i5 450 -VS- i5 520?

Hey everyone,

Is there much of a difference in performance between the 450 and 520? The only difference i see in the specs is .33GHz more turboboost. How much better does that make 520? Is it worth $100 to upgrade?

EDIT- After looking into the differences, here they are...

The 450 and the 520 are the same, except for the 520 has:
- .33GHz more turboboost
- Intel® Virtualization Technology (running 2 operating systems at a time)
- Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (something about security)
- AES New Instructions (better encryption, so better security)


Now, this doesn't convince me that the 520 will run any better then the 450. .33GHz more turbo boost doesn't sound like it would do to much, and those three new technologies totally don't apply to me (and probably don't apply to most people) I could understand getting a 520 if you needed to run multiple operating systems at a time, but besides that, there doesn't seem to be much of an advantage. What do you guys think, am I missing something?

 

I chose 520m.

 

I am planning on getting the i5-450M because it is cheaper but includes a faster bus (not that it matters? it might actually decrease battery life too). Also, it does well in PassMark CPU benchmarks.

 

i'm thinking of using $100 difference to partially fund a SSD. is that a good choice?

 

Any funding to a SSD is a wise choice.

 

wow, jumps above the 540m even.

wonder what that benchmark uses to test it

 

yea is passmark a legit site?

 

i can't find any details on the computers used in these benchmarks. i don't trust any cpu benchmarks unless they are ran on very similar computers.

edit, i found this:

 

Check out Intel ARK, there are several differences that are not performance based, that the 520M has. One such feature is VT for example. If you aren't using these features, then save your money and stick with the cheaper processor.

 

This is the real difference between the two. I also say if you're not going to be using the extra features save your money and put it towards an SSD. I fought and fought myself to not purchase the 520M when I bought my ENVY 15. Looking back at it now I'm glad I saved the $100.

 

Thanks sgogeta!

Alright, after looking into the differences, here they are....

The 450 and the 520 are the same, except for the 520 has:
- .33GHz more turboboost
- Intel® Virtualization Technology (running 2 operating systems at a time)
- Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (something about security)
- AES New Instructions (better encryption, so better security)


Now, this doesn't convince me that the 520 will run any better then the 450. .33GHz more turbo boost doesn't sound like it would do to much, and those three new technologies totally don't apply to me (and probably don't apply to most people) I could understand getting a 520 if you needed to run multiple operating systems at a time, but besides that, there doesn't seem to be much of an advantage. What do you guys think, am I missing something?

 

Now I'm debating the 520/450 choice even more.
How "overclockable" are they?
$100 is a lot :<

 

It also lists the 430M above the 520M, FYI.

 

yea I dunno if I trust that site to much. Does anyone know of any other benchmark sites that have the i5's? I'm gonna go for a 450 unless I see some pretty convincing benchmarks in favor of the 520.

 

Dam should I cancel my order and just order one with i450? I am actually regretting spending the extra money since I already kind pushed my budget over the limit.

 

It's a faster processor and more efficient. Less power, lower temperatures, and faster processing, the question is do you need all this for $100?

New MacBook Pro Core i3/i5/i7 Mobile CPU Benchmark | Mhackintosh blog

Comparisons between Core i3s and Core i5s (and core 2 duos, which suck) in Macbook Pros, only performance though.

EDIT: I'm assuming the difference between a 450m and a 520m is about half of the difference between the 430m and 520m.

EDIT: Actually the difference is probably less than half, if the 330m to 350m improvement is anything to go by. I'd still say 520m is the best choice unless you don't need a fast CPU.

 

That mac benchmark doesnt test the 450. And you are assuming its faster and more efficient, but look at the specs - Compare Intel® Products,

They are the same except for the new non-performance technologies I listed, so they cant perform much different

 

I realize that, did you see the performance increase between the 330 to 350? That's about the same performance increase you'll see from the 430 to 450.

The 350 and 430 have the same GHz but there's a larger performance increase between those two than the 330 to 350.

 

the 430 has turbo boost, thats why it performs better. The 450 and 520 have the same specs, except for things that dont affect performance

 

Hello there. I had a HP dv6tse laptop configured in my "Saved Configurations" at HP website to include an i5 520. I just clicked in my Saved Configurations and HP has dropped me from an i5 5 520 to an i5 450 (actually to a 430 upgradeable to 450), has thrown in a free memory upgrade from 4GB to 6GB and has dropped the overall price. The i5 520 is no longer an option. The next upgrade from the i5 450 is now an i7 720.

Given the info on this thread concerning i5 450 versus i5 520 performance, given the free upgrade from 4GB to 6GB and given the drop in purchase price, I think the changes look like a good deal!

 

yea it looks like you did get a good deal john =]

 

I don't know how much difference it makes, but one other difference in that side by side comparison at Intel is that the 520 has "Smart Cache" and the 450 doesn't.

Here is an Intel video concerning "Smart Cache": Intel® Smart Cache

 

I think that may just be a typo, I thought all Arrandale CPU's had Smart Cache.

