Intel Core i3 microprocessor family

Core i3 is an entry-level Core-branded family, positioned to compete with AMD Athlon II X3/X4 and Phenom II X2/X3 families. First two members of the Core i3 family, Core i3-530 and i3-540, were released on January 7th 2010 at Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. The CPUs are based on Westmere micro-architecture (enhanced Nehalem micro-architecture), and have all basic features of the micro-architecture - 256 KB level 2 cache per core, shared level 3 cache, support for SIMD instructions up to SSE4, Virtualization and Hyper-Threading technologies. There are a few Westmere/Nehalem features, missing from all Core i3 microprocessors. Core i3 doesn't have Turbo Boost technology, which temporary increases frequency of one or more CPU cores. Core i3 processors also lack new AES instructions, Trusted Execution technology and support for VT-d virtualization. The slowest from first two Core i3 CPUs, i3-530, runs at 2.93 GHz, which is %13 slower than the fastest Core 2 Duo CPU E8600. Not surprisingly, the i3-530 is about 10% slower than the E8600 in office and game applications. Many media applications, such 3D processing, and audio and video encoding/decoding, are heavily multi-threaded, therefore Core i3 CPUs with Hyper-Threading feature perform better in them than in office or game applications. In media applications the i3-530 CPU sometimes is as fast as the dual-core E8600, and often up to 15% faster.