Core i3-5005U: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i3-5005U is a fifth-generation Broadwell processor from 2015, a low-voltage dual-core that anchored budget business laptops for years. Eleven models in the catalog carry it, and it meets the recommended CPU requirement in 0 of the 69 games the catalog tracks. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i3-5005U sits in 2026

A catalog score of 16.9 places the chip 476th of 741 scored laptop CPUs — the lower half of the table. The neighborhood spans several eras of low-power and legacy silicon: the Core M-5Y10c, Pentium G4400 and Core i7-2720QM sit just above, the Core 9 270H and Core i5-3380M alongside, and the Pentium G4560T just below. Ranking near a 2011 quad-core i7-2720QM tells the story: a decade of efficiency gains, but not a decade of performance gains.

What the chip brings

Broadwell-U is a dual-core, four-thread design on a 14 nm process, rated at 15 W. It runs at a fixed 2 GHz — there is no boost clock, which was standard for i3 branding of that era. Public benchmark numbers confirm the positioning: a Geekbench single-core score of 621, multi-core of 1,244, and a PassMark rating of 2,010. That is office-and-browsing territory by any modern measure.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Measured purely as a processor, the chip clears the recommended CPU tier for 0 of 69 cataloged games. It does meet the minimum CPU requirement for eight lighter titles — Minecraft, Valorant, Dota 2, League of Legends, Sims 4, Rainbow Six Siege, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Civilization 6 — while everything else, from Fortnite to Cyberpunk 2077, sits below minimum. These verdicts are CPU-only — the laptop's GPU and RAM decide actual playability — but no configuration turns this chip into a modern gaming machine.

Laptops that carry it

The 11-model roster is almost entirely business hardware: Dell's Latitude 3380, E5250, E3540 and 3550, Lenovo's ThinkPad L450 and E550, and HP's 250 G4 through 250 G6 line. Most date from 2015, with the HP 250 G5 and G6 stretching to 2018–2019, and prices run from $121 up to $531 for the newest HP units. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: a performance index of 28.9, office comfort at 50, energy efficiency 55.3 and portability 42.7 — serviceable numbers for light duty, nothing more.

Bottom line

The Core i3-5005U suits a buyer who needs the cheapest possible reliable machine for documents, browsing and video calls. As a gaming or heavy-workload processor it is out of the conversation: zero recommended-tier games and a 2015-era fixed clock. The laptops around it — Latitudes, ThinkPads, HP 250s — were built for offices and classrooms, and that is still the honest use case a decade later.