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Intel Hardware

Intel 5th Gen Core Series Performance Preview With 2015 Dell XPS 13 97

Posted by Soulskill from the separating-fact-from-marketing dept.
MojoKid writes: Intel's strategically timed CES 2015 launch of their new 5th Gen Core Series processors for notebooks was met with a reasonably warm reception, though it's always difficult to rise above the noise of CES chatter. Performance claims for Intel's new chip promise major gains in graphics and more modest increases in standard compute applications. However, the biggest bet Intel placed on the new Broadwell-U architecture is performance-per-watt throughput and battery life in premium notebook products that are now in production with major OEM partners. A few manufacturers were early out of the gate with new Core i5 5XXX series-based machines, however, none of the major players caught the same kind of buzz that Dell received, with the introduction of their new XPS 13 Ultrabook with its near bezel-less 13-inch WQHD (3200X1800) display. As expected, the Core i5-5200U in this machine offered performance gains of anywhere from 10 to 20 percent, in round numbers, depending on the benchmark. In gaming and graphics testing is where the new 5200U chip took the largest lead over the previous gen Core i5-4200U CPU, which is one of the most common processors found in typical ultrabook style 13-inch machines.
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Intel 5th Gen Core Series Performance Preview With 2015 Dell XPS 13 More

Intel 5th Gen Core Series Performance Preview With 2015 Dell XPS 13

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  • Bigger keys please (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Blaskowicz ( 634489 ) on Friday January 09, 2015 @11:02PM (#48779391)

    So the laptop is full of ridiculously advanced tech, even in the graphics department but the keyboard looks cheap and really to me the more travel there is, the better. Won't somebody make a laptop with thick keys?, or at least some "high end keyboard" option. Seems like there's $5 worth of keyboard there, on a one-piece computer that's closer to $1000. What if there were $50 worth of keyboard, I wonder.
    Providing a right ctrl key is nice I guess, but I wonder when we'll see a genius including a right Fn key so we can do single-handed page up, page down, end and home.

  • The i5 has the same thermal power as the i7. The i5 generally runs at a slight speed advantage to the i7. The i7 has twice the cores of the i5. So for single threaded tasks, the i5 may be a hair faster. But for multithreads (getting more common, despite the complaints about it here), the i7 will be almost twice as fast as the i5.

    Call me when they have the i7. For no more heat and exactly the same battery life, I'd rather pay for the i7.

    • i7-4790t (tray, oem only). 45 watts and truly a fanless buildable system (I did one, its great).

      hard to find that chip. pretty much, no one has it (anymore). $300 or more, if you can find it. but wow, 45w on an i7 with 8 real cores. its great to do 'make -j9' on a fanless 'htpc' ;)

      • Re:i5? Call me when they have the i7 (Score:4, Informative)

        by Ost99 ( 101831 ) on Friday January 09, 2015 @11:49PM (#48779559)

        The 4790t does not have 8 cores. It's 4 cores with hyper-threading.
        Still massively impressive at just 45W.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Retron ( 577778 )

          It's not *that* impressive - laptop i7s are 47W parts and they're doubtless *very* closely related. There are also some 37W quad-core mobile i7s, but they have low clock rates in comparison.

      • They make fanless i7 boxes? Wouldn't a high load on an htpc melt your case? :)

        I've been wondering about getting a Brix or a NUC just as a quiet home desktop. Not having to crank the volume up to 11 just to hear html5 video above the fan matters more than raw performance.

        • for a case, check this one out: streacom fc8-evo

          supports well over 75w tdp. so a 45w tdp is no problem at all, even at full load.

          there is a case that is identical to the fc8-evo by 'perfect home theater' (in the boston area) and their case is quite a bit cheaper and pretty much the same thing as the streacom version.

          you have to buy a mini-itx board and you also have to be careful if you need the 'long heat pipes' or 'short heat pipes', based on where the cpu socket is located. the perfect home theater sto

    • But for multithreads (getting more common, despite the complaints about it here),

      If only the Java/python/ruby "script kiddies" could do the below. Your i7 would be worthwhile. :)

      //Thread 0 - Scan Filesystem for music
      unsigned __stdcall Thread_0(void*)
      {
      while (cThread.bActive[0])
      { //Find Files
      for (int i = 0; i MAX_PLAYLIST_DIRECTORY; i++)
      { //Stop request, break

    • The average user, even gamers getting little to no benefit of going from an i5 to an i7. you may be doing some particular workloads that do benefit, but that would definitely put you in the minority of users.

      • How about if one is not using Windows, but instead, either a Linux or BSD distro? Same thing then?

        • yes. Your OS is pretty well irrelevant when talking about multi threaded loads, windows, Linux and BSD all do it well. But the applications and actual workloads that benefit are far less common.

