ASUS K53E: Testing Dual-Core Sandy Bridge
by Jarred Walton on April 8, 2011 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- Asus
Dual-Core Sandy Bridge: Moderate Improvements over Arrandale
Since this review is more about dual-core Sandy Bridge than a specific laptop, we’ll start our conclusion looking at the Intel platform. While I was frankly blown away by the improvements that quad-core Sandy Bridge brought to the table, the dual-core variant isn’t quite so impressive. Most of that can be attributed to the fact that Clarksfield was long overdue for replacement, so moving from 45nm and discrete GPUs to 32nm with on-die graphics and better power gating was a real boon. Going from dual-core Arrandale to dual-core Sandy Bridge is more of an incremental improvement. If you consider Intel’s Tick-Tock strategy, that makes sense: Nehalem and by extension Clarksfield are in the “tock” category (e.g. new architecture on a mature process), while Arrandale is a “tick”. Sandy Bridge is the “tock” to Arrandale (and other parts as well), so the big improvement for Arrandale is going to come next year with Ivy Bridge.
While dual-core Sandy Bridge isn’t the homerun that quad-core SNB is, we do have to acknowledge all the areas that it gets right. Power use in light to moderate workloads is down slightly from Arrandale, and video decoding power use is down significantly. Graphics performance on the mobile chips is double what we got with Arrandale, and compatibility in general has improved. Something we didn’t get into in this review is Intel’s Quick Sync technology, which is currently the fastest way to transcode H.264 video content if you want to put up a quick video on YouTube. What really impresses me is that you can get similar battery life (in light workloads) with either the dual-core or quad-core SND parts, so provided your laptop can dissipate the 45W (vs. 35W on dual-core) of heavy workloads there’s no need to compromise. Apple recognized the benefits here and chose to take the quad-core only approach with their new MacBook Pro 15/17 models, though given the thin chassis it looks like they get a bit too hot and loud for my taste.
The major selling points of dual-core Sandy Bridge are straightforward. First is pricing: the i5-2520M carries a 1000 unit price of $225 according to Intel, replacing the previous generation i5-520M. Intel doesn’t disclose pricing for the i5-24xxM parts, but I’d expect OEMs to pay substantially less than $200 for those chips. At the high-end, there are also dual-core i7-26xxM parts that will run into the $300+ range, but rather than paying $346 for something like the i7-2620M (2.7GHz base with 3.4GHz Turbo), I’d much rather have the $378 i7-2720QM (2.2GHz base, up to 3.3GHz max Turbo). In most workloads, I expect the 2720QM is going to be equal to or faster than the 2620M. We already hinted at the other reason for the dual-core parts: power restrictions. While a quad-core chip might idle very close to dual-core levels, put a heavier load on the CPU and the 45W TDP comes into play. I don’t expect to see standard voltage DC parts in anything smaller than 13.3”-screen laptops, and 45W quad-core chips will have a very difficult time in smaller chassis, but the 17W parts like the i7-2617M should be viable for 11.6”-screen ultraportables—it’s just a shame that the 1000 unit pricing on such CPUs is $289.
If we look at the bigger picture, one area where Sandy Bridge isn’t likely to tread is the sub-$600 laptop market—just like Arrandale, if we leave out the cut-down Celeron P4000 and Pentium P6000 models. You can already buy the ASUS K53E-A1 with an i3-2310M for $625, but going lower than that will be difficult. When you look at everything that goes into a modern laptop, it’s easy to see why. [Warning: Very rough estimates on pricing ahead.]
Add up the cost of the OS, RAM, storage, LCD, chassis, and battery and you’re looking at a base price of around $300 for a 4GB RAM + 500GB HDD laptop. AMD’s Brazos motherboard + APU will cost another $100-$125 most likely, which explains why the E-350 laptops start at $450 as a minimum price on the HP dm1z. With Sandy Bridge, the minimum cost of the motherboard and an i3 CPU is going to be closer to $200, and the faster i5 processors might bump that up to $250 to $300. Minimalist Sandy Bridge laptops like the K53E start at $600, which leaves plenty of room in the budget space. A laptop with the Celeron B810 can probably get down to the $500 price point, but at that point you’re only running SNB at 1.6GHz, you don’t have Turbo, you lose Quick Sync, and the GPU is a 6EU part that only runs at up to 950MHz. Such a laptop is going to be about half as fast as the i5-2520M we looked at today, which means it’s not particularly compelling if there’s only a 20% price difference.
