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Intel 5th Gen Core Series Performance Preview With 2015 Dell XPS 13
MojoKid writes: Intel's strategically timed CES 2015 launch of their new 5th Gen Core Series processors for notebooks was met with a reasonably warm reception, though it's always difficult to rise above the noise of CES chatter. Performance claims for Intel's new chip promise major gains in graphics and more modest increases in standard compute applications. However, the biggest bet Intel placed on the new Broadwell-U architecture is performance-per-watt throughput and battery life in premium notebook products that are now in production with major OEM partners. A few manufacturers were early out of the gate with new Core i5 5XXX series-based machines, however, none of the major players caught the same kind of buzz that Dell received, with the introduction of their new XPS 13 Ultrabook with its near bezel-less 13-inch WQHD (3200X1800) display. As expected, the Core i5-5200U in this machine offered performance gains of anywhere from 10 to 20 percent, in round numbers, depending on the benchmark. In gaming and graphics testing is where the new 5200U chip took the largest lead over the previous gen Core i5-4200U CPU, which is one of the most common processors found in typical ultrabook style 13-inch machines.
It's sad, but at this point I'm almost inclined to applaud Dell and Intel for showing a product that isn't clearly just a bunch of vapid handwaving bullshit, even if Haswell and Broadwell have been somewhat underwhelming advances. Not that this is new to CES by a long shot, but it seems especially bad this year.
So the laptop is full of ridiculously advanced tech, even in the graphics department but the keyboard looks cheap and really to me the more travel there is, the better. Won't somebody make a laptop with thick keys?, or at least some "high end keyboard" option. Seems like there's $5 worth of keyboard there, on a one-piece computer that's closer to $1000. What if there were $50 worth of keyboard, I wonder.
Providing a right ctrl key is nice I guess, but I wonder when we'll see a genius including a right Fn key so we can do single-handed page up, page down, end and home.
The i5 has the same thermal power as the i7. The i5 generally runs at a slight speed advantage to the i7. The i7 has twice the cores of the i5. So for single threaded tasks, the i5 may be a hair faster. But for multithreads (getting more common, despite the complaints about it here), the i7 will be almost twice as fast as the i5.
Call me when they have the i7. For no more heat and exactly the same battery life, I'd rather pay for the i7.
Learn to love Alaska
i7-4790t (tray, oem only). 45 watts and truly a fanless buildable system (I did one, its great).
hard to find that chip. pretty much, no one has it (anymore). $300 or more, if you can find it. but wow, 45w on an i7 with 8 real cores. its great to do 'make -j9' on a fanless 'htpc' ;)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
About a month ago I purchased a used Dell Latitude, known for exceptional battery life and reasonable ruggedness. The second reason is why I wanted it. But after using it a bit I just can't go back to a laptop with little battery life. I'm hoping laptop manufacturers notice the desire consumers have for efficient products. My CPU is an I-5 2500 series, introduced after Inter started pushing for lower power usage. I say: Bravo!
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
But for multithreads (getting more common, despite the complaints about it here),
If only the Java/python/ruby "script kiddies" could do the below. Your i7 would be worthwhile. :)
unsigned __stdcall Thread_0(void*)
{
while (cThread.bActive[0])
{
for (int i = 0; i MAX_PLAYLIST_DIRECTORY; i++)
{
if (cThread.bStopRequest[0])
{
break;
}
else if (cFile.Playlist_Directory[i] != "")
{
cFile.Scan_Media(cFile.Playlist_Directory[i], "*.*", true);
}
}
cThread.bActive[0] = false;
}
return 0;
}
The average user, even gamers getting little to no benefit of going from an i5 to an i7. you may be doing some particular workloads that do benefit, but that would definitely put you in the minority of users.
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How about if one is not using Windows, but instead, either a Linux or BSD distro? Same thing then?
all modern os's wake up and do things, on their own. this competes with user tasks. having more cpus or threads or cores helps with this.
so, yes, i5 and i7 are helpful for even 'simple' desktop users. and my htpc is an i7, with 8 real cores, so that my movies are even that much resistant to being jittered by other proc's waking up and demanding cpu time.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I hope that they learn to offer more than just a thin 8GB of ram. Really, they should have been delivering 16GB in a netbook sometime about a year to two years ago. My current laptop has 32GB and my desktop has 64GB. The primary thing that holds me back from going netbook is that they think 4GB is enough for everyone and 8GB is a powerhouse.
The 4790t does not have 8 cores. It's 4 cores with hyper-threading.
Still massively impressive at just 45W.
---- Sig. gone.
