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 ESTTouchXPRT 2014 Results
TouchXPRT performs several tasks, and the workloads very much fall into the race to sleep category. There are several workloads, from adding filters to photos, to creating podcasts. The benchmark takes about ten minutes to complete, but each workload is slightly different.
Looking at the Core i5 graph makes it very obvious where the heaviest lifting is in this benchmark, but even that one is full of bursts of work. The Dell Venue tablet is able to hit a very high frequency for many of these tasks, since it has adequate time to cool off in between. The ASUS is as consistent as always, and the Yoga 3 Pro can really stretch its legs on this benchmark.
Looking at the average CPU frequency, the Yoga 3 Pro beats out the other Core M devices by a lot, and even turbo higher than the Core i5 on many occasions. If the work is short, the higher burst frequency of the 5Y71 can make a big difference. This would be very similar to web browsing, where short bursts of work get the job done. The Dell has the lowest average CPU frequency again, but as we have seen in previous results the fact that it can hit a much higher frequency than the ASUS can help it regain ground, especially on a short workload such as this one.
The GPU average frequencies show the disadvantage of the 5Y10. It is quite a bit under the 800 MHz turbo frequency of the chip, and it cannot turbo to the 900 MHz of the other two chips when it does have thermal headroom to make up the difference. The other two devices can be seen to jump all the way up to the 900 MHz maximum many times.
Temperatures are low, and the ASUS is the lowest again. The Yoga 3 Pro is sitting right at the 65°C target temperature, which means it was not always able to keep within that target during these quick bursts of energy needed.
TouchXPRT is almost a perfect workload for 5Y71, and the Yoga 3 Pro outperforms even the Core i5-5200U in this test. The Venue 11 Pro also comes in right at the score of the Core i5. The ASUS UX305 is certainly hampered by its lack of turbo compared to the other devices in this test. It had the lowest average temperature, and it could not do anything with it.
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serendip - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Maybe Intel made too many compromises and OEMs reached too far with their designs. On one hand a fast race to sleep is good, yet on the other hand, I'd rather be a slow and steady tortoise who finishes the race than a hare that turbos and sleeps frequently to prevent overheating. Device buyers don't care about TDP or poorly set skin temperature limits, they'll just swear off Core M products that give them throttled 600 MHz speeds instead of full power.boblozano - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Good point, though I tend to think it'll depend on the use cases. I went back to separate desktop(s) / laptop (rather than a single, uber-laptop) about a year ago. Consequently the laptop can be optimized for size / weight / mobility, for which a core-m device is helpful.jospoortvliet - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
Exactly the same here. I will do my video and image editing on my quad-core desktop anyway, so a core M is perfect: I need portability and battery life in a laptop, not raw performance. Intel made just the right chip for a customer like me here. Too bad that on the desktop side, where I would love an affordable six or eight core with a high tdp, they fail me.girishp - Monday, April 13, 2015 - link
I tried doing the same thing, but portability quickly triumphs any advantage of a powerful desktop, especially when a good powerful laptop can do most of what I need. I bought the 2nd gen Mac Book Air for my wife and it was good for her basic multimedia requirements (Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, etc.), but the latest Mac Book just isn't powerful enough for any of her needs.MrSpadge - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Turbo gives the system increased responsiveness under bursty loads, i.e. most everyday workloads. There's no good reason not to use the performance available and be a tortoise voluntarily. When the load is sustained over longer periods, Turbo automatically throttles back to what ever limit the OEM has set. Had you choosen the tortoise mode, you would have started at this point. With Turbo you don't loose any performance compared to this scenario, it just makes you reach the limit quicker. Turbo also autoamtically factors in things like "how many cores are loaded", "how stresful is this program in reality", "how good is the device cooling" and "how hot is the ambient" by simply measuring them empirically (power consumption & temperature). In fixed tortoise mode you'd have to predict all of them and assume the worst case, just like Intel & AMD did for the first dual and quad cores with low fixed frequencies.If Turbo results in "turbos and sleeps frequently to prevent overheating" it is simply set up badly, significantly worse than Turbo on Intel Desktop CPUs since a few years. Instead of sleeping to avoid overheating the turbo bin must gradually be lowered until a good steady state is reached.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Forgot to add: it would be really nice if there was a simple user control for their current preference of maximum performance vs. tolerated temperature. Win allows limiting a CPUs maximum performance state, but most users will never find this option in the advanced energy settings. A simple slider as a sidebar-like gadget could work well. Not only for Core-M, but also for regular laptops and desktops. Add one slider for each discrete GPU's power target.mkozakewich - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Also, MS removed that option in all their PCs with connected standby. You can still enable it through the registry, but regular users are even less likely to make use of that option. We need some sane defaults set so we can have separate "Low Power", "Balanced" and "Overdrive" modes. We won't care about skin temperature if we've chosen to use that temperature briefly and we have an option to turn it back down.soccerballtux - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
the biggest problem is Windows packaging in tons of storage indexing that runs every time you log in, or letting services run around in the background and datamine (Facebook, Amazon Music re-scans every 10 minutes-- I mean seriously? might as sell me a phone with 100MB less of RAM if you're going to do that)The_Assimilator - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Because it's obviously Windows' fault that it runs services that you told it to install.lilmoe - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
+1