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 ESTPCMark 8 Home Results
PCMark 8 Home is a much different workload than Cinebench. Cinebench thrives on sustained performance over the duration of the workload, with the CPU utilization staying around 100% for the duration. While an important metric, most people do not use their computers like that in their day to day lives, so Futuremark has crafted the PCMark suite to perform tasks which are more akin to what the average person will do in a day. Home includes workloads for web browsing, writing, gaming, photo editing, and video chat, and the nature of these loads mean that there is a lot more burst performance needed, so the race to sleep mentality of the Core M can be more effective in this scenario.
The burst nature of this benchmark is apparent just looking at the Core i5. No longer is the CPU frequency consistent across the board, and the temperatures ramp up and down as the work is performed and finished. Even more pronounced is the Dell tablet, which spikes up and down from its maximum temperature, but at the same time ramping clock speeds up quite high as well. The incredible cooling of the ASUS UX305 passive solution makes a big difference here, with the UX305 being able to maintain almost its maximum frequency for the duration of this benchmark. The Yoga 3 Pro really shines here though, with it maintaining quite high speeds for almost the entire duration of the benchmark.
Average CPU frequencies on the other hand show an unexpected disparity between the results we saw above and what the averages end up being. It's the cool Yoga 3 Pro that holds the highest average clockspeeds, followed by the UX305, and finally bringing up the rear is the Venure 11 Pro 7000.
The GPU averages for the three Core M devices are very similar overall, although none are at their maximum. Only the 15 watt Core i5 can maintain its maximum GPU frequency for the duration of this test. As we will see later, GPUs can draw a lot of power.
Moving on to temperature, with the burst nature of this benchmark, all of the devices have a reasonable time to cool off between workloads. The ASUS shows its amazing cooling capabilities again, with a significantly lower temperature than even both of the active cooled devices, but none of them are too close to their maximum allowed temperature over the duration.
Looking at the end result of this benchmark kind of throws everything we have seen in the above graphs on its head. The Yoga 3 Pro, despite sustaining a CPU frequency higher than all of the other Core M devices in this test, ends up scoring the worst, however the overall result by the Yoga 3 Pro is disadvantaged in this benchmark by the gaming test, due to the high resolution display on the Yoga 3 Pro. This is very similar to the results seen in the Dell XPS 13 review, where the QHD+ model only scored 2691 and the FHD model scored 3042 with the same processor. However the ASUS UX305 beats the other Core M devices, although it does so with a much lower resolution display than the Yoga 3 Pro which would certainly beat it otherwise.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
110 Comments
View All Comments
jjj - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
You insist on only showing low power CPU results , because putting them properly in context would hurt sales right? God forbid you include laptops....And today somehow you decided to fully ignore AMD too.
Maybe stop working for Intel and serve your readers instead.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Dude.. WTF?This is an evaluation of what Core M is and what this means for devices using it. It's neither a comparison to other device and CPU classes, nor a general recommendation of this product.
Michael Bay - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
AMD just can`t afford a decent shill anymore.THIS is what they go these days.
xthetenth - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
I guess it's easy to confuse discussions of architectural details for devices that have already been reviewed on this very site with articles comparing those devices to other similar devices when the preexisting reviews contain many of the very comparisons you want.Dorek - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
"And today somehow you decided to fully ignore AMD too."Only because the market does.
Refuge - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
This article was never about comparing the CPU's to AMD or anyone. It was about explaining why we are getting awkward results across the board on the performance of these low TDP Intel parts.Nothing to do with AMD, or even the specific OEM's products either, so much as their construction and heat dissipation performance, but it was only in an effort to further explain the varying results of these low TDP Intel chips.
Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Haha how does a 4.5w CPU for a laptop have anything to do with a 65w+ desktop CPU?Allan_Hundeboll - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
If he was working for intel he would have included amd's "lowpower" cpuname99 - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Yeah, it's ridiculous.Why isn't there also a comparison against a POWER8 --- that would DEMOLISH this silly little Broadwell-Y.
And they're going on about how great the power dissipation is? Compare it against an ARM M0 and look who has crazy low power dissipation then!
I demand that every future AnandTech review compare any CPU against every other other CPU in the known universe, no matter how irrelevant the comparison...
lilmoe - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
That price tag makes this the most confusing and out-of-place processor from Intel... Microsoft proved that Haswell-U can power an ultra-thin x86 tablet, have mobile SoC comparable battery life, and price it comparably or even lower than Core M products. All that with the added benefit of better performance...OEMs can take advantage of lower pricing on some Broadwell-U processors, and install a better/thinner active cooling solution with the savings. So where does that put Core M other than "luxury" devices that have no need for "real" performance advantages?
Not for me, thanks... Not at THAT price tag.