Core i3-4005U: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i3-4005U is a Haswell dual-core from 2013 built for budget ultrabooks and entry laptops, and the catalog ties it to a handful of machines of that generation. Measured on the processor side, it meets the recommended CPU requirement in none of the 69 games the catalog tracks, clearing only the minimum bar for the two lightest titles. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs in 2026, what it offers, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i3-4005U sits in 2026

A catalog score of 10.9 places the chip 531st of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the bottom third of the table. The neighborhood is a mixed bag of low-power and entry parts: the Core i5-4210Y (11.1), Pentium G3260 (11.1) and Core i7-2675QM (11.1) sit just above, the AMD FX-9800P (10.9) alongside, and the Core Ultra 5 238V (10.8) and Pentium G3250 (10.7) just below. Scoring at the same level as decade-old desktop Pentiums sums it up — this was an entry processor even when new, and time has not improved it.

What the chip brings

Haswell gives the i3-4005U two cores and four threads on a 22 nm process, running at a flat 1.7 GHz with no turbo, inside a 15 W ultrabook-class envelope — the low-power sibling of the 4005U's standard-voltage cousins. Public benchmark records show a Geekbench single-core score of 518, a multi-core score of 1,044 and a PassMark overall rating of 1,648 — the weakest tier of Haswell, built for battery life and price rather than speed.

Games: CPU-side readiness

As a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for none of the 69 cataloged games, and it meets the minimum CPU tier for just two of them — League of Legends and Minecraft. The other 67 titles, from Dota 2 and Sims 4 upward through Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield, all ask for more processor than this. As always these verdicts are CPU-only — the laptop's GPU and RAM decide actual playability — but with the processor below nearly every minimum, gaming in any real sense is off the table.

Laptops that carry it

The matched roster is entry-level hardware of the 2014–2015 generation: Dell's Latitude 3440 ($174) and Inspiron 15 3542 ($123) on the consumer and business sides, plus HP's 250 G3, 250 G4 and 350 G1 budget notebooks. The laptops around it typically show a median best CPU score of 23, a performance index of 30.7 and office comfort of 75 — adequate numbers for documents and web duty, with mobility at a median of just 23.5 for mostly 15-inch chassis.

Bottom line

The Core i3-4005U is a bottom-third processor in 2026: serviceable for browsing, office work and video playback in an inexpensive used laptop, and nothing more. Two game minimums out of sixty-nine is the catalog's way of saying this was never a gaming part. Buy these machines for price and simplicity; for anything heavier, the compare pages show how cheaply a step up the ranking can be had.