The most important thing about different architectures is making sure that you have a motherboard that supports the type of processor you're interested in. Processors, regardless of whether they're a Core i3, i5 and i7, based on the same architecture are fundamentally the same inside. The differences in performance come from which features are enabled or disabled, the clock speed and how many cores each one has.
| Model | Core i3 | Core i5 | Core i7 |
| Number of cores | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| Hyper-threading | Yes | No | Yes |
| Turbo boost | No | Yes | Yes |
| K model | No | Yes | Yes |
Cores
A core can be thought of as in individual processor. A dual-core processor, therefore has two internal processors, a quad-core model has four. More cores are useful for multi-tasking; for example, you can run two applications at the same time, each one having access to its own dedicated processor.
More cores are also useful for multi-threaded applications, such as video editing. With these types of applications they can use multiple cores to improve performance. Single-threaded applications can only use a single core leaving any others idle. Core i3 processors have two cores, Core i5 CPUs have four and Core i7 models also have four. Some Core i7 Extreme processors have six or eight cores. Generally speaking, we find that most applications can't take full advantage of six or eight cores, so the performance boost from extra cores isn't as great.
Hyper-Threading
Hyper-Threading is Intel's technology for creating two logical cores in each physical core. In other words, to your operating system it appears as though your CPU has double the number of cores than it really does.
In terms of performance, Hyper-Threading speeds up multi-tasking and multi-threaded applications. It's not as fast or as efficient as extra 'real' cores, but it's an improvement over a single Core. Core i3 and i7 processors have this technology, Core i5 processors do not.
Clock Speed
The faster the clock speed in MHz, the faster each core can run. This can create some variances in performance. For example, a Core i3-4370 Haswell processor runs at 3.8GHz. It would be faster running a single-threaded application, which can only use one core, than a Core i5-4590, which only has a clock speed of 3.2GHz. However, running a multi-threaded application, the Core i5 would most likely be quicker, as its four real cores are better than the Core i3's two cores and Hyper-Threading.
Turbo Boost
Turbo Boost is Intel's technology for automatically overclocking a processor, boosting its clock speed higher than the default setting. The CPU monitors its temperature and, when it's running cool enough, will apply the overclock. Core i5 and i7 CPUs have this technology, Core i3 models do not.
K Models
Any CPU that has a model ending with a K means that it the CPU is unlocked. This means that you can use BIOS settings to up the clock speed of the chip, overclocking it yourself. We've seen big improvements in performance this way - we pushed the Intel Core i7-4790K chip to 4.7GHz!
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