Quick and Dirty Core i7 8550u Throttling Behavior on Dell Inspiron 13 7000

Here is a quick and dirty first look at the Dell Inspiron 13 7000 with the 8th Gen Core i7 8550u

I currently use a dell M4700 i7 3840QM as my main system but I’m looking for something nearly as fast but more portable with better battery life. I really don’t do anything special with my computers, just web browsing and the odd older game like TF2 ect nothing strenuous.

I was most interested in how the new 15W Quad Cores stack up to the existing ones.

Here is a screen shot of Throttle Stop showing the 44W package power limit of the cpu. I can confirm the CPU will load up to 44W for short periods of time before throttling back.



Here is a video running the throttle stop benchmark(32m) showing how the CPU throttles up and down using the 8 thread and 4 thread setting




Here is a screen shot showing the CPU under full load using the 1024M Throttle Stop benchmark




Basically in this notebook application you are looking at the following

1 Core Full load 4ghz no throttling

2-4 Core Full load 3.7ghz to start and then slowly drops down to 2.6ghz sustained full load @ approximately 75c.

I haven’t had a chance to play around with GPU benchmarks yet.

Here are 2 screen shots from Passmark V9 The first is the Inspiron 7000 the second is my M4700






One positive of this particular notebook, it can dual 4k Monitors both at 60hz with no trick, the UHD can do HDMI 2.0 no problems in this implementation.

One thing to note is that since the power envelope is so tight with these quadcores, while running the dual 4k screen and the laptop screens I found the CPU would not turbo quite as high, presumably due to the UHD 620 driving the 3 screens.

Bottom line I can’t see a single negative with these new quadcore CPU’s at all. Of course its up to the manufacture to set power limits but it appears dell has done a great job in this notebook. The only thing I wonder about is with the 44W power limit of the CPU it only comes with a 45W AC adapter not a big deal and I’m currently running it off a 90W ac adapter but still didn’t notice any ill effects running with the 45W one.

 

Thanks for posting. Could you provide more details on how the two systems (the 7000 and the M4700) are configured? RAM, O/S, Storage subsystem used, programs, etc.?

See:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=900&cmp[]=3064

While the QM processor from 5 years ago uses 3x more power (uhm... okay; TDP), it is only ~10% faster in a multicore setting. Meanwhile; the 'u' processor is ~5% more responsive in single core loads at 3x less TDP...

I can only imagine what a current platform with a 45W TDP would be able to offer us in terms of performance (ignoring battery life, of course).

Sure, this is over the course of half a decade... but the improvements are spectacular nonetheless.

It is examples like this that have me questioning the ones that claim no/little/'held back' progress from Intel in the last decade...

It is obvious Intel is supplying for the mobile users what we all (collectively) want; efficiency over pure performance.

Silvr6, assuming that both platforms are setup the same (O/S, RAM, storage subsystem and programs), could you do a real world workload (one of your own, of course) and see which one is better. Thanks.

 

M4700
i7 3840QM
2x8GB DDR3 1600
Crucial CT250MX 250GB Msata SSD
2GB Quadro K2000M
Windows 7 Pro 64
Inspiron 13 7000
i7 8550u
2x 8GB DDR4 2400
Samsung PM961 NVME 512GB SSD
Intel UHD 620
Windows 10 Home 64

I don't really do anything strenous on either of my computers but I did run a few tests, totally not scientific and sorry for the bad quality.

First up is a video of the Winrar Benchmark, i wanted to let it run for a few minutes (5) to let the 8550u settle in and not have its crazy turbo boost skew the results. As you can see its a little bit faster than the i7 3840QM, possibly due to the PCIE SSD as well.




Next up is the CPUZ Benchmark, once again the i7 8550u is slightly quicker

i7 3840QM

i7 8550U


I also ran cinebench R15 in both multithreaded and singlethreaded

i7 3840QM Multithread

i7 8550U Multithread

i73840QM Singlethread

i7 8550U Singlethread



Even in extended tests and mind you these aren't a full suite of them. The new CPU's offer very noticeable improvements in performance. What would be interesting is seeing these CPU's paired with the Mobile GTX 10XX GPU's since those are usually in laptops running the i7 7700HQ, could use some of the power savings to extend battery life as you aren't giving up a huge amount of performance with these cpu's.

 

A quick google search came up with
http://laptopmedia.com/comparisons/...re-i7-7700hq-the-performance-is-watt-matters/

So based on their limited testing, the fact i'm slightly faster than an i7 3840QM doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary.

 

Just reran Passmark

 

Thank you for the quick response and the links too.

Is the 4700 running an mSATA MX200 SSD? Are you running Crucial Storage Executive on it with the excellent Momentum Cache enabled?

See:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/suppo...ut-ssd-_-us-ssd-learn-about-storage-executive



You may want to try that with your older notebook. The increased performance of the storage subsystem is noticeable.

The i7-8550u certainly looks like a winner here.


Edit: I'm not sure why the PM score you get is so low (see my passmark link above to your processors...)? Are you running it on battery power (maybe)?

 

The crucial drive is the CT250MX model, I have not installed any Curcial Software.

The PM score is overall so it takes everything else in to account which is why i'm only getting around 4000.
Just put a notebook cooler on when I ran passmark again, my disk score jumped huge, my guess is the SSD is throttling due to excessive heat.

 

What did the score get with the cooler/without? Throttling; main reason for not wanting any current M.2 drive (still). No matter how insane the max 'scores' indicate they should do.

Yeah; that is an MX200 SSD. Try the software and see for yourself. A few reboots are required, but after that; it's just a smoother experience on the same hardware.

