550D / T2i vs. 7D High ISO 100% Crops

I looked for forever on this forum for a direct comparison of the high ISO performance of the 550D versus a known quantity (in this case a 7D) to no avail. Therefore, for others desiring to know exactly how the 550D fairs in the high ISO ranges, here you go:

Basically, the same normal lens was used for all shots at the same aperture. Manual exposures set and no noise reduction was applied when using DPP to convert RAW files. Everything was identical between the shots except for the camera body.

You will notice that the results are almost identical. The favor may actually go to the 550D if you will look at the 3200 and 6400 crops, since there are noticeable hot pixels in the 7D crops that are not in the 550's.

Note: you can expand the images by clicking on them to give you true 100%.