Intel Arrandale: 32nm for Notebooks, Core i5 540M Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 4, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Final Words
From the balanced notebook perspective, Arrandale is awesome. Battery life doesn't improve, but performance goes up tremendously. The end result is better performance for hopefully the same power consumption. If you're stuck with an aging laptop it's worth the wait. If you can wait even longer we expect to see a second rev of Arrandale silicon towards the middle of the year with better power characteristics. Let's look at some other mobile markets, though.
If what you're after is raw, unadulterated performance, there are still faster options. We compared Arrandale with a Core 2 Duo P8700, and performance went up. If you already have something with a Core i7-720QM (or other i7 part) or a Core 2 Quad, the performance figures aren't nearly so rosy. The catch is that battery life on quad-core CPUs, frankly, stinks. Most of the time, you're lucky to get over 90 minutes of battery life in light loads. For those looking at mobile performance, Clarksfield is still the winner (or grab a desktop Core i7 notebook).
We are also missing something to replace the ultra-long battery life offered by the Core 2 Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) parts. True, Intel has some low voltage 18W TDP parts running at 1.06GHz to 1.20GHz stock (Turbo up to 1.86GHz to 2.26GHz depending on the model), but the current results suggest that CULV + GS45 is still going to be far more compelling for those interested in battery life while maintaining some level of performance, or you can go with Pine Trail/Pineview (Atom N450) for extreme battery life at the cost of performance. It looks like Arrandale needs some further tweaking before we see an heir to the CULV throne.
Ultimately, we like Arrandale a lot as a balanced mobile offering. It's not going to be as fast as Clarksfield but that was never the point. Performance is 20% better in typical applications compared to mobile dual-core Penryn parts like the P8000 and P9000 series, and battery life at least didn't go down (in most cases). It's also nice to see integrated Intel graphics that don't suck… or at least, they only suck as bad as the current AMD and NVIDIA IGPs. We'll look at doing more testing with Arrandale's IGP in a future article when we have final shipping hardware, as the ability to limit the CPU performance in order to boost GPU speeds is intriguing.
If you're after a "typical" laptop, Arrandale solutions should be high on your list. We expect to see a ton of announced models at CES this week, and we'll do our best to cover them (along with Pine Trial netbooks). We still can't recommend any particular laptop as a solution for every problem, as different users have different needs, but Arrandale brings more choice to the table and choice is a good thing.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
View All Comments
Alberto - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
According to www.legitreviews.com/article/1169/15/ and www.legitreviews.com/article/1169/16/ the idle power is very interesting, lower then the older plataform of around 30%.Likely the difference between the two articles is due to a different bios. Moreover Legit has done a lot of tweaks to make the two plataforms comparable (cpu apart). In the battery test, the Monteniva laptop has a 6 cell battery instead of a 8 cell, but the 30% figure seem confirmated.
HotFoot - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
One thing I've often wondered about battery tests is variability in the batteries themselves. Of course, over time batteries wear out and life goes down - but what about the difference between new batteries, even ones of the same rated capacities?I would be interested to see a review such as this one, but where the battery life is tested twice - swapping batteries between platforms and taking the average. Some adaptation will probably be needed. Or, maybe a standard battery testbench used for all battery life tests - which would involve adapters for each notebook.
My point is uncertainty. I know it's not an academic paper, but if the variability in results is 10% or higher (which my gut tells me it very well may be with batteries), the conclusions drawn from the results could be radically different. Maybe it's not that bad, and a few tests into the subject would demonstrate that.
JarredWalton - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I had http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=361...">two Gateway laptops that had the same battery design, only one was Intel-based and the other was AMD-based. After a request similar to yours, I swapped the batteries and retested. Variability was less than 2%, which is the same variability between test runs.kazuha vinland - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Your unit was obviously just a prototype, but can we expect to see the first Arrendale laptops arriving this or next month?webmastir - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
love reading your reviews - very insightful. thanks.8steve8 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
when can we expect reviews of these ULV processors?when can we expect laptops with these ULV processors?
strikeback03 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
And seriously, wtf was intel thinking with these names? 5 processors, all at different speeds, with either 640 or 620 in the name. If a 620LM was the same speed as a 620UM but just used less power I could see it, but there are 3 processors with 620 in the name, running at 1.06, 2.0, and 2.66GHz. The consumer also has to know that a 620M is faster than a 640LM.ET - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I'd love to see more comprehensive mobile benchmarks, but it looks like finally Intel graphics isn't the complete crap it used to be.yuhong - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
On Intel codenames, "Clarksfield" can be easily confused with the desktop "Clarkfield".yuhong - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Oops, I mean Clarkdale by Clarkfield.