Core i3-1215U: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i3-1215U was the entry ticket to the Alder Lake generation — 38 catalog models carry it. A 6-core, 15-watt design, it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 49 of the 69 games the catalog tracks and ships in some of the cheapest usable laptops on the site. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings, and which laptops ship with it.

Where the Core i3-1215U sits in 2026

A catalog score of 60.9 places the chip 157th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the upper third of a table spanning two decades of silicon. The neighborhood is a modern crowd: the Ryzen 9 270 and Ryzen 3 PRO 7330U (both 61.1) and Ryzen AI 9 465 (61) just above, the Core i5-11300H (60.9), Core Ultra 5 338H (60.8) and Ryzen 7 8745HS (60.8) alongside. On the catalog's composite scale the little i3 holds its own against pricier modern silicon — efficiency and everyday responsiveness count for as much as raw multi-core throughput.

What the chip brings

Alder Lake-U is a 6-core, 8-thread design on a 7 nm-class process rated at 15 W: 1.2 GHz base and up to 4.4 GHz boost. Basic Intel UHD graphics handles display duty; this is not a gaming iGPU. The catalog holds a full benchmark card: GeekBench 1,805 single / 4,791 multi and a PassMark overall score of 10,155 — modest absolute numbers that reflect the chip's entry positioning.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 49 of 69 cataloged games — Counter-Strike 2, PUBG, Metro Exodus, The Last of Us Part 1, Ghost of Tsushima and Dying Light 2 among them. Eighteen more sit at the minimum tier: Alan Wake 2, Forza Horizon 5, Battlefield 5, Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring all list the chip above their minimum but below their recommended CPU requirement. Only Starfield and Helldivers 2 ask for more processor. These verdicts are CPU-only — and here they meet reality: the 1215U's laptops ship with entry graphics, so actual play depends far more on the GPU than this table suggests.

Laptops that carry it

The 38-model roster is the budget and education tier. Dell's Latitude 3340 trades around $127 and the 3540 around $210 — the cheapest mainstream business machines on the site — with the 2022 Latitude 5330/5430/5530 at $415–475 still in circulation. ASUS's Vivobook 14 and 15 cover consumers at $553, Dell's Inspiron 16 5620 the big-screen side at $604, and HP's EliteBook 640 G9 ($410), ProBook 450 G9 ($455) and EliteBook 650 G9 ($476) the office pool. Roster medians describe the fleet: office comfort at a perfect 100, energy efficiency 86.5 — but a photo/design index of 20 and a best-GPU-score median of 15, the honest signature of entry hardware.

Bottom line

The Core i3-1215U is proof that the entry tier grew up: six Alder Lake cores, a perfect office-comfort profile across its roster, and used-market prices that start near $130. It is a study-and-office chip first and foremost — the catalog's CPU-side verdicts are generous, but the entry graphics in most of these laptops set the real ceiling. For a cheap, quiet, all-day machine, it is hard to beat at its price.