Intel Core i3 540

Product Survey: Processors

The technology on offer includes two cores and Hyper-threading. Often known as simply 'HT', this system allows each core to emulate two cores, meaning that the OS 'sees' four cores instead of two. This helps even out the load between the two 'real' cores and improve performance. However, the i3 CPUs don't have a Turbo mode which would have helped speed things up when not all cores are in use at once. Engineered at 32 nm, the Core i3 processors don't need much power. When idle, our test computer required a total of 95 W, which is a very impressive performance that's repeated when it's working hard: power use only climbs to 137 W. In the same test conditions, an uses 130 W and 186 W respectively. While the latter has four physical cores, it has broadly equivalent average performance. The lack of Turbo mode doesn't count against the Core i3 540, which is a fairly average mid-range processor. Complex programs do run, but more slowly than they would on a quad-core CPU. The performance is good enough if you only need to use one them every now and again: if you don't have a lot of photos to edit or only want to work with video when you get back from your summer holidays once a year, then you'll get by just fine.