If you’re in the market for a new laptop right now, I can make a very strong case for spending $800 to get a balanced laptop that should last several years. The K53E comes close to being such a laptop, with the only omission being switchable graphics of some form. If you compare the K53E to other budget offerings it provides a substantially faster CPU, a better GPU (for now), and depending on what you’re comparing it with either much better (K10.5) or only slightly worse (E-350) battery life. You get all that for just 16% more than the Toshiba L645, or 60% more than the HP dm1z. The problem is, there’s a huge market for laptops that are simply as cheap as possible—it’s the one reason netbooks are even remotely popular in my opinion. Netbooks are slow, often poorly built, slow, too small for many to use comfortably, and above all they’re really slow. AMD’s C-50 at least makes them viable for watching YouTube content and other videos, but they’re still much slower than what you can get for only a moderate bump in price. However, try talking to most people about YouTube and Flash content, amount of memory, hard drive capacity, and the difference between Win7 Starter and Win7 Home Premium and all you’ll get is a blank stare and a statement of, “But this laptop only costs $300!” If it’s difficult to convince someone to move from a $300 netbook to a $500 laptop, you can imagine the reaction most people have if you suggest a $720 laptop.
Intel looks content to cede a lot of ground to AMD in the low cost laptop market. There’s little (well, nothing really) to recommend an Atom netbook over a Brazos alternative at the $300 to $350 price bracket. Move up to $400 to $500 and you’ve got a bunch of AMD Athlon II, Turion II, and Phenom II laptops that will run circles around cheap netbooks; they may lack battery life and might run warm, but they’ve got plenty of RAM and storage. AMD E-350 laptops cater to the other side of the fence, with smaller sizes and better battery life, plus a better GPU compared to the old HD 4200 IGP. As for Intel, you can find Celeron and Pentium laptops for $500, but they’re cut back enough that while they might boast better battery life than AMD’s Danube (K10.5) platform, they fail to convince as a complete solution. After that we enter the gray area where laptops like the K53E overlap AMD laptops that have discrete GPUs—and presumably in the near future we’ll see Llano show up in the $600 to $750 price range. Finally, you get to the $800+ range, and this is where I find laptops start to get interesting. Here you reach the point where you don’t have to make serious compromises in pursuit of a lower price.
Above $800, I wouldn’t recommend much from the AMD camp right now, other than their graphics chips. The HD 6000M GPUs look like they perform well and have good power characteristics, and AMD might even have an answer for NVIDIA’s Optimus Technology (we’re trying to get some systems for testing to see how the latest AMD switchable graphics work). However, even at 3.0GHz a dual-core K10.5 CPU can’t keep up with last year’s i3-370M, and the aging HD 4250 IGP needed to be retired early last year. Thankfully, Llano will fix the GPU/IGP, and with the process technology switch and better use of power gating it should close the CPU performance gap. We’ll see what Llano has to offer soon enough, but right now the bar has been set and dual-core and quad-core Sandy Bridge are the ones to beat.
As for the ASUS K53E, while we looked at a notebook with the i5-2520M instead of the 2310M or 2410M, we still have a good idea of how the latter will perform. In a pinch, $625 for an i3-based notebook might be acceptable, but Turbo is a major selling point for Sandy Bridge and I’d be hesitant to give that up. For $720, the K53E-B1 gives you good application performance, good battery life, excellent transcoding capabilities, and adequate graphics performance for entry-level gaming. You’ll miss out on newer features like USB 3.0, you won’t get any other specialized expansion options like eSATA, FireWire, or ExpressCard, and you’ll get a poor quality LCD. We can levy similar complaints against many other budget laptops and notebooks.
The biggest problem with the ASUS K53E is really another ASUS laptop. If you don’t care about games at all, the K53E is fine, but when you can get substantially better gaming performance, a smaller and lighter chassis, and better battery life (except for video decoding) with the U41JF and only pay an extra $100, I’d be more inclined to go that route right now. With the 15% overclock, the U41JF’s i3-380M even manages to keep up and sometimes surpass the performance of the i5-2415M in the new MacBook Pro 13. There are definitely advantages with Sandy Bridge compared to Arrandale, but the dual-core parts tend to be more of an incremental upgrade than a major game-changer.
