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 Sky Diver Results
Most of the previous benchmarks were day to day tasks. Some involved the GPU, but it was never the focus. We will now move on to benchmarks which focus on GPU performance to see what kind of an effect this can have. Remember, the TDP of Core M is 4.5 watts including the integrated graphics, so any thermal room needed for graphics is going to come at the expense of the CPU. 3DMark Sky Diver is aimed for gaming laptops and mid-range PCs, so it is a bit too much load for integrated graphics. But it does feature DirectX 11 and includes both graphics and physics tests. The benchmark is around five minutes long.
We can see that the Core i5 continues shrugging off these tests. While the SoC did heat up, the GPU frequency was flat throughout the results. This is quite a bit different than all of the Core M processors, which had to throttle both the CPU and GPU as needed. It is very interesting especially in the UX305 results to see that the GPU is throttled on high CPU workloads to give more headroom for the CPU, which you can see on the third heat spike in its graph. This would be the physics test, which relies heavily on the CPU. The Dell Venue 11 and Yoga 3 Pro had very different temperature curves, and the Yoga 3 Pro had to throttle the GPU quite a bit to stay at its target SoC temperature.
Looking at the average CPU frequencies reaffirms what we have seen in previous results. The ASUS, despite having the lowest turbo frequency, has the highest average for the Core M devices. But it is the GPU frequencies which are the most important in this test.
All of the Core M devices had to throttle the GPU to some extent, but the ASUS did the least. The Yoga 3 Pro and Dell Venue 11 Pro were basically tied in average GPU frequency for the duration of this test. GPU workloads can pull a lot of power into the SoC, which can raise temperatures as we will see in the next graph.
Looking at the SoC temperatures explains the results. The Yoga 3 Pro has an average of 65.2°C, which is the target temperature for the Yoga. This means it was not able to leverage the breaks in workloads to ramp up its higher turbo frequencies when needed. The Dell Venue 11 is at almost 90°C for the benchmark, and that is also its limit. The ASUS, with its better cooling, manages to basically mirror the Core i5 for SoC temperature.
The excellent cooling of the ASUS form factor shines in the GPU tests. For the overall score, it comes very close to the Core i5. Both of the 5Y71 devices struggle under sustained GPU workloads, as the scores confirm.
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zepi - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Surface pro 3 is ~50% thicker than iPad Air 2, weights ~50% more, has active cooling and still has poorer performance than Surface Pro 2.From my point of view Surface pro 3 proves that Haswell-U can't power ultra-thin x86 tablets.
lilmoe - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Didn't know the iPad was an ultra-thin x86 tablet that replace your laptop. Good to know, thanks.I get that the iPad has a huge fan base, I really do. But would you guys please stop comparing it to real PCs in tablet form already??
zepi - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
Central argument proposed was that SP3 somehow proves that Haswell-U can power ultra-thin X86 tablets. There were no mentions about Windows or OSX compatibility in original statement.Keyword is Tablet. x86, ultra-thin etc. are describe terms. You don't need to go far and see that the statement is clearly false. Ultra-thin in context of tablets means these days that thickness of the device should to be somewhere around 6-7mm. SP3 is 9mm. I picked iPad Air 2, because it is the most well known of competitors. We could just as well use Dell Venue 8. Ipad thickness is 6.1 and Dell is 6mm thick. Later is even x86 and runs windows
Weight was another thing. Naturally comparing weight to Venue 8 makes very little sense since SP3 has over twice the total screen area of Venue 8 so I compare it with iPad air 2, which has the biggest screen area of the most well known tablets in the market. Most certainly, there are some less well known 12" models, but they are not widely spread and have hardly any market penetration.
I cannot see how SP3 would prove that 15w TDP allows for compact tablet designs. SP3 is already thermally limited and mostly proves to me that in order to reach smaller and thinner designs, lower power SOC's are necessary. From my point of view SP3 is full computer which offers decent (though arguably best in class) tablet usability in addition of being dockable general purpose PC-computer.
digiguy - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
come on, you change the comparison in the same sentence, SP3 is thinner and lighter than SP2, and has has higher res screen. As for ipad air, try to run Windows on it....Jaybus - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Or even if it ran OSX. The iPad is a giant iPhone. If it ran OSX, then we could compare it to SP3. For now, iPad can only be compared to Android tablets.xthetenth - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Being thicker than slower devices and slower than thicker devices only proves that it fits between them on a size/performance scale and does nothing to show that it's not a good device.ppi - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
My desktop is also thicker than iPaid Air2, weighs more, has active cooling and certainly eats more power. So ... ?You have to realize, that this 4.5W chip actually has performance that is in league with 15W chip. For many ultrabook/2-in-1 use cases ideal chip. And read the Yoga3 review, where on CPU-bound benchmarks, Core-M runs circles around A8X.
frozentundra123456 - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
I agree with some of the other posters. The problem is the price of these devices for the performance. I can see them for say business use, where the company is paying, use is light, and mobility is important (say for a sales rep who travels a lot), but otherwise, I cant see Joe Average Consumer paying north of 1000 for these when you can get similar perrformance for less in a 350.00 conventional laptop or less performance, but still decent in a 100 to 300 dollar atom device.xthetenth - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
The ASUS is in the 700 dollar range and avoids a great many other compromises cheaper devices would make. It fits into the price/quality scale very nicely.zepi - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
From gaming / usability perspective the average-results do not necessarily tell enough.Ie. does the usage experience of certain devices suffer because GPU / CPU throttles too much under certain loads?
Are the bottom 10% frametimes so horrendous on throttling devices that DOTA-gaming is practically out of question despite relatively small difference in average frame rates?