      • all modern os's wake up and do things, on their own. this competes with user tasks. having more cpus or threads or cores helps with this.

        so, yes, i5 and i7 are helpful for even 'simple' desktop users. and my htpc is an i7, with 8 real cores, so that my movies are even that much resistant to being jittered by other proc's waking up and demanding cpu time.

        • Unless you have a X99 motherboard with a silly expensive CPU, your Core i7 is 4 cores with hyperthreading.

          If you actually spent a thousand bucks to put a true 8 core chip on a HTPC, well... wish I had your money to burn :)

        • if you have an i7 as a HTPC then most likely 7 of your cores are asleep 90% of the time, a second core would occasionally be doing some stuff.cores. The rest would be pretty well unused unless you have some serious issues with your setup. my HTPC uses a core i3 and even that is massive overkill and provides flawless HD playback.

          • Not if you use a custom DirectShow filter chain to do custom deinterlacing, resizing, etc. (eg. ffdshow).
            I need a high-speed dual core w/HT or a medium-speed quad w/o HT for that.

            • resizing etc is not CPU intensive and unless you are using some truly god aweful filters or have a terrible setup, you still are looking at relatively low CPU utilization where an i7 is still overkill.

        • Setting up higher priority for your media player would be cheaper (even Windows XP could do it)

        • I can say the same about my i3, or even your average cell phone chip that has ony 2 cofes, eacch being only 1 5th as powerful as an i3.
          Disk io, network io, mory bandwidth are sill the most common bottlenecks. If a regular desktop user has bad response times due to cpu shortage, there is probably a software bug, or misconfiguration.

          The dirty little secret that is shared by everyone who has a chttp://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Slik-smugles-folk-til-Europa-7809354.htmllue, is that the cpu hardly matters

        • Yeah, the 'jitter' is almost certainly not caused by CPU interruptions from other processes (on a HTPC).

          What you need is a video player that uses a dedicated D3D drawing surface (if you're on Windows) and either a frame blender/interpolator (MadVR smooth motion, SVP, although this is definitely a workaround), or better yet, a video player (MPC-BE / MPC-HE) or renderer (madVR) that matches the refresh rate of the display with the frame rate of the source content.

          The latter is the best option, but your displa

        • all modern os's wake up and do things, on their own. this competes with user tasks. having more cpus or threads or cores helps with this.

          so, yes, i5 and i7 are helpful for even 'simple' desktop users. and my htpc is an i7, with 8 real cores, so that my movies are even that much resistant to being jittered by other proc's waking up and demanding cpu time.

          I think having 2 cores instead of 1 was beneficial to a lot of workloads as it kept the PC responsive if one thread was really hogging the CPU, it kept the other free for the rest of the user's processes. Although modern OS's claim to use preemptive multitasking, they strain under these loads if single core. I think even a single core with hyperthreading helps with responsiveness in these situations.

          With 4 cores (i5 desktop CPU), or 4 cores + hyperthreading (i7 Desktop: 8 imaginary cores), there's diminishi

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            I have an i7 with 8 threads. I was *never* CPU limited for anything - ever. Even a DVD rip, I'd end up limited by IO, rather than CPU. I'm sure there is some theoretical load that could have stressed the CPU, but I never saw it. When I started LoLing with the wife, her load times were 1/4 mine. Since every time it loaded, I'd be provably slower than her. It was embarrassing. Her laptop is a year old, compared to mine, 3 years old. So, I pulled out my 3G modem and dropped in a 256GB SSD in the mSATA s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        The average user occasionally does something like rip a DVD, or leave stuff running in the background while playing the game. Though all that stuff wouldn't fill up the CPUs, except for a DVD rip or similar, but that's not going to make a huge difference.

    • Depends : in that power range (about 15 watts) i7 is the same thing as i5 but with a few more megahertz. Both are dual core / quad threads and a fair bit slower that desktop i3 (yet again about the same chip but with a much higher power range)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      Huh? The U-series i7 is a dual-core part, it has the same number of threads as the i5. That's always been the case, prior generations never had a quad-core U-series i7 either.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        I have an i7-3612QM in my laptop. Sure, you wouldn't likely see that in a ultralite. But comparing the i5, the i7 runs a little slower to keep 4 cores in the same heat as the 2-core i5. For multithread, the i7 will be much better. With single-thread only, and one program at a time, the i5 may have a slight advantage. A dual core i5 vs dual core i7, there's not as much difference.

        • I have an i7-3612QM in my laptop. Sure, you wouldn't likely see that in a ultralite. But comparing the i5, the i7 runs a little slower to keep 4 cores in the same heat as the 2-core i5. For multithread, the i7 will be much better. With single-thread only, and one program at a time, the i5 may have a slight advantage. A dual core i5 vs dual core i7, there's not as much difference.