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JarredWalton - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
Our battery life testing has always targeted maximum battery life while still being able to complete all tasks. So with Core 2 Duo, Athlon II, Core i-series, etc. we've always set minimum CPU and maximum CPU to 0%, and enabled any special power saving features as applicable. (I should note that there are exceptions to the above: Atom, Brazos, and CULV/ULV have always been tested at 0/100% CPU settings, mostly because they are already slow--particularly Atom. The laptop needs to be able to play our H.264 video without stuttering or dropping frames.) On the ASUS U41JF, if you use the "Battery Saving" Power4Gear profile, it automatically underclocks and locks the CPU to run at no more than 900MHz. Running stock instead of underclocked reduces battery life by 5-10% as noted in the U41JF review. Finally, as I point out, it's interesting that for SNB, 0/0% actually reduces battery life compared to 0/100% CPU in two of the three battery tests--this is not the case with Arrandale.Regarding power efficiency: 10 to 15% better efficiency is "similar" in my book. The 30% difference in H.264 is a lot more pronounced, true. As for SSD vs. HDD, SSDs really don't use that much less power at idle, and often even under load. Look at the ASUS U30Jc with an SSD comparison: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/266?vs=267 SSD wins by 7% at idle, HDD wins by 3% in the Internet, and the H.264 is a tie (0.3% difference). The 17.3" LCD vs. 15.6" LCD is going to be more than a 5% difference I'd bet, and the K53E actually has an LCD that appears to use very little power. The same applies to the comparison with Dell's E6410: 15-20% isn't massive in my book, but 55% certainly qualifies. It's better, yes, but not a huge change.
Your E-350 comment is already addressed in the text if you don't take just one piece of the paragraph: "Ah, but the E-350 has a much better IGP, right? Well, maybe it’s better, but it’s certainly not faster than Intel’s HD 3000 when it’s bottlenecked by the CPU...." I suppose I can add "and memory bandwidth" for you though.
Anyway, what individuals think of DC vs. QC Sandy Bridge is a matter of opinion. I was more impressed by QC, and if I could get QC over DC in the form factor I want that's what I'd do. Dell's XPS L502x for instance gives you both options, and with a moderately large 15.6" chassis the quad-core is an easy sell for me. Others might be more impressed with the dual-core stuff, but we've had dual-core Arrandale for a year and increasing battery life by 20% with 15-20% more performance is still "incremental" in my book.
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
"What about AMD’s Fusion E-350 platform? If the 3DMark results hold in our actual gaming tests, Intel’s “horrible” HD 3000 IGP offers over twice the performance of the HD 6310M. In fact, even an Arrandale IGP would come within 10% of the E-350 results in 3DMark. It’s not that we love Intel or want them to pummel AMD, and we understand that the E-350 competes in a lower price bracket. Still, many people like to get carried away in discussions of how much better AMD’s graphics are compared to Intel’s IGP. That’s certainly true when you’re looking at discrete GPUs, and compatibility is still better with AMD and NVIDIA drivers, but the latest SNB IGP changed the status quo."What is this nonsense? You claim to understand that the E-350 competes in a lower price bracket. But it is obvious you simply cannot comprehend that there is a difference between a $50 part and a $225 part. Sandy Bridge is too expensive to ever change the status quo. That product line is so expensive that it changes nothing. Except you are paying the price of a discrete gpu, plus a hefty markup, to have an integrated gpu. Intel will not lower those prices even when llano blows it out of the sky for half the price.
JarredWalton - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
Did you even read the whole conclusion? Where I repeatedly cede the sub-$600 territory to AMD? And I only mention Llano nine times throughout the review. Obviously nonsense.... Except, $600 SNB is now a viable alternative to what used to be $900 laptops. The U30Jc is slower in every regard than the current i5-2xxx CPUs -- the 310M can't keep up with HD 3000, and Arrandale can't keep up with SNB. So yes, that's "changing the status quo". Integrated graphics no longer suck quite as bad, to the point where HD 5470 is dead and so is G 310M.JPForums - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
SNB is probably more efficient at H.264 decode, but one fact makes it a little less than clear. Ironically, you point it out here:
That does seem like a rather low power draw for a 15.6" and makes me wonder how much power HP's 11.6" draws. The question is purely academic, though, as I would be willing to sacrifice some battery life for a better looking screen. Further, 13.3" is about as small as I'll go.
