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.
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MonkeyPaw - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
Personally, I'm disappointed with the "unchanged" battery life. The reality is, most IGP-based notebooks don't need to be faster to most people. A few friends of mine recently bought notebooks, and they have what I call average requirements: email, browser, iTunes, office, photo management. My advice to them was that anything they buy today will be more than fast enough for their needs (they were currently running outdated machines), and that their decision should be based on things like battery life and bonus features. Even my own notebook purchase was based less on total processing power and more on price, then battery life.I think Intel had it backwards. Start by improving battery life, then slowly improve performance. That may have been their plan, but it looks like 32nm has a ways to go for them before that can happen.
JarredWalton - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
I would expect the LV versions to be competitive, but it wouldn't surprise me if the initial 32nm parts are not where they would like in terms of power use. The rev 2 of Arrandale will hopefully address that shortcoming.secretanchitman - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
thats the thing though - who knows what apple is going to do now, since they currently use ion/9400m in the macbooks/macbook pros. they do use intel + discrete ati in the current imacs, yet the lowest end imac has a 9400 in it. the problem with arrandale is that it has the gpu integrated on, and traditionally...intel integrated graphics suck compared to nvidia and ati gpus.im hoping that intel made special versions of arrandale without the built in gpu, or they are able to turn it off, and use separate graphics instead. lets be honest, the 9400m is much better than anything intel offers now.
taltamir - Thursday, February 4, 2010 - link
what does it matter? apple can't run games anyways... neither can any laptop.The difference between intel and nvidia/ati is that a laptop with nvidia/ati can get playable FPS on the absolute LOWEST settings which look like crap. the intel can NOT get playable FPS, period.
Either would be a horrid experience for a gamer... get a desktop if you want to game.
filotti - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Actually, the article says that the performance of the integrated GPU is equal to the performance of the 790GX IGP. This means that it should be equivalent to the 9400m too.mino - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link
Raw performance? Probably comparable to 785G in 3D benchmarketing.Drivers to be able to use the performance. Non existent.
This is pretty much a beefed up HD4500. Nothing less, nothing more.
marc1000 - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
The desktop versions have a 16xPCIe slot, so I believe it IS possible to pair the mobile versions with discrete grapchis too. Not that manufacturers will be that much interested in doing so. After all, it seems that Intel aimed for the same level of performance that 9400 has, so Apple would not have reasons to go "non-Intel". I guess this is the primary reason why they made the GPU perform exactly at this level. It's the "good enough" philosophy.Penti - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Of course you can, HM/QM/QS57 supports switchable graphics too and has x16 or the same 16 (maybe) lanes on-die as the desktop parts for discrete graphics. It also has 8 lanes on the chipset. Apple, HP, Dell, Fujitsu etc will be interested in more high-end business models and consumer products.