While troubleshooting your PC or buying a new PC, you might want to know what generation your Intel processor is. Intel has been releasing a new generation of CPUs almost every year, and you must attempt to buy the latest generation Intel CPUs only.
In August 2016, Intel announced 7th generation CPUs. Its 6th generation CPUs were announced in August 2015.
Finding out what generation your Intel processor is quite easy if you are on Windows 10/8/7. You can identify the generation to which your Intel CPU belongs by having a look at its model number.
Find out what generation your Intel processor is in Windows 10
Identifying the generation to which your PC’s Intel CPU belongs is quite easy. You can do that without the help of any third-party utilities. Here is how to just that.
Step 1: On your Windows 10 PC, right-click on This PC icon on the desktop and then click Properties. Alternatively, right-click on This PC icon in the File Explorer navigation pane and then click Properties to open system properties window.
Step 2: Here, as you can see in the picture below, in the system section, Windows 10 displays your processor model number. Here, my Intel CPU model number is i5-5300U.
In this model number, the first number after the hyphen (remember, after the hyphen) denotes the generation of the CPU. So, in this case, my CPU belongs to the 5th generation. For example, if your CPU model number is i5-3427U, it belongs to the 3rd generation.
The first number of model number will begin with either 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7.
If you still have queries regarding the processor generation and model number, please refer to this Intel page. Also, you can use the official Intel Processor Identification Utility to get detailed information about Intel processors.