Core i3-8121U: specs and benchmarks
Aggregate performance score
Core i3-8121U provides poor benchmark performance at 2.76% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.
Summary
Intel started Core i3-8121U sales 5 May 2018. This is a Coffee Lake-U architecture notebook processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 2 cores and 4 threads, and is based on 10 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3200 MHz and a locked multiplier.
Compatibility-wise, this is Intel BGA1440 processor with a TDP of 15 Watt and a maximum temperature of 72 °C. It supports DDR4 memory.
Primary details
Core i3-8121U processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.
| Place in the ranking | 1698 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Market segment | Laptop | |
| Series | Intel Core i3 | |
| Power efficiency | 9.33 | of 100.00 (Core Ultra 7 164U) |
| Architecture codename | Coffee Lake-U (2018−2019) | |
| Release date | 5 May 2018 (6 years ago) |
Detailed specifications
Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.
| Physical cores | 2 (Dual-core) | |
| Threads | 4 | |
| Base clock speed | 2.2 GHz | of 4.7 GHz (Ryzen 9 7900X) |
| Boost clock speed | 3.2 GHz | of 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS) |
| Bus type | OPI | |
| Bus rate | 4 GT/s | |
| Multiplier | 22 | of 42 (Core i7-7700K) |
| L1 cache | 64K (per core) | of 80 KB (EPYC 9965) |
| L2 cache | 256K (per core) | |
| L3 cache | 4 MB (shared) | of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X) |
| Chip lithography | 10 nm | of 3 nm (Core Ultra 9 285K) |
| Die size | 123 mm2 | |
| Maximum core temperature | 105 °C | of 110 °C (Core Ultra 9 185H) |
| Maximum case temperature (TCase) | 72 °C | of 105 °C (Core i7-5950HQ) |
| 64 bit support | + | |
| Windows 11 compatibility | - |
Compatibility
Information on Core i3-8121U compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.
| Number of CPUs in a configuration | 1 (Uniprocessor) | of 8 (Xeon Platinum 8454H) |
| Socket | Intel BGA1440 | |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 15 Watt | of 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P) |
Technologies and extensions
Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i3-8121U. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.
| Instruction set extensions | Intel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX, Intel® AVX2, Intel® AVX-512 | |
| AES-NI | + | |
| AVX | + | |
| vPro | - | |
| Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST) | + | |
| QuickAssist | - | |
| Speed Shift | + | |
| My WiFi | + | |
| Turbo Boost Technology | 2.0 | |
| Hyper-Threading Technology | + | |
| Idle States | + | |
| Thermal Monitoring | + | |
| Flex Memory Access | + | |
| Smart Response | + | |
| Demand Based Switching | - | |
| HD Audio | + | |
| RST | + |
Security technologies
Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.
| TXT | - | |
| EDB | + | |
| Secure Key | + | |
| MPX | + | |
| SGX | - | |
| OS Guard | + |
Virtualization technologies
Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.
| VT-d | + | |
| VT-x | + | |
| VT-i | - | |
| EPT | + |
Memory specs
Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i3-8121U's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.
| Supported memory types | DDR4 | |
| Maximum memory size | 32 GB | of 6 TiB (EPYC 9654) |
| Max memory channels | 2 | of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221) |
| Maximum memory bandwidth | 38.397 GB/s | of 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9654) |
Graphics specifications
General parameters of a GPU integrated into Core i3-8121U.
| Integrated graphics card | Iris Pro Plus |
Peripherals
Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.
| PCIe version | 3.0 | of 5.0 (EPYC 9655P) |
| PCI Express lanes | 16 | of 128 (EPYC 9655P) |
Benchmark performance
Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i3-8121U. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.
GeekBench 5 Single-Core
GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.
GeekBench 5 Multi-Core
GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.
3DMark06 CPU
3DMark06 is a discontinued DirectX 9 benchmark suite from Futuremark. Its CPU part contains two scenarios, one dedicated to artificial intelligence pathfinding, another to game physics using PhysX package.
Cinebench 15 64-bit multi-core
Cinebench Release 15 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R15 which uses all the processor threads.
Cinebench 15 64-bit single-core
Cinebench R15 (standing for Release 15) is a benchmark made by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version (sometimes called Single-Thread) only uses a single processor thread to render a room full of reflective spheres and light sources.
Send your test results of Core i3-8121U.
AMD equivalent
According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i3-8121U is Ryzen Embedded R1606G, which is slower by 6% and lower by 34 positions in our ranking.
Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i3-8121U:
Similar processors
Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended GPUs
People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i3-8121U, according to our PC configuration statistics.
These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i3-8121U in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 47 configurations using Core i3-8121U in our database.
