Intel
Intel Core i5-3470
The volume Ivy Bridge quad-core: four physical cores at 3.2-3.6 GHz with a locked multiplier, sold into mainstream and business desktops that were never going to be overclocked. It is the sensible ceiling for a cheap LGA1155 revival when an i7-3770 costs too much.
Pros
- Four real cores rather than the two-core-plus-SMT arrangement of the i3s in this family
- Turbo to 3.6 GHz and 6 MB of L3 in a 77 W envelope
- PCIe 3.0 x16 from the CPU, so a modern GPU runs at full x16 Gen3 bandwidth
- Supports VT-d, unlike the unlocked K-series Ivy parts — usable as a passthrough virtualisation host
- Extremely common in ex-corporate towers, so both the chip and matching H61/B75/Q77 boards are cheap
Cons
- No Hyper-Threading: four threads total, which modern games and OS background load saturate quickly
- Locked multiplier — only the limited 4-bin turbo headroom on a Z77 board, and none at all on H61/B75
- HD Graphics 2500 is far weaker than the HD 4000 in the i7-3770 if you plan to run without a GPU
- DDR3-1600 and 32 GB maximum; no AVX2
Below average
Computed from specs & benchmarks via our public methodology.
Full specifications
Everything we track for the Intel Core i5-3470
General
- Announced
- 2012
- Socket
- LGA1155
- Process
- 22 nm
- Base TDP
- 77 W
- Unlocked multiplier
- No
- Cooler included
- Yes
Cores & Clocks
- Cores
- 4
- Performance cores
- 4
- Efficiency cores
- 0
- Threads
- 4
- Base clock
- 3.2 GHz
- Boost clock
- 3.6 GHz
- L2 cache
- 1 MB
- L3 cache
- 6 MB
Integrated GPU
- iGPU
- Intel HD Graphics 2500
- iGPU clock
- 1,100 MHz
Memory
- Memory support
- DDR3-1600
- Max memory
- 32 GB
- Memory channels
- 2
Platform
- PCIe version
- 3
- CPU PCIe lanes
- 16
Benchmarks
- Geekbench 6 (single)
- 950
- Geekbench 6 (multi)
- 2,500
- Cinebench R23 (single)
- 830
- Cinebench R23 (multi)
- 3,000
- PassMark
- 5,000
Quick answers
Is the Intel Core i5-3470 good in 2026?
The Intel Core i5-3470 earns an Inno Score of 21.4/100 (“Below average”) based on its specs and benchmark results. The volume Ivy Bridge quad-core: four physical cores at 3.2-3.6 GHz with a locked multiplier, sold into mainstream and business desktops that were never going to be overclocked. It is the sensible ceiling for a cheap LGA1155 revival when an i7-3770 costs too much.
What are the key specs of the Intel Core i5-3470?
Cores: 4 · Threads: 4 · Boost clock: 3.6 GHz · Socket: LGA1155
What are the closest alternatives to the Intel Core i5-3470?
Its closest rivals on InnoReviews are AMD Ryzen 3 1200, Intel Core i5-4590, Intel Core i3-3220 — open the comparison pages for a spec-by-spec breakdown.