Should probably be doing what AMD has done, their APU notebooks have an integrated GPU that rivals that of discreet mobile GPUs (runs shadow of mordor at 1080p, high settings), quad core instead of dual, in less than 35W for the entire system (minus monitor).
15W ULV is nice, but you can't do much but word processing on one of those - not relevant to 2D nor 3D artists, consumers/gamers, engineers, nor other creative professionals.
Meanwhile, the MBAir has been filling this niche, with overwhelmingly positive consumer feedback, for 3+ years now, so nothing to see here...
Unless you have a X99 motherboard with a silly expensive CPU, your Core i7 is 4 cores with hyperthreading.
If you actually spent a thousand bucks to put a true 8 core chip on a HTPC, well... wish I had your money to burn :)
I have tried -j4 and -j8 on a 4/8 i7 and with HT gnuradio compiled 70% faster with -j8 than -j4.
I have tried -j4 and -j8 on a 4/8 i7 and with HT gnuradio compiled 70% faster with -j8 than -j4.
Right, which is NOT twice as fast... and is that workload even CPU bound?
It's not *that* impressive - laptop i7s are 47W parts and they're doubtless *very* closely related. There are also some 37W quad-core mobile i7s, but they have low clock rates in comparison.
But for multithreads (getting more common, despite the complaints about it here),
If only the Java/python/ruby "script kiddies" could do the below. Your i7 would be worthwhile. :)
unsigned __stdcall Thread_0(void*)
{
while (cThread.bActive[0])
{ //Find Files
for (int i = 0; i MAX_PLAYLIST_DIRECTORY; i++)
{ //Stop request, break
if (cThread.bStopRequest[0])
{
break;
}
else if (cFile.Playlist_Directory[i] != "")
{
cFile.Scan_Media(cFile.Playlist_Directory[i], "*.*", true);
}
}
cThread.bActive[0] = false;
}
return 0;
}
What is that, a background thread doing some... IO? /sigh ... the average Java programmer sadly knows more about IO and threading than you would seem to, and they don't tend to know a whole heck of a lot about system resources.
Run-on sentence. -1.
and it still gets rings run around it by an 830M. Heck, the AMD stuff out performs it. It just seems silly to have that much processor and an integrated graphics chip...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Holy shit, what kind of amateur level crap is this? Crawl back into mom's basement.
The average user occasionally does something like rip a DVD, or leave stuff running in the background while playing the game. Though all that stuff wouldn't fill up the CPUs, except for a DVD rip or similar, but that's not going to make a huge difference.
Learn to love Alaska
Aluminum case, numpad. Not that hard.
Of course they stopped making phones with physical keyboards, manufacturing is dead. Cheap is in.
yes. Your OS is pretty well irrelevant when talking about multi threaded loads, windows, Linux and BSD all do it well. But the applications and actual workloads that benefit are far less common.
By the way, you i7 920 (or other LGA1366 folks), drop in an X5650. 6 cores, less heat, more cache (and therefore faster even single-threaded), and overclocks better than even the D0 stepping of the 920. For anyone CPU-bound and not GPU-bound, best upgrade ever.
Bullshit. an i5 has far more cores than what the average user requires, even when taking into consideration OS needs. your example shows an extreme lack of technical knowledge. a 2 core CPU could happily guarantee a smooth movie experience. In fact my media machine that I use for watching HD movies is an old Atom based machine, it has no jitters, if you get jitters on an i5... hell even an i3, then the problem is something else as watching a movie uses very little processing power.
if you have an i7 as a HTPC then most likely 7 of your cores are asleep 90% of the time, a second core would occasionally be doing some stuff.cores. The rest would be pretty well unused unless you have some serious issues with your setup. my HTPC uses a core i3 and even that is massive overkill and provides flawless HD playback.
Depends : in that power range (about 15 watts) i7 is the same thing as i5 but with a few more megahertz. Both are dual core / quad threads and a fair bit slower that desktop i3 (yet again about the same chip but with a much higher power range)
I didn't get you. From your comment, which of the above OSs was 'my' OS?
The point I think is your OS is irrelevant, you probably shouldn't participate in a technical discussion if you don't understand that.
Just like my brand new core i7 xps13 to sleep properly and not whine like a stuck pig when the right internal speaker is plugged in.
Huh? The U-series i7 is a dual-core part, it has the same number of threads as the i5. That's always been the case, prior generations never had a quad-core U-series i7 either.
Setting up higher priority for your media player would be cheaper (even Windows XP could do it)
All that proves is that hyperthreading helps. It would still be just 4 cores.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
I can say the same about my i3, or even your average cell phone chip that has ony 2 cofes, eacch being only 1 5th as powerful as an i3.
