Analyzing Intel Core M Performance: How 5Y10 can beat 5Y71 & the OEMs' Dilemma
by Brett Howse & Ian Cutress on April 8, 2015 8:00 AM ESTPCMark 8 Creative Results
The Creative suite for PCMark changes the workloads out a bit, and is overall a much longer benchmark. Creative includes web browsing, photo editing, video editing, group video chat, media transcoding, and gaming workloads, so like the previous test the higher resolution of the Yoga 3 Pro will bring its scores down compared to the 1080p of all of the other devices. Like PCMark 8 Home, the work features high demand followed by low demand.
The Core i5 performs much the same as during the Home benchmark. Clearly the cooling system which is designed to get rid of 15 watts of heat can pretty easily cope with these types of workloads, and it even allows the CPU to turbo quite often to the CPU’s maximum speed of 2.7 GHz. GPU workloads are also no issue for the cooling system. None of the 4.5 watt TDP devices fare so well though, and as with the Home benchmark we see the Yoga 3 Pro having quite good CPU and GPU frequencies. The Dell is limited quite a bit more on temperature, and the ASUS is limited by its lack of maximum turbo frequency.
Looking at the average CPU frequency tells a big story of thermal limitations on the Dell Venue 11 Pro. With an average that is barely over its base of 1.2 GHz, the device spends a significant amount of time below its base frequency. The UX305 keeps its consistency high, with it almost reaching its maximum turbo clock, while the Yoga 3 Pro ends up quite a bit faster.
The GPU story has the ASUS bumping into its maximum GPU speed of 800 MHz, keeping pace with the Dell Venue 11 Pro which can go as high as 900 MHz. The Yoga 3 Pro is over 800 Mhz, here, showcasing its active cooling solution and meaning it is certainly spending time closer to its 900 MHz GPU turbo.
Looking at average temperatures, it is obvious why the ASUS can stay close to its maximum turbo on many workloads. After this one hour benchmark, the CPU average was just over 56°C despite the passive cooling. The active cooled Broadwell-U laptop is a bit higher, and the Yoga 3 Pro kept its average under its 65°C CPU maximum.
The Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro scores the highest of all three Core M devices in this benchmark despite the higher resolution display. On this type of workload where the actual work is much shorter, it keeps its CPU frequency much higher than all of the other Core M devices. The Venue 11 Pro also outscores the UX305 despite its low average CPU frequency. When needed, it was able to turbo well past the 2 GHz maximum of the 5Y10 device.
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serendip - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Maybe Intel made too many compromises and OEMs reached too far with their designs. On one hand a fast race to sleep is good, yet on the other hand, I'd rather be a slow and steady tortoise who finishes the race than a hare that turbos and sleeps frequently to prevent overheating. Device buyers don't care about TDP or poorly set skin temperature limits, they'll just swear off Core M products that give them throttled 600 MHz speeds instead of full power.boblozano - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Good point, though I tend to think it'll depend on the use cases. I went back to separate desktop(s) / laptop (rather than a single, uber-laptop) about a year ago. Consequently the laptop can be optimized for size / weight / mobility, for which a core-m device is helpful.jospoortvliet - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
Exactly the same here. I will do my video and image editing on my quad-core desktop anyway, so a core M is perfect: I need portability and battery life in a laptop, not raw performance. Intel made just the right chip for a customer like me here. Too bad that on the desktop side, where I would love an affordable six or eight core with a high tdp, they fail me.girishp - Monday, April 13, 2015 - link
I tried doing the same thing, but portability quickly triumphs any advantage of a powerful desktop, especially when a good powerful laptop can do most of what I need. I bought the 2nd gen Mac Book Air for my wife and it was good for her basic multimedia requirements (Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, etc.), but the latest Mac Book just isn't powerful enough for any of her needs.MrSpadge - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Turbo gives the system increased responsiveness under bursty loads, i.e. most everyday workloads. There's no good reason not to use the performance available and be a tortoise voluntarily. When the load is sustained over longer periods, Turbo automatically throttles back to what ever limit the OEM has set. Had you choosen the tortoise mode, you would have started at this point. With Turbo you don't loose any performance compared to this scenario, it just makes you reach the limit quicker. Turbo also autoamtically factors in things like "how many cores are loaded", "how stresful is this program in reality", "how good is the device cooling" and "how hot is the ambient" by simply measuring them empirically (power consumption & temperature). In fixed tortoise mode you'd have to predict all of them and assume the worst case, just like Intel & AMD did for the first dual and quad cores with low fixed frequencies.If Turbo results in "turbos and sleeps frequently to prevent overheating" it is simply set up badly, significantly worse than Turbo on Intel Desktop CPUs since a few years. Instead of sleeping to avoid overheating the turbo bin must gradually be lowered until a good steady state is reached.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Forgot to add: it would be really nice if there was a simple user control for their current preference of maximum performance vs. tolerated temperature. Win allows limiting a CPUs maximum performance state, but most users will never find this option in the advanced energy settings. A simple slider as a sidebar-like gadget could work well. Not only for Core-M, but also for regular laptops and desktops. Add one slider for each discrete GPU's power target.mkozakewich - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Also, MS removed that option in all their PCs with connected standby. You can still enable it through the registry, but regular users are even less likely to make use of that option. We need some sane defaults set so we can have separate "Low Power", "Balanced" and "Overdrive" modes. We won't care about skin temperature if we've chosen to use that temperature briefly and we have an option to turn it back down.soccerballtux - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
the biggest problem is Windows packaging in tons of storage indexing that runs every time you log in, or letting services run around in the background and datamine (Facebook, Amazon Music re-scans every 10 minutes-- I mean seriously? might as sell me a phone with 100MB less of RAM if you're going to do that)The_Assimilator - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Because it's obviously Windows' fault that it runs services that you told it to install.lilmoe - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
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