Intel Core i3 3227U  vs 3217U 

If you're a person who's always on the go, you'll need an ultraportable laptop. It's lighter than the average laptop and is geared towards portability and long lasting battery life. For this match up, we’re comparing two of those processors: the Intel Core i3 3227U versus the Intel Core i3 3217U, to see which has better performance.

The 3227U and 3217U are similar in more ways than one. Essentially, both are dual Core chips with 3 MB of cache. Fortunately, they're also hyperthreaded which results to more efficient use of each processor core. They also have great battery life because of a low power consumption of 17W TDP.

Their main difference lies in the clock speed: the 3227U is clocked at 1.9 GHz, while the 3217U is clocked at 1.8 GHz. The question is, does this 100 MHz difference matter when it comes to real world usage?

Yes; benchmarks show that the 3227U is the faster processor. In the PassMark single core test, it's around 16% faster, while the Geekbench and 3DMark benchmarks show the same performance increase of at least 10%. Despite the obvious difference in performance, it's surprising that they are similarly priced at $225, which leads to the conclusion that the 3227U offers the better bang for the buck.

Wrapping things up, when it comes to budget ultraportable CPUs, we recommend the higher model because it offers better performance. For this match up, choose the Intel Core i3 3227U over the Intel Core i3 3217U to power your ultraportable laptop.