Disk io, network io, mory bandwidth are sill the most common bottlenecks. If a regular desktop user has bad response times due to cpu shortage, there is probably a software bug, or misconfiguration.
The dirty little secret that is shared by everyone who has a chttp://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Slik-smugles-folk-til-Europa-7809354.htmllue, is that the cpu hardly matters anymore, except for a few applictions.
Your regular dick jane and joe that walks into bestbuy getting outfitted for college or needing a machine to do their acconting and surf the web shoould not even be looking at the cpu model. Theyd run just fine on an atom or celeron, or a pentium Ii from the 90.s.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
VPro, Aka VT, AKA Intel Management Engine.
On chip vnc direct to your framebuffer!
Remote access to RAM!
Can always be remotely reenabled!
Yeah, the 'jitter' is almost certainly not caused by CPU interruptions from other processes (on a HTPC).
What you need is a video player that uses a dedicated D3D drawing surface (if you're on Windows) and either a frame blender/interpolator (MadVR smooth motion, SVP, although this is definitely a workaround), or better yet, a video player (MPC-BE / MPC-HE) or renderer (madVR) that matches the refresh rate of the display with the frame rate of the source content.
The latter is the best option, but your display needs to support slightly exotic refresh rates.
Warning: after having experienced perfectly smooth video playback, you will be spoiled for life.
By the way, it's not correct that every mobile i7 has 4 cores. The low power i7 CPUs have only two cores. Considering that Broadwell is focusing on low power parts (less than 30W TDP), there will not be a quad core Broadwell Core i7. If you need a quad core i7, then you have to get the Haswell part.
I have an i7-3612QM in my laptop. Sure, you wouldn't likely see that in a ultralite. But comparing the i5, the i7 runs a little slower to keep 4 cores in the same heat as the 2-core i5. For multithread, the i7 will be much better. With single-thread only, and one program at a time, the i5 may have a slight advantage. A dual core i5 vs dual core i7, there's not as much difference.
Learn to love Alaska
Low power is neat, but the last batch of low power chips, weren't as fast as the one in my 4-year old laptop.
Battery life is nice, but we need laptops and chips that get work done too.
BTW, getting these when I attempt sign in
Error 503 Service Unavailable
Service Unavailable
Guru Meditation:
XID: 372099683
Varnish cache server
Yup, I hadn't looked up all the specs of the new chips. No quad-core. 33% more cache than the i5. A little more speed. Not the bigger differences of the older line, 2-core vs 4-core and all that. I already have a Haswell i7, and can't get any faster from the new line. Just cooler. I'll stay with my current as long as I can.
Learn to love Alaska
He is using the word "your" wrong. He meant "THE" OS is irrelevant when talking about multi-threaded.....
They make fanless i7 boxes? Wouldn't a high load on an htpc melt your case? :)
I've been wondering about getting a Brix or a NUC just as a quiet home desktop. Not having to crank the volume up to 11 just to hear html5 video above the fan matters more than raw performance.
all modern os's wake up and do things, on their own. this competes with user tasks. having more cpus or threads or cores helps with this.
so, yes, i5 and i7 are helpful for even 'simple' desktop users. and my htpc is an i7, with 8 real cores, so that my movies are even that much resistant to being jittered by other proc's waking up and demanding cpu time.
I think having 2 cores instead of 1 was beneficial to a lot of workloads as it kept the PC responsive if one thread was really hogging the CPU, it kept the other free for the rest of the user's processes. Although modern OS's claim to use preemptive multitasking, they strain under these loads if single core. I think even a single core with hyperthreading helps with responsiveness in these situations.
With 4 cores (i5 desktop CPU), or 4 cores + hyperthreading (i7 Desktop: 8 imaginary cores), there's diminishing returns. The extra threads really only help if the user's application is multithread aware, eg: a good video encoder. Individual application performance and responsiveness frequently relies on single thread performance.
Now a lot of nuisance background stuff is IO dependent. If you use Windows check Resource monitor on disk usage. When background stuff is working away, it's probably 100% busy, grinding away at 1MB/s. I've seen things like AV's doing that. That's going to bog down disk access for your applications as well. This is where SSD's have big gains as you can get random IO performance of 80MB/s.
When specing a new PC, I went with a core i5, because single thread performance was similar to the i7, but cost $100 less, and went with an SSD for the OS drive.
I have an i7-3612QM in my laptop. Sure, you wouldn't likely see that in a ultralite. But comparing the i5, the i7 runs a little slower to keep 4 cores in the same heat as the 2-core i5. For multithread, the i7 will be much better. With single-thread only, and one program at a time, the i5 may have a slight advantage. A dual core i5 vs dual core i7, there's not as much difference.
