4 ms·

Thanks for that. It's something I've been trying to get to the bottom of, with a very limited understanding of CPU comparisons. I understand clockspeed is not s

by luxpir 10y ago

Thanks for that. It's something I've been trying to get to the bottom of, with a very limited understanding of CPU comparisons. I understand clockspeed is not something that can be directly compared, where MIPS might be more of an apples-to-apples comparison? In that light the M7 turbos up to 3.1 Ghz, where the i7 turbos to 3.7 Ghz. That's with double the cores/threads. On paper not a 10x improvement, but in terms of MIPS it could well be. In reviews people don't seem to be phased by the new CPUs, they say they can watch HD videos and run VMs as normal, but nobody has yet given a succinct summary of the limitations. Not to mention that in these specific 2-in-1 Zenbooks I've seen the CPUs are Core-M3s, not M7s. Aside: I didn't know the Core-M CPUs couldn't handle more than 16GB RAM, that's an interesting stat from that spec sheet. The decision between new desktop or laptop is still to be made. A situation where something like the Zenbook could remote into a more powerful desktop sounds good but in practice would it work - I sometimes prefer to work without an internet connection, completely remotely. Sure I could sync the machines with git, rsync or similar, but the laptop still draws me in. Particularly the 2-in-1 form factor. My Kindle (keyboard!) recently went to Davy Jones' locker and I'm quite happy reading on my netbook if the settings are right. So then the tablet + desktop combination comes to mind. I don't know. Power vs portability still an issue in 2016. Hopefully not for much longer! EDIT: Found a rudimentary comparison based on the Surface. It doesn't show even a 3x improvement: http://www.lovemysurface.net/surface-pro-4-core-m3-vs-i5-vs-i7/ http://www.lovemysurface.net/surface-pro-4-core-m3-vs-i5-vs-...

exDM69 10y ago
> I understand clockspeed is not something that can be directly compared, where MIPS might be more of an apples-to-apples comparison? There's a joke saying that MIPS is acronym for "Meaningless Information Provided by Salesmen". It's just not a good measure of overall performance, because there's no guarantee that it translates to real world performance. The only way to get good performance indicators is looking at benchmarks, and with an emphasis to benchmarks that resemble the workloads you expect to be running. For ballpark estimates (of similar hardware), the power consumption is a good measure because the performance per watt figure is typically quite close for similar CPU architectures. It doesn't work for GPUs or CPUs of very different architectures, though. For the comparisons you linked on the Surface, it will tell you how the CPU works on that particular form factor. But it's not a good estimate of the CPU power in general, because a small device like that is always going to be thermally constrained. You can't take this conclusion and apply it to another kind of laptop/desktop.
- luxpir 10y ago
  Appreciate that, thanks. Will keep up the search for the right trade-off.
- vvanders 10y ago
  To go down the rabbit hole even further common benchmarks will run with one-off drivers to give the appearance of better performance. I've seen vendors skip mem-zero, skew buffer sizes, overclock, disable thermal limits and all sorts of other shenanigans specifically targeted at gaming benchmarks. Only real way to evaluate hardware is to run the exact loads(or simulacrum of them that's not disclosed to the vendor) which probably overkill for consumer hardware.

by luxpir 10y ago

exDM69 10y ago

> I understand clockspeed is not something that can be directly compared, where MIPS might be more of an apples-to-apples comparison? There's a joke saying that MIPS is acronym for "Meaningless Information Provided by Salesmen". It's just not a good measure of overall performance, because there's no guarantee that it translates to real world performance. The only way to get good performance indicators is looking at benchmarks, and with an emphasis to benchmarks that resemble the workloads you expect to be running. For ballpark estimates (of similar hardware), the power consumption is a good measure because the performance per watt figure is typically quite close for similar CPU architectures. It doesn't work for GPUs or CPUs of very different architectures, though. For the comparisons you linked on the Surface, it will tell you how the CPU works on that particular form factor. But it's not a good estimate of the CPU power in general, because a small device like that is always going to be thermally constrained. You can't take this conclusion and apply it to another kind of laptop/desktop.

luxpir 10y ago
Appreciate that, thanks. Will keep up the search for the right trade-off.
vvanders 10y ago
To go down the rabbit hole even further common benchmarks will run with one-off drivers to give the appearance of better performance. I've seen vendors skip mem-zero, skew buffer sizes, overclock, disable thermal limits and all sorts of other shenanigans specifically targeted at gaming benchmarks. Only real way to evaluate hardware is to run the exact loads(or simulacrum of them that's not disclosed to the vendor) which probably overkill for consumer hardware.