding pass 1

x264 version 4.0 is a video encoding benchmark uses MPEG 4 x264 compression method to compress a sample HD (720p) video. Pass 1 is a faster variant that produces a constant bit rate output file. Its result is measured in frames per second, which means how many frames of the source video file were encoded per second.  

i5-3550 164

Geekbench 2

i5-3550 8990

3DMark Fire Strike Physics

i5-3550 5870

Gaming performance

Closest competitors

Core i5-3550's performance relative to its closest rivals among desktop CPUs.


FX-8140 101.32
Core i3-7320 100.99
Core i5-3550 100
Core i5-4440 99.67

AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i5-3550 is FX-8140, which is faster by 1% and higher by 5 positions in our ranking.

Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i5-3550:

FX-8320E 103.31
FX-8140 101.32
Core i5-3550 100
FX-6350 95.7

Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i5-3550, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i5-3550 in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 6716 configurations using Core i5-3550 in our database.

RTX 4090 GeForce RTX 4090
0.5% (32/6716)
RTX 4080 GeForce RTX 4080
0.03% (2/6716)
RTX 4070 Ti GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
0.03% (2/6716)
RX 7900 XTX Radeon RX 7900 XTX
0.04% (3/6716)
RTX 3090 Ti GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
0.07% (5/6716)
RX 7900 XT Radeon RX 7900 XT
0.01% (1/6716)
RX 6950 XT Radeon RX 6950 XT
0.01% (1/6716)
RTX 3080 Ti GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
0.03% (2/6716)

All comparisons with Core i5-3550

Community ratings

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


3.8 645 votes

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Questions & comments

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