why not a i3 6100u skylake vs i5 ?

why not a skylake i3 6100u vs i5? with budget around 500 usd or less?
when I compare both they look very similar in performance.

 

At that budget they are pretty similar, an i5 6300hq though is far more powerful, depends which i5.

 

Indeed.. The i5 is generally better then the i3 and with the new i5 6300hq, you get quad cores in the i5 range.. Which is a first for mobile..

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I can see that, because you are comparing a Quad Core premium i5 with a Dual core i3, I guess my thought was I did not see a great difference between a dual core i5 and dual core i3

 

That's true, but you didn't tell me what the other i5 was so I said duals are close while the quad is far superior.

 

My other thought was does the power difference between the u and Hq really matter to battery life?

 

The hq will reduce your battery life compared to a dual but with the optimizations Intel has done over the years, the difference will be small, about half an hour.. The extra 2 cores is defiantly worth that IMO..

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As long as you refrain from doing anything when running on battery which gets those 4 cores busy. The first battery-saving measure is to make sure that TuroBoost is disabled - I did some recent tests which concluded that TurboBoost delivered 24% more performance but used 60% more power.

John

 

John,

Any links to those tests?

I have not seen a platform that was 'optimized' for extreme battery life give a satisfying performance for even browsing these forums, imo.

And when comparing very light workloads on dual core vs. quad core processors; the more powerful quad processors give similar enough (relative) battery life that buying a dual core has not been an option for the past few years.

Always buy as much 'compute' as you can afford. If you need battery life too? Pick a model that gives you the biggest battery possible or at least one that lets you swap batteries as needed (and make sure you pick up an external battery charger while you're at it too...).

 

My measurements are documented here.

I haven't tried to assess either the minimum comfortable CPU speed before before usability is impaired or how the CPU speed affects the overall power consumption to complete a specific task. The latter would make an interesting research project.

John

 

Ty for the link.

What your conclusions are based on (60% power reduction for a mere 24% increase in compute power) is not a normal workflow though (wPrime 1024)?

I too would be interested in the research project you suggest. And I would be betting that my seat of the pants observations is that Intel has already optimized the power/performance points (especially for Skylake, with it's cpu controlled switching vs. O/S switching of the power modes) to give the best experience at the least power usage.

At least for light and medium loads. At heavy/constant loads? That is another story (which I'm not too worried about - you can't get nothing for nothing...).