i5-430M & i5-520M comparison

[Nigel]

Hi

I realise that there will be variations between results taken on different machines, but is there any reason why the M430 comes out better that the M520 in the Passmark CPU list?

Intel Core i5 M 430 @ 2.27GHz CPU Mark:2525 Rank:117
Intel Core i5 M 520 @ 2.40GHz CPU Mark:2385 Rank:125

Regards
Nigel

[Michael (Passmark)]

One thing to check in the charts is the number of samples each CPU has, you can see this by mousing over the result bar.

In this case the 430 has over 50 submitted results, making the score fairly accurate, whereas the 520 only has 3, which means that even one bad result could be throwing the average off by quite a bit making the score inaccurate.

[Nigel]

Thanks Michael. Thats useful to know. I tend not to use the CPU charts, but use the CPU list quite often. It would be nice to see the number of samples on the CPU list either as an extra column or as mouse over text.

Thanks
Nigel

[s1m0nc]

Thanks, this was useful to me too.

Any idea when the i5-540M will be included, or why it's not already? Trying to work out if it's worth the extra $30.

[Michael (Passmark)]

Because the results are all user submitted we don't really have any control over when any particular CPU model turns up.

That being said I checked the database and we do have a few submissions for this one. They aren't appearing in the chart however because they all appear to be overclocked (3Ghz, instead of 2.53Ghz stock). This puts them in the overclocked chart, however this chart only shows the top 50 or so and this CPU doesn't make the cutoff.

It might be the case that these aren't actually manually overclocked. We've been having some trouble with the new Intel CPUs reporting their turbo mode speed, where by they automatically increase their base speed when only one core is under load. This is an area we are actively trying to be able to gather better data on.

For your interest there are currently 4 samples all scoring around 2800-2900. Note that if you are ever interested in looking up odd CPUs that there might be results for but haven't made it into the main charts for some reason you can search for and download the individual baseline submissions from within PerformanceTest. We don't exclude anything from these search results so if it's not there we don't have it.

[s1m0nc]

Wow - thanks so much for the quick response, and the research too. Outstanding!

Also v happy, since the Dell deal was expiring today, so bit the bullet and ordered the i5-540 upgrade - and with the 2800-2900 score v glad I did. I'll be sure to come back and register a score and see how it measures up. Hopefully I can find this thread and update.

Thanks again.
Simon, Oxford UK