Both models
i7-2640M and
i3-2120 are based on
Sandy Bridge architecture.
"Sandy Bridge codename was originally ""Gesher"". The development began in 2005 and four years later, the first Sandy Bridge CPU was presented. The most prominent features are Intel Turbo Boost 2.0, AES encryption and SHA-1 hashing acceleration, Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) 256-bit instruction set and the ability to have up to 8 physical cores or 16 logical cores through Hyper-Threading."
Using the multithread performance as a reference, the i7-2640M gets a score of
54.9 k points while the i3-2120 gets
53.5 k points.
Summarizing, the
i7-2640M is
1 times faster than the
i3-2120 . To get a proper comparison between both models, take a look to the data shown below.