What is up with these results? Did intel really F up there last set Laptop CPUs that bad?

[Azurael]

So I am helping a coworker pick out a new Laptop since they are going back to school and their old one is not going to cut it anymore. I did not recogonize the Processor names so I looked them up to get an ideal of the proformance each offered. This is what I got. 

 

What I want to know is why these results seen to be so different from what I am used to seeing from Processor ratings when compared to other ones who aren't rated as highly. Like how an i5 here kicks the ass of an i7.

[BiotechBen]

22 minutes ago, Azurael said:

So I am helping a coworker pick out a new Laptop since they are going back to school and their old one is not going to cut it anymore. I did not recogonize the Processor names so I looked them up to get an ideal of the proformance each offered. This is what I got. 

 

What I want to know is why these results seen to be so different from what I am used to seeing from Processor ratings when compared to other ones who aren't rated as highly. Like how an i5 here kicks the ass of an i7.

All are 15W, it comes down to cooling and sicon lottery and boost behaviour. The i5-1335U is a great chip, and with all being 10c/12t, with the exact same amount of cache, and same single thread performance, they're effectively the same chip but with slightly different boost behaviour and frequency. So if you've got a 15w i5 and a 15w i7, but the i5 has a BIOS that allows it to boost for longer, it may outperform the i7.

[Azurael]

5 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

All are 15W, it comes down to cooling and sicon lottery and boost behaviour. The i5-1335U is a great chip, and with all being 10c/12t, with the exact same amount of cache, and same single thread performance, they're effectively the same chip but with slightly different boost behaviour and frequency. So if you've got a 15w i5 and a 15w i7, but the i5 has a BIOS that allows it to boost for longer, it may outperform the i7.

That makes sense. Especially if the i5 can boost longer or be more thermally efficent. Though that raises an important question if these chips are all so similar and just have different clock speeds. What is the point to making so many different "models?" At this point it looks more like a scam especially if the lower grade model out performs the higher teir model.

 

The Ultra one here does not actually surprise me Especially with a Sample size of 4. I just HAAAAAAAAAATE Intel's new naming scheme. Plus it seems like they are trying to confuse people with it.

[BiotechBen]

16 minutes ago, Azurael said:

The Ultra one here does not actually surprise me Especially with a Sample size of 4. I just HAAAAAAAAAATE Intel's new naming scheme. Plus it seems like they are trying to confuse people with it.

I agree, it's needlessly obtuse, and it does definitely feel like trying to make it so that only ultras get bought and then the everything else goes in the low end stuff (re: why notebooks died).

 

17 minutes ago, Azurael said:

That makes sense. Especially if the i5 can boost longer or be more thermally efficent. Though that raises an important question if these chips are all so similar and just have different clock speeds. What is the point to making so many different "models?" At this point it looks more like a scam especially if the lower grade model out performs the higher teir model.

If they have a base silicon quality, you can only flood the market with the same chip name so much when the market is used to tiers of processors, so if they can take the exact same silicon and spread it out so that the small differences create tiers, they can more effectively sell the product. If anything, this shows that the manufacturing process is very mature and unless are high enough that their inventory is partially flooded with good silicon, and therefore, the low end chips are less aggressively pushed. You could also agree that the yields are such that only that minimum species achieved, and that's why the same chip is being pushed so hard.

However, given the difference in the boost frequency between the seemingly identical silicon, I'd say it's less likely the latter.

[-rascal-]

You can see the number of Cores / Threads are the same between the i5 and i7.

The i5 is scoring better because of the higher Base / Boost clock.

 

The other thing is, Intel is f#ckin' around with the brand naming.

Moving forward, it won't be i9 / i7 / i5 / i3 anymore.

You can have an "Ultra 5" that is higher in spec than an "Ultra 7."

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/processors/core-ultra/products.html

 

Given the specs, power rating, architecture, etc, it's not surprising the Ultra 5 135UL scores higher.