Intel Core i5-6600 vs Intel Core i7-4870HQ Comparison

The recorded data tells a curious story: a 2014 mobile chip, soldered to its board and long end-of-life, outscoring a desktop Skylake successor in six of eight benchmark tests. The Intel Core i7-4870HQ is a Crystalwell Haswell part built on a 22 nm process with a 47 W TDP, while the Intel Core i5-6600 is a 14 nm Skylake desktop CPU with a 35 W TDP and a launch MSRP of $224. On paper, the newer, leaner, more efficient desktop chip should sweep. It does not. Both land at the 41st percentile against all CPUs in the database, with average benchmark scores of 1769 for the i7 and 1744 for the i5, a gap so small the two practically share a tier. What differs is where each one scores, and that split is what makes this comparison worth a closer look.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The Cinebench results are unanimous. In Cinebench R15 multi-core, the i7-4870HQ posts 540 against the i5-6600's 520, a 3.8 percent win. The single-core R15 result goes the same way: 76 versus 73, a 4.1 percent margin. Cinebench R20 repeats the pattern almost exactly, with the i7 taking multi-core 2253 to 2167 (4 percent) and single-core 317 to 305 (3.9 percent). Cinebench R23 is no different: 5366 versus 5161 in multi-core (4 percent) and 757 versus 728 in single-core (4 percent).

That consistency across three generations of Cinebench is the interesting part. A roughly four percent margin that repeats in six separate rendering tests is not noise, it is a structural advantage. The obvious suspect is threading: the i7 has 8 threads to the i5's 4, which explains multi-core wins, but it does not explain the single-core wins. The i7's 3.70 GHz boost clock is actually lower than the i5's 3.90 GHz, so frequency is not the answer either. Something in the Crystalwell design, perhaps the larger 264 mm² die, is holding up better than raw specifications would predict.

Then Geekbench flips the table. In Geekbench multi-core, the i5-6600 wins 3755 to 3701, a 1.4 percent edge, and in Geekbench single-core it pulls ahead 1239 to 1143, a substantial 7.7 percent margin. Why would the i5 lose every Cinebench single-core test by four percent yet win Geekbench single-core by nearly eight? The data invites speculation. Geekbench leans on short bursts of activity, and a 3.90 GHz boost clock on a 35 W desktop thermal envelope can sustain those bursts in ways a mobile chip with a higher TDP but tighter physical constraints may not. The i7's higher sustained TDP appears to pay off in long rendering runs, while the i5's higher peak clock wins the sprint.

The aggregate verdict from the head-to-head is 6 wins to 2 in favor of the i7-4870HQ, with an average benchmark score gap of 1769 to 1744, just 25 points apart.

The Verdict

For anyone choosing based on rendering throughput, the data points to the i7-4870HQ. It wins every Cinebench test, multi-core and single-core alike, by a steady four percent margin, and its 8 threads give it headroom the 4-thread i5 cannot match when workloads scale beyond four cores. Its average score of 1769 places it nearest the AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE (avgScore 1766, a 0.2 percent delta) and between the Intel Xeon E5-2637 v3 (1773, -0.2 percent), Xeon E-2224 (1762, 0.4 percent), and Xeon E5-4610 v3 (1777, -0.4 percent), a cluster of rivals within half a percent either way.

For bursty, general-purpose compute, the i5-6600 makes a stronger case. Its 7.7 percent Geekbench single-core win is the largest single margin in the entire dataset, and it also takes Geekbench multi-core. Its own rival cluster is equally tight: the Intel Core i7-980X (1746, -0.1 percent), AMD Ryzen 3 4300U (1742, 0.1 percent), Intel Core i3-10100 (1742, 0.1 percent), and Intel Core i5-8269U (1748, -0.2 percent). Notably, the i5's nearest rivals include much newer parts, which suggests its per-thread responsiveness aged well.

There is also the practical question of platform. The i7 is a mobile BGA 1364 part, soldered and unupgradeable. The i5 sits in Socket 1151, a standard desktop socket. Both are end-of-life, both have locked multipliers, and neither supports ECC memory. For a database user comparing them today, the choice reduces to rendering consistency versus burst speed, and mobile-versus-desktop form factor.

Architecture Differences

The two chips sit one architecture apart. The i7-4870HQ is Haswell, codename Crystalwell, manufactured on Intel's 22 nm process, with 1,400 million transistors packed into a 264 mm² die. The i5-6600 is Skylake, built on 14 nm, with a smaller 177 mm² die and no transistor count recorded in the database. The die size difference is striking: the older mobile part occupies nearly 50 percent more silicon, and that Crystalwell lineage is exactly where its unexplained Cinebench resilience likely lives.