Intel's "Turbo boost" will let 1 busy core run at a faster clock rate than if all cores were busy. I would have thought this would result in it running an i7 at the same speed as the comprable i5 under a single threaded task.
for a case, check this one out: streacom fc8-evo
supports well over 75w tdp. so a 45w tdp is no problem at all, even at full load.
there is a case that is identical to the fc8-evo by 'perfect home theater' (in the boston area) and their case is quite a bit cheaper and pretty much the same thing as the streacom version.
you have to buy a mini-itx board and you also have to be careful if you need the 'long heat pipes' or 'short heat pipes', based on where the cpu socket is located. the perfect home theater store will sell you either (or both) of the HP lengths so you are covered.
highly recommended for a silent and super fast pc.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
"Intel's strategically timed CES 2015 launch of their new 5th Gen Core Series processors for notebooks was met with a reasonably warm reception"
Was the warm reception due to inadequate cooling in those laptops? ;)
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The thing I never understood is that these are supposed to be geared to ultrabooks. However any laptop these days that are inexpensive are also using these U series processors, and they arent slim by any means. A few years ago when I was looking for a new laptop I found that between many manufacturers series revisions they switched from the HQ processors to the U processors, yet still charged the same amount on the laptop for much lower performance. You could find basically the same 2 models across a year when they made the switch at the same price.
Since the U's also now show up in all the cheap laptops and you can only find the HQ's in higher priced laptops anymore that just tells me that they cost alot less. Manufacturers realized most consumers arent concerned about specs and just buy what ever is in their price range regardless and could charge the same amount. So the U's allowed them higher profit margins without much reduction in purchases.
At that point I just gave up on the whole laptop thing after buying one of the remaining toshiba's that had an i7-HQ series proc in it for ~600 and had twice the performance of the newer model. Once I had to swap it out three times for static discharge issues from a non-user replaceable battery I threw in the towel on laptops
True, but make -j8 is also faster then make -j4 on a i5 because make is not 100% cpu bound.
But It would be very interesting to compare make -j8 on a i5 and i7 with the same frequency, to see how much ht helps.
Not if you use a custom DirectShow filter chain to do custom deinterlacing, resizing, etc. (eg. ffdshow).
I need a high-speed dual core w/HT or a medium-speed quad w/o HT for that.
Like most businesses, we're not deploying Win 8. Anyone know if there's a way to get Windows 7 preloaded by Dell on this laptop? (Business site doesn't show it, but I'm wondering if there's a gov't, educational, or other channel that does.)
----- obSig
Put a 3200x1800 (or 4200x2400 to match the resolution) screen in a Precision with the i7 version of that chip, and now we'd be talking.
For the Haswell (the "previous" generation), the cap on turbo was lower for the i7 than the i5. Not by much, but enough that a purely single task test should give the i5 a small advantage.
Learn to love Alaska
Indeed a great upgrade at less than $100 these days.
I have an i7 with 8 threads. I was *never* CPU limited for anything - ever. Even a DVD rip, I'd end up limited by IO, rather than CPU. I'm sure there is some theoretical load that could have stressed the CPU, but I never saw it. When I started LoLing with the wife, her load times were 1/4 mine. Since every time it loaded, I'd be provably slower than her. It was embarrassing. Her laptop is a year old, compared to mine, 3 years old. So, I pulled out my 3G modem and dropped in a 256GB SSD in the mSATA slot. Loaded a fresh Windows on the new drive, and used the old for storage. Installed LoL on the SSD, and my load times are now better than hers by 5-10%.
SSD loads my CPU more because things wait less time on IO. But still can't fill the CPU for any more than a few seconds at a time. A DVD rip takes ~10 minutes per 90 minute DVD, but without CPU at 100%, so probably limited by DVD read speed (using all 8 threads, sometimes I use 7, if I plan on running a game at the same time). The only time I can reliably max out the CPU is when I'm on a 1G Internet connection and re-open a browser with 30-50 tabs. It loads all the tabs and renders all the content on all of them as fast as it can. 3-10 seconds of 100% CPU is the best I can do, without loading something designed to deliberately load CPUs.
I may have "overpaid" (though I got the laptop at a great discount, lower than the i5 version), but it's nice to never be CPU limited.
Oh, and the wife's drive is a 1GB HDD with 20 GB SSD cache drive. Almost exactly the same speed as my 256 GB SSD, and a whole lot more space. Much better bang for the buck than my 256GB SSD primary drive with 750 GB spinner for storage, and the same usable space.