          Intel's "Turbo boost" will let 1 busy core run at a faster clock rate than if all cores were busy. I would have thought this would result in it running an i7 at the same speed as the comprable i5 under a single threaded task.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Guspaz ( 556486 )

          Sure, but those are in higher end notebooks, and the market for those is probably smaller. I'd imagine the vast majority of notebooks sold are going to be cheaper ones that have a medium power chip of some kind, likely an i3. Then you'd have a bunch of utlrabooks and a bunch of high power ones, but not in remotely the same sort of quantity. Since the XPS 13 is an ultrabook, it's going to be strictly limited to the ultrabook (U-series) processors, for thermal reasons if nothing else, which is why your "call

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            I have an i7-3612QM in my laptop. I don't try to go long periods away from power. But it's really nice to play casual games at desktop performance. And the cores do make a difference when having lots of things open, taking up background processing while doing something like a game, or doing something while playing a video out of the HDMI to a second monitor.

            Speaking of which, I need to look up how I can send audio from one program out the HDMI while sending the audio from everything else out the laptop s

    • Bah.
      Not interested in the quad core stuff.
      The only thing i want from this family is as powerful as possibe dual core chips.
      Dual core xeons are pretty much extinct by now , but there are a few servers sold with core i3 and i5 instead of xeons.

      You see the licensing pricing struture for software such as oracle db, tuxedo, weblogic, and others are per core. So it has become tricky to source a mainstream server model and ke ep the layered product licensing under $100ks of dollars. Since the recent x86 cores are

    • By the way, it's not correct that every mobile i7 has 4 cores. The low power i7 CPUs have only two cores. Considering that Broadwell is focusing on low power parts (less than 30W TDP), there will not be a quad core Broadwell Core i7. If you need a quad core i7, then you have to get the Haswell part.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )
        Yup, I hadn't looked up all the specs of the new chips. No quad-core. 33% more cache than the i5. A little more speed. Not the bigger differences of the older line, 2-core vs 4-core and all that. I already have a Haswell i7, and can't get any faster from the new line. Just cooler. I'll stay with my current as long as I can.
  • About a month ago I purchased a used Dell Latitude, known for exceptional battery life and reasonable ruggedness. The second reason is why I wanted it. But after using it a bit I just can't go back to a laptop with little battery life. I'm hoping laptop manufacturers notice the desire consumers have for efficient products. My CPU is an I-5 2500 series, introduced after Inter started pushing for lower power usage. I say: Bravo!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      Errm, was it used? The i5-2500 series is three generations out of date: they're four years old, from early 2011. It's surprising that you'd find that for sale a month ago.

  • and it still gets rings run around it by an 830M. Heck, the AMD stuff out performs it. It just seems silly to have that much processor and an integrated graphics chip...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      Intel's modern iGPUs are pretty good. Their high-end GPUs tend to compete in the x40 class of nVidia chips (meaning faster than the 830M), but their new generation of iGPUs may push that out the the x45 class.

      The "discrete" versus "integrated" divide stopped making sense years ago. There's a lot of overlap between the mid to high range of iGPUs and the low to mid range of dGPUs.

      Really, they're all just GPUs, and where the transistors are located in the notebook isn't relevant. Only the performance is. And I

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      and it still gets rings run around it by an 830M

      Wow, a 15W iGPU gets beaten by a 33W dGPU what a shocker.

      Heck, the AMD stuff out performs it.

      An A8-6410 which is AMDs best 15W part scores 2010 [futuremark.com] in futuremark, you can find the i7-4200 under chips with similar performance at 2310.

      It just seems silly to have that much processor and an integrated graphics chip...

      Today that's a misnomer, Intel's laptop chips are mainly a GPU [anandtech.com] with a small sideorder of CPU, just like AMD.

      The top of the line chip i7-5557 will have 3.1 vs 2.2 GHz base frequency for the i7-5200 currently under review, 48 EUs vs 24 EUs and they'll run at 1100 vs 900 MHz at 28W vs 15W TDP. You can expect it to be at

  • Just like my brand new core i7 xps13 to sleep properly and not whine like a stuck pig when the right internal speaker is plugged in.

  • "Intel's strategically timed CES 2015 launch of their new 5th Gen Core Series processors for notebooks was met with a reasonably warm reception"

    Was the warm reception due to inadequate cooling in those laptops? ;)

  • The thing I never understood is that these are supposed to be geared to ultrabooks. However any laptop these days that are inexpensive are also using these U series processors, and they arent slim by any means. A few years ago when I was looking for a new laptop I found that between many manufacturers series revisions they switched from the HQ processors to the U processors, yet still charged the same amount on the laptop for much lower performance. You could find basically the same 2 models across a year w

  • Like most businesses, we're not deploying Win 8. Anyone know if there's a way to get Windows 7 preloaded by Dell on this laptop? (Business site doesn't show it, but I'm wondering if there's a gov't, educational, or other channel that does.)

  • Put a 3200x1800 (or 4200x2400 to match the resolution) screen in a Precision with the i7 version of that chip, and now we'd be talking.

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