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Intel's Core M Performance Is Erratic Between Devices
An anonymous reader writes: AnandTech noticed some odd performance disparities with Intel's Core M CPU, a chip designed to bring high-powered processing to thin, fan-less devices. After investigating, they found that how OEMs build their laptops and tablets has a far greater effect on Core M performance than it does for other chips. "When an OEM designs a device for Core M, or any SoC for that matter, they have to consider construction and industrial design as well as overriding performance. ... This, broadly speaking, gives the OEM control over several components that are out of the hands of the processor designers. Screen size, thickness, industrial design, and skin temperature all have their limits, and adjusting those knobs opens the door to slower or faster Core M units, depending on what the company decides to target.
In the Core M units that we have tested at AnandTech so far this year, we have seen a variety of implementations with and without fans and in a variety of form factors. But the critical point of all of this comes down to how the OEM defines the SoC/skin temperature limitations of the device, and this ends up being why the low-end Core M-5Y10 can beat the high-end Core M-5Y71, and is a poignant part of our tests. Simply put, if the system with 5Y10 has a higher SoC/skin temperature, it can stay in its turbo mode for longer and can end up outperforming a 5Y71, leading to some of the unusual results we've seen so far."
In the Core M units that we have tested at AnandTech so far this year, we have seen a variety of implementations with and without fans and in a variety of form factors. But the critical point of all of this comes down to how the OEM defines the SoC/skin temperature limitations of the device, and this ends up being why the low-end Core M-5Y10 can beat the high-end Core M-5Y71, and is a poignant part of our tests. Simply put, if the system with 5Y10 has a higher SoC/skin temperature, it can stay in its turbo mode for longer and can end up outperforming a 5Y71, leading to some of the unusual results we've seen so far."
This has been the case for Intel CPUs for many years. Back in the Core 2 days they were already letting laptop manufacturers customize the power profiles (and therefore performance) of their mobile CPUs to suit the thermal load handling ability of their machines.
If you have one of those old Core 2 machines and don't install the Intel chipset driver for it (or install the generic one) it will get hot and loud pretty quickly. The only real difference now is that the CPU has better management built in and works okay without the driver giving it hints.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Having a Core i7 will not actually feel more responsive in everyday tasks compared to a Core M if the i7 is paired with a spinning rust disk and the Core M has a PCI E SSD.
Cool - I'll transcode a 900MB .dv clip to h.264 with ffmpeg on my 4-core hyperthreadding i7 (the low-power model, even) with a simple drive mirror, and you run it on your Core M with a PCIe SSD (on a Mac even), and let's see when each job finishes.
(as usual, use the right tool for the task)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)