Core and thread counts diverge sharply. Both have 4 cores, but the i7 carries 8 threads through hyper-threading while the i5 has only 4 threads. Clocks favor the i5 on paper, 3.30 GHz base and 3.90 GHz boost against the i7's 2.50 GHz base and 3.70 GHz boost, yet the i7 wins most tests anyway. TDP favors the i5 too, 35 W versus 47 W.

Cache is identical: 64 KB of L1 and 256 KB of L2 per core, plus a shared 6 MB L3 on both. PCIe is also identical, Gen 3 with 16 CPU lanes. Memory is not: the i7 supports DDR3 only on a dual-channel bus with 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth, while the i5 supports both DDR3 and DDR4, reaching 34.1 GB/s. That is a significant bandwidth gap, roughly a third more for the Skylake part, and it may contribute to the i5's strong Geekbench showings. Integrated graphics differ as well, Intel HD 5200 on the i7 versus UHD Graphics 530 on the i5.

FAQ

Q: Which CPU is faster overall?

A: The i7-4870HQ, narrowly. It wins 6 of 8 benchmark tests and leads the average score 1769 to 1744, but both sit at the 41st percentile against all CPUs, so the practical difference is small.

Q: Why does the i5-6600 lose Cinebench but win Geekbench?

A: The data shows the i7 winning all six Cinebench tests by about 4 percent, while the i5 takes Geekbench single-core by 7.7 percent and multi-core by 1.4 percent. The likely explanation in the numbers is the i5's higher 3.90 GHz boost clock excelling in short bursts, while the i7's 8 threads and 47 W sustained envelope win longer rendering loads.

Q: Does hyper-threading matter here?

A: Yes for the i7. Its 8 threads versus the i5's 4 give it a scaling advantage in multi-core tests, though in practice the Cinebench multi-core margin is only around 4 percent because both have 4 physical cores.

Q: Which platform is more flexible?

A: The i5-6600. It uses Socket 1151 and supports DDR3 or DDR4 memory with 34.1 GB/s bandwidth. The i7 is soldered to BGA 1364 and supports DDR3 only at 25.6 GB/s.

Q: Can either CPU be overclocked?

A: No. Both have locked multipliers, so the recorded clocks are the ceiling.

Q: How do they compare to other CPUs in the database?

A: The i7's nearest rivals are the AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE, Xeon E5-2637 v3, Xeon E-2224, and Xeon E5-4610 v3, all within 0.4 percent. The i5's nearest rivals are the Core i7-980X, Ryzen 3 4300U, Core i3-10100, and Core i5-8269U, all within 0.2 percent.

Where Each One Wins

The i7-4870HQ owns sustained rendering. Cinebench R15, R20, and R23, multi-core and single-core, all go its way by consistent margins between 3.8 and 4.1 percent. Workloads like video encoding, 3D rendering, and any task that runs flat-out for minutes rather than seconds will favor the Crystalwell part, as will anything that can use more than 4 threads, since the i5 simply has no fifth thread to offer.

The i5-6600 wins burst workloads and responsiveness. Its 7.7 percent Geekbench single-core lead is the biggest number in the matchup, and its 1.4 percent Geekbench multi-core win shows the advantage holds under light parallelism. Snappy application launches, web workloads, and short computational tasks play to its higher boost clock and its much stronger memory bandwidth of 34.1 GB/s versus 25.6 GB/s.

It is also worth noting the i5's desktop identity: Socket 1151, DDR4 support, and a 35 W TDP make it the practical choice where power draw and platform flexibility matter. The i7's mobile BGA packaging means it only exists inside whatever system it was soldered into.

Specification Differences

• Threads: 8 (i7-4870HQ) vs 4 (i5-6600)
• Base clock: 2.50 GHz vs 3.30 GHz
• Boost clock: 3.70 GHz vs 3.90 GHz
• TDP: 47 W vs 35 W
• Socket: Intel BGA 1364 vs Intel Socket 1151
• Architecture: Haswell (Crystalwell) vs Skylake
• Process node: 22 nm vs 14 nm
• Transistors: 1,400 million vs not recorded
• Die size: 264 mm² vs 177 mm²
• Memory support: DDR3 vs DDR3 and DDR4
• Memory bandwidth: 25.6 GB/s vs 34.1 GB/s
• Integrated graphics: Intel HD 5200 vs UHD Graphics 530
• Market segment: Mobile vs Desktop
• Release date: 2014-06-30 vs 2015-06-30
• Launch MSRP: not recorded vs $224

Everything else, core count, cache hierarchy, PCIe lanes, ECC support, multiplier lock, and production status, is identical between the two.