Core i5-4200M: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-4200M is a Haswell dual-core from Intel's fourth Core generation, released in 2013 — the mainstream processor of that year's office laptops. The catalog matches it to 9 models, and it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 0 of the 69 games the site tracks. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings to a portable, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i5-4200M sits in 2026

A catalog score of 27.8 places the chip 395th of 672 scored laptop CPUs — just below the middle of a table that spans two decades of silicon. The neighborhood mixes generations freely: the Core i7-2860QM (28.1), Core i3-6100H (28) and Athlon Gold 3150U (27.9) just above, the Core i3-6157U (27.8) alongside, and the Core i7-5500U (27.7) and Core i7-3632QM (27.5) just below. Trading places with i7-branded chips and a budget Athlon alike is the honest summary of where a 2013 dual-core lands in 2026.

What the chip brings

Haswell is a 2-core, 4-thread design on a 22 nm process, rated at 37 W: a 2.5 GHz base clock and up to 3.1 GHz boost. Memory support runs to dual-channel DDR3L at 1333 or 1600 MHz, up to 32 GB and 25 GB/s, and the integrated graphics are Intel's HD Graphics 4600. In public benchmarks the chip posts 876 single-core and 1,714 multi-core in Geekbench, with a PassMark overall score of 2,809.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip meets the recommended CPU tier for 0 of the 69 cataloged games. It does clear the minimum CPU tier for 26 of them — League of Legends, Dota 2, Valorant, Minecraft, Sims 4, Overwatch, Grand Theft Auto V, Doom Eternal, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Hitman 3 and Civilization 6 among them. The other 43, from Fortnite and Counter-Strike 2 through Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring up to Starfield, sit below their minimum CPU requirement. These verdicts are CPU-only — whether a game actually plays well depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM.

Laptops that carry it

The 9-model roster is all 2013 stock: Dell's Latitude E6540 at $159, the HP Envy 15-j154eo ultrabook at $221, ProBook 650 G1 at $109 and the ZBook 17 G2 workstation at $228, Lenovo's ThinkPad L540, L440 and E540 from $132 to $174, and the consumer-side IdeaPad Z710 at $207 and G710 at $145 — used-market listing prices throughout. Roster medians describe the laptops, not the chip: office comfort at 50 is the fleet's strongest suit, while a graphics score of 2.24, mobility at 14 and portability at 26.8 mark these out as deskbound machines rather than travel or gaming gear.

Bottom line

The Core i5-4200M is a fair engine for undemanding 2026 use — documents, browsing, streaming — and the fourth-generation core still feels usable for everyday office work. But the CPU-side game verdicts, 26 of 69 at minimum and none at recommended, close the book on modern gaming, and the roster's near-zero graphics median seals it. At the $109–228 listing prices you are paying for the chassis and the keyboard; if games or heavy multitasking matter at all, step further up the table.