Learn to love Alaska
compilers are mostly CPU bound. secondarily I'd say they are memory bound, that is memory bandwidth, not memory size.
that ht gives as much as 70% speedup isd proof that it is not 100% cpu bound. if it was 100%, I'd expect very little speedup. 70% speedup tells you that we have exactly the kind of workload ht and other mt was invented for. in old days without multithreading, a core would do only one operation per cycle, in between the pipeline, staging, bus requests etc. every time it missed a cachge lookup,ba page fault, we had to context switch, and wait until next cycle to try an operation. with ht,bwe have always multiple pipelines lined up, and when he is out because of page faulkt another is ready to go. basically, wghat my does, is to allow a core to be 100% utilized. that's why some workload see improvement with ht, while a few even see degradation. a workload that is truly 100% CPU bound might see degradation. workloads that are mosrptly cvpu and memory, will see greatest improvermernt. in the case above, they might benefit from even more than 8 threads, if thecore is not 100% utilized yet. it depends how much cpu bound vs memory bound the process is. now the core would be idle in those cases where more than 4 threads had a page fault in same clock cycle. now you understand why processor cache vsize is so important. ram access is extrermerly slow compared to CPU clock cycles.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
ummm BULLSHIT. even with all that you are using very little CPU processing.
resizing etc is not CPU intensive and unless you are using some truly god aweful filters or have a terrible setup, you still are looking at relatively low CPU utilization where an i7 is still overkill.
Sure, but those are in higher end notebooks, and the market for those is probably smaller. I'd imagine the vast majority of notebooks sold are going to be cheaper ones that have a medium power chip of some kind, likely an i3. Then you'd have a bunch of utlrabooks and a bunch of high power ones, but not in remotely the same sort of quantity. Since the XPS 13 is an ultrabook, it's going to be strictly limited to the ultrabook (U-series) processors, for thermal reasons if nothing else, which is why your "call me when they have i7" comment doesn't really make sense in context.
The U-series processors come in 15W or 28W, and the XPS 13's i5-5200U is a 15W part. So it's *VERY* far away from being able to handle the TDP of a quad-core i7. The lowest power quad core chip is the fourth gen 37W i7 chips, so more than double the power and thermal requirements.
Only the U chips are out for 5th gen, so if we want to compare the fastest i5 (dual-core) with the lowest power quad-core i7, we need to look at those fourth gen 37W parts. In that case, we can see the i7-4712HQ is the fastest 37W i7, and the i5-4340M is the fastest 37W i5. The primary difference is the doubled number of cores (and cache), but the clockspeed suffers somewhat.
The i7 is looking at 2.3 to 3.3GHz, while the i5 is looking at 2.9 to 3.6GHz. The i5 also has a slightly faster GPU, 1.15GHz versus 1.25GHz. The i5 also has a few extra features, namely vPro and trusted execution. Most people won't care about those.
I'd argue that in most common scenarios, the i5 is going to be faster, because most things that the average user does is going to be limited by single-threaded performance... but some people do use applications that could take advantage of more than two cores. It'll be up to the use case.
Personally, I'm happy with an 11.5W or 15W chip in my system, because I'll take 15 hours of battery life in a system that's fast enough, versus the extra processing power that would be useless to me in a notebook. For me, the notebook is primarily for running a browser and remote desktop, and anything heavier than that is going to happen on my desktop. Perhaps even remotely, modern remote desktop provides a very close to native experience, even over LTE. For example, even full-screen video works fine over a cellular link, although I've noticed the audio is a tad delayed. It's a huge improvement over remote desktop even a few years ago.
I have an i7-3612QM in my laptop. I don't try to go long periods away from power. But it's really nice to play casual games at desktop performance. And the cores do make a difference when having lots of things open, taking up background processing while doing something like a game, or doing something while playing a video out of the HDMI to a second monitor.
Speaking of which, I need to look up how I can send audio from one program out the HDMI while sending the audio from everything else out the laptop speakers. Because it's not too unusual for me to play a video via VLC for the kids, while doing something else, though never tried playing a game fullscreen on the laptop screen while playing a video in HD on the HDMI.
I don't claim to be a regular user. But I claim to actually use it that way.
Learn to love Alaska
I have an i5-4690 Which is 3.5Ghz with turbo up to 3.9Ghz, and 84W TDP.
i7-4771 is rated at 3.5Ghz base, turbo of 3.9Ghz, and 84WTDP.
These benchmarks show identical single thread performance:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-...
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/s...
i7-4771-2,229
i5-4690-2,228
no he didn't use the word your wrong at all. he is telling him it doesn't matter what OS he is using it will be basically the same. both your or THE OS are correct.