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 EST3DMark Cloud Gate Results
3DMark Cloud Gate is a benchmark aimed at notebooks and home PCs, and is quite a bit less demanding. It has a DirectX 11 engine but is limited to Direct3D feature level 10, and is compatible with DirectX 10 hardware. The overall run is about three minutes.
There is not much more to be said about the Core i5 at this point. It does an admirable job keeping the GPU frequency almost flat during this benchmark. You can clearly see the Dell Venue 11 Pro ramping up frequencies on the CPU, which cause temperature spikes when this happens. When it throttles the CPU on this workload, it does free up enough thermal room to allow the GPU frequency to be fairly strong. We see a lot of throttling on the ASUS as well, but not quite as pronounced. Once again, on the physics test the GPU is pushed down in frequency to give the CPU more room. The Yoga 3 Pro tries its best but is once again limited by a much lower SoC temperature set point.
On the CPU side, we have a very similar situation to the Sky Diver benchmark. The ASUS once again keeps a higher average CPU frequency than all of the other Core M devices in this test. The Venue 11 is close though.
On the GPU side, the Zenbook and Venue 11 Pro are basically tied. The shorter and less demanding workload lets the Dell keep up despite not having as good of a cooling solution. But, averages are just averages. Clearly the ASUS keeps a substantially higher GPU frequency for much of this test, as is seen in the graph.
The SoC temperatures are actually quite high on the Zenbook in this test, with it coming close to the Venue 11 Pro, but the cooling system clearly is more efficient since the change in temperature on the ASUS is much more gradual than the spikes seen in the Venue 11 Pro. The Yoga 3 Pro tries to stay around 65°C but near the end the temperature does go above their target.
The overall benchmark results for this test are very similar to the previous 3DMark test. The ASUS comes in very close to the Dell Latitude with its Core i5, and the other devices fall back quite a ways. Long sustained GPU workloads are very difficult for both of the 5Y71 devices to handle.
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seapeople - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
Won't an over-aggressive turbo actually decrease performance? Processors are generally less power efficient at higher clock speeds, i.e., running at 3GHz is twice as fast as 1.5GHz but generally uses more than 2x the power, and thus more than 2x the heat.In this case, therefore, a processor that races to 3GHz will quickly (and less efficiently) use up its thermal headroom and have to throttle back moreso than a processor that stayed at 2GHz.
It's like a footrace - if the race is 100m long, you're going to finish fastest if you go all out. However, if the race is a mile long, then the guy who starts off sprinting is going to be sputtering along a quarter of the way into the race as the joggers pass him up.
MrSpadge - Friday, April 10, 2015 - link
You are right that with agressive Turbo the chip is running in a less power efficient state initially and will have to throttle a bit earlier than a slower, steadily running chip. but if we're talking about low performance under sustained loads, this doesn't matter: it affects the first few seconds, or 10's of seconds at most, whereas in the following minutes both systems are running at the same power efficient throttled speed, which is basically determined by the system cooling. It's not like the sprinter who's completely exhausted and can't recover.retrospooty - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
I dont think its really all that complicated... If you are looking for raw performance, Core M isnt for you. It is really for low power devices that do basic stuff like browsing, email etc. For that purpose, its one hell of a CPU. That performance level at 4.5 watts is a hefty accomplishment IMOYuLeven - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
I do development on a Core M machine. Instead of carrying 4 pounds of computing power on my back, I let a cloud based development box do the heavy lifting. The plume light Core M notebook is used basically to write the code and give orders to the Dev box. IMHO opinion a far better setup than having scoliosis for the sake of running code locally.mkozakewich - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
It's not for web browsing. That's what Atom is for. A Core-M device is good for all regular core tasks except sustained graphics tasks. I wouldn't get one to game, but it'll be great for anything else.retrospooty - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
That is pretty much exactly what am saying. Basic use, core M is fine. Not for high performance requirements.nathanddrews - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
They have taken the exact opposite approach to their SSD design, where they try very hard to offer constant and consistent performance.xthetenth - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Both make sense from the perspective of increasing perceived speed. With storage, it hanging and being slow is the biggest way it can impact the feel of the device, while processors that trade finishing short tasks much faster for a tiny decrease in how fast they complete long tasks do a lot to achieve a responsive feel.xthetenth - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Device buyers don't buy devices to get a higher average frequency, they buy things to do what they want without the device holding them up. Look at the benchmarks where the ASUS holds higher average frequencies but the Yoga's higher maximum frequency means it completes tasks faster, and it performs better in the benchmark. That sort of responsiveness is what turbo is for. The time to complete long tasks isn't going to be materially changed but the time to complete short tasks is going to be reduced significantly if the processor can use a quick burst like turbo allows.I'm also pretty sure that most users consider not getting burned by their device a good thing that should continue, incidentally.
StormyParis - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
That's not a real use case though. Real use case is load a page (low CPU), render page (high CPU) read page (low CPU). I don't care how fast my CPU is idling while I'm reading the page, I do care how fast the page renders. It'd be different if I were running simulations.. that's what desktop CPUs are for.