That aside, this article makes me wonder how well similarly equipped notebooks with Optimus technology will do. It would be nice to see some designs that get most of the battery life under normal usage while giving you the ability to game when you want. Hopefully, nVidia realizes that the GPU is no longer needed for H.264 decode with SNB and will leave the CPU to take care of it.
JarredWalton - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
All of the Optimus Arrandale stuff I tested used the IGP, because it was sufficient for H.264 decode. However, oddly enough the Optimus laptops never quite seem to get to the same battery life levels as the IGP-only systems. Okay, I only tested one of the latter (Dell Latitude E6410), but for a 14" chassis the relative battery life was much better than any other Arrandale laptop we tested.Perhaps the real culprit is the batteries: they all come with Wh ratings, but I can tell you from personal experience that some 2500mAh NiMH Energizer AA rechargeables have got nothing on 2000mAh NiMH Eneloop AA rechargeables. But unfortunately, I don't know of a good way to independently rate a laptop battery to say exactly how good it is--not without some sophisticated equipment (and tearing the batteries apart, which would likely be frowned on). So I "hope" that these Lithium Ion batteries are more consistent than NiMH, even if they're not.
strikeback03 - Monday, April 11, 2011 - link
I have some 2500 mAh Energizer AA batteries that I bought 4-5 years ago that are absolute trash. Even when new they self-discharged so fast that their apparent capacity was much lower than the rating. Fully charge them using an intelligent charger then leave them in a drawer for a few weeks and they would be dead. Nevermind low-discharge batteries like the Eneloop, even compared to other standard NiMH batteries they are awful.As far as Li-Ion batteries go it is relatively easy to test in a way that makes them look really good (third-party camera/phone batteries are infamous for this). I would hope that laptop batteries from well-known brands wouldn't follow the same pattern, but I suppose you never know.
JarredWalton - Monday, April 11, 2011 - link
I've noticed over the years that some laptop batteries will self-discharge at a faster rate than others. I've never really tried to determine how fast that rate is, but it would be interesting to fully charge every laptop battery I have, wait three weeks (with them unplugged), then check how much charge is remaining. Most laptop batteries seem to lose most of their charge within about three months, so they definitely wouldn't keep up with the Eneloop stuff.krumme - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
An e350 is 74mm2 - the same as Atom - this is exact numbers.The e350 is aprox 40usd (63usd list price - exact number) exactly the same as Atom d550 sans ion
The e350 have fewer pins -> cheaper to integrate for the OEM than Atom
How difficult is it to compare in the same segments?
As an owner of an Intel sb e2520m machine (dell e6420) and an Atom nettop, i can safely say this Article is the most lousy and biased article for years.
This leads to the most stupid buying decisions all over. Do you seriously think the e350 is a SB competitor?
What a shame
JarredWalton - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
You're simply not getting it: less than twice the cost, more than double (actually, quadruple CPU and double GPU) the performance. That's my point. If you want an inexpensive netbook, Brazos wins. If you want an all-around laptop, E-350 is better than Atom, but Atom was horrible. What exactly is stupid about telling people that Brazos isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread? It fills a niche, but for me Brazos is at best a secondary laptop.Or to rephrase: do you seriously think everyone should buy Brazos and forget about better options that cost more? What a shame.
krumme - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
Who would have imagined the brazos came to 15.6" right off?Probably it will be all over even in desktops within the next year, when TSMC 40nm capacity expands big time.
The OEM knows their market so the consumers clearly have a different view of performance than you and I do.
Even with a ssd i cant tell the difference selecting max 50% perf., doing all the normal office stuff and hd video. The brazos is paired with normal hd, and its aparently just fast enough not to be noticed for the target group. And battery life is just okey. The target group would probably prefer more battery life if they could select themselves - if lower price was not possible.
I think a review and the conclusions - with its interpretation of facts - should reflect the needs and the perspective of the target group.
Sandy bridge is an excellent CPU with even better power management, but its like comparing a gtx570 to an 330m if you compare it to brazos. It doesnt make sense. Its different different segments, different purpose.
If some less informed buyers - lets say the ones that buy cheap stuff - reads this article they might get the impression the HP brazos is very slow, and will select an Intel brand instead. And it will be Atom something not an i3/i5 or Llano - whatever - for that matter. And Brazos is the best since sliced bread compared to an Atom.
Normal users dont use time installing programs or games, encode, whatever. And when they do they take a cup of coffee.