 

This disk test in passmark went from 8151 to 15877

It appears this laptop is senstive to temperature which isn't too much of a surprise, I can't get geekbench to run on the M4700 but here is the score on the Inspiron

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/4388501

Here is the GPU Geek Bench
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/compute/1227075

 

Thanks for the good info. What sort of battery life do you get while web browsing?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Battery life isn't the best from what i've done in limited testing so far. Its a 38W/HR battery so its not the largest. Its about 3 hours of streaming netflix while browsing the web. Just streaming netflix by itself or youtube by itself would probably be around 4-5 hours, web surfing maybe 6 hours, the cpu itself is rather frugal but the biggest issue is the battery size. For comparison the XPS 13 has a 60W/HR battery

 

Have you tried going to BIOS - Performance and disable Intel SpeedStep Technology ? Worked for me

 

Worked how so? Better battery life? Which notebook do you have

 

No no, worked for throttling CPU i've got Inspiron 7570 with i5-8250u

 

Oh ok, i haven't really had any issues with throttling. My cpu does 2.6GHZ sustained under full load, good enough for me, no issues at all

 

Good info, thanks. I think that the XPS 13 may throttle a bit, so I'm undecided between it and the Yoga 920 (assuming that the fan noise problems from the Yoga 910 are fixed).

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

I have one of these coming soon. What are your thoughts on this model? 940mx? Build quality, screen, ect...

Thanks,
Bob

 

I"m willing to but you will have a bit better performance and slightly less throttling because the onboard GPU won't be utilized when gaming. The larger chassis may also be a bit better at cooling although there is zero problems with the cooling in my 13" version

 

Great information!

I picked up the HP Spectre X360 13.3” 8550U today and am impressed with how ‘zippy’ it feels while seemingly providing stellar battery life.

Heavily considered the XPS 13 variant but the design is dated IMO (I already own a 5th gen).

 

The high single core turbo boost really wakes this machines up thats for sure!

 

BoB, if you have this unit that you were waiting for, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

 

Silvr6, just wondering how your Inspiron 13 7000 series compares with the Inspiron 13 5000 series (both with 8th gen processors)? If you have had any experience in comparing these, of course.

 

I have only seen the 5000 series at my local staples and it was the 7th gen one, the casing appears to be plastic vs aluminum and the screen bezel is much larger, its not a bad laptop but it is cheaper and looks cheaper compared to the 7000 series i have. If you are just looking for performance and not looks the 5000 series might be a good bet. I'd have to look the 5000 series probably only has sata SSD's instead of available PCIE SSD's in the 7000 if that even matters to you

 

Ty! SATA SSD's do matter to me (they're better, ).

As you have noticed with your system; heat makes them perform much less than their nominal rated speeds.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...n-dell-inspiron-13-7000.809595/#post-10612667

 

I cover the i5 8250u model here. It's not too bad but the 940mx thermal limitations are the main thorn in its side. Something their Techs are aware of and have no desire to make the changes according to the three "techs" I spoke with.

 

Thanks for that. I think you confirmed why I don't like gpu's in a notebook platform.

Limitations - self imposed or some time of throttle related issues - is why I have igpu platforms that simply work as they're supposed to day in and day out for years. Without having to open the machine up ever (well, except to change to an SSD and max the RAM, once).

The Kaby Lake R models are getting me very interested. I may have to pick one of these up without a gpu and see what it can do for me.

Ty.

 

You’re very welcome. Dell could have easily made this a sweet machine if they either increased the GPU temp limit or better yet used the MX150 of course with a respectable thermal threshold as well.

Then of course there’s the FireCuda drive. SSD in 2017 please. Makes great hardware feel slow and I wouldn’t be surprised to see many RMAs because of these two things.

 

I was demoing a similar Dell notebook and it was taking at least 30 seconds longer to move past the BIOS - not just rebooting, but also shutting down too. Any thoughts?

I did set the BIOS to 'minimal' boot checking, turned off the 'boot from USB' option and made sure it was an UEFI, secure boot on a GPT SSD. Nothing helped.

While the system was running it was very responsive even with the Samsung PM871 256GB SSD + 32GB RAM (DDR4 2400) on a clean install of Win10x64Pro and an i7-8550u processor. Just rebooting it or shutting it down would leave the system with a blank/black screen and the fan screaming until the power was cut off.

Oh yeah; one other thing; in the BIOS there was the message of 'ASF2 Force off' with a time stamp of each time I tried to shut down the computer normally. From a quick google search; is that a M/B issue (brand new system - but this is dell hell...).

If you have no further thoughts on this; Dell continues to suck... and I should have known better than try them again.

 

At the end of my Final Thoughts video you can see how slow the unit is with the FireCuda drive but with the 850 EVO Sata SSD it was just as fast as anything without bench-marking anyway.

 

Even with the "throttling" pcie ssd it was still bench-marking higher than any sata ssd i've used and never noticed any slowdown when it was scoring an 8000 vs 15000 in passmark.

 

Thanks for trying to help guys (BOB and Silvr6). I pointed this defect (slow BIOS - in Win10x64Pro it was very fast indeed) to the sales guys and they agreed it was probably a defective M/B.

They offered another sample for me to try - but Dell being what it is (crap) I passed. No guarantee that what the first example showed won't show up in the near future in any other similar Dell system too.

btw, the system got very hot (just what I expected from a Dell notebook) in a heavy, sustained load (even when merely running 'Automatic Maintenance', manually) - the CPU never throttled even while hitting 3.94GHz+ for many minutes at a time, but the underside of the system felt very, very warm/hot to the touch. Definitely not a 'laptop' of my definition and the fan singing at the top of it's lungs didn't give the system any more dignity either.

In a proper ThinkPAD system, this Kaby Lake R platform will be fantastic...

Waves bills in front of Lenovo's face.