 

This is sort of driving me crazy. I really want to figure out which one would be best, but all this talk of single threading, etc is confusing the heck out of me.
I'm by no means an extreme computer enthusiast, but I'm no slouch either.
I just can't decide T_T

 

haha honestly I'd just assume that each upgrade gives a marginal increase of speed. Whatever is the cheapest CPU that gives you the speed you need/want I would buy that. All the options are "fast", it's just different levels of "fast".

It's hard to calculate value when there are so many variables in each CPU variation.

 

Seth, when you look at the specs side by side, they are almost the same cpu. Unless you plan to run 2 operating systems at the same time, they will perform the same. Save your $100, or send it to me =]

 

I got the 520...because I will be running 4-5 OSs at a time

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/650ef6bf0e.gif

If you look at those benchmarks, the only place the 520 has any sort of meaningful difference (aside from the composite score) is the comm suite, which nobody has really figured out what is. Bottom line, if you're doing movies music gaming or office crap there will be no difference between the two.

In response to what some have said about battery life:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/f3d52024f9.gif
Meh, 3.1W more power usage at idle than the 520 - personally I don't see this as a big deal because the difference at load flattens out to mum and when I'm on battery I usually am doing *something,* not to say that I'll have my proc maxed all the time, but that the statistical trend seems to be the more you're doing the closer the power consumption of the two will get to one another. I'm going with a 430 because I can't justify spending 100 or however much it is on 3w of power consumption at idle.

A quick word about Intel VT
If you're running lots of VMs you shouldn't even be asking this question, get the 520. That said, Microsoft is removing hardware virtualization support as a requirement for Windows XP mode because Intel's lineup is so confusing anyway even supernerds can't figure out if they have virtualization support or not...basically this means that if you want XP mode you should disregard virtualization in your decision.

 

I called to cancel my order, I realized that I was already over the budget (paid 1300 bucks including tax). I was going to reorder with a i450. After a little bit of a back and forth, I finally accepted $100 store credit not to cancel my order. I figure I'd sell it or use it to buy a new router, so I guess I got the upgrade almost for free. Can't complain.

They were prolly pretty happy too, it probably costs them a ton of money to cancel an order especially during busy times. Makes me wonder if I could've gotten even more out of the deal.

 

On top of that, 450M should be better than 430M so the gap between them is even less than what the benchmark says. I'd say 450M is a good bet if you don't need the specific instruction set included in 520M.

 

I am so glad that I clicked on this thread!
I will go for the 450M instead of the 520M.
Thanx 2 all!

 

I pointed this out on another thread, but here we go again...

The communication suite difference is completely down to the AES hardware acceleration offered in the 520. It does not add AES encryption functionality 'that 99% of people won't use' as you guys think, it is hardware acceleration for AES encryption that nearly everyone uses in some way. The number of programs that take advantage of the hardware acceleration will increase over time.

AES encryption is used when hitting secure websites ( https://) and for securing your home wifi as well as encrypting/decrypting individual files or hard drive partitions.

Have a read of this: AES-NI Performance Analyzed; Limited To 32nm Core i5 CPUs : Is Intel?s AES-NI Support A Must-Have Feature?

Now, whether it's worth the extra money to speed up those operations is the call we have to make.

 

But the amount of data received in an https connection, say, the gmail page, is still relatively minimal, and I was under the impression that wifi's encryption was taken care of by the wireless card (which is why some older systems can't connect to WPA2 networks?). You are correct about the encryption though, and after reading that Tom's article I'd say it is an absolute no-brainer that anyone thinking about substantively using bitlocker or otherwise encrypting large files as a hobby or for work go with the 520.

 

Are you serious?

 

Yep, real world is definitely different to benchmarks. But I was just pointing out what the AES hardware support is for and how it affects the Communication Suite benchmark. How much of a real world gain you get if your aren't encrypting all of your data and just using it during comms, I'm not sure.

In other words, the communication suite benchmark shows a massive difference between CPUs because of this feature, but will it be noticeable in daily use for the average user? And will it be more noticeable in a couple of years for those who will be keeping and using their machines for that time period.

 

I don't see hard disc encryption becoming standard - even with faster and faster hardware it will add to access times, no way around it. I just can't see any practical application for the hardware-accelerated AES that doesn't involve large amounts of secret NASA data or whatever.

 

YA


. . . . . . . . .

 

I wonder if there's a way to sell HP cards for $ somewhere...best site I've found only paid out 60% of the card's worth...

 

I think that the change to the DMI bus was overlooked here. The i5-450 has 4.8 giga-transfers per second (GT/sec), whereas the i5-520 has 2.4.

So, if you dont care about the VT & AES stuff, then the differences between the 450 & 520 are.

i5-450
- Single core max Turbo-Boost = 2.66 GHz
- 4.8 GT/sec DMI Bus

i5-520
- Single core max Turbo-Boost = 2.93 GHz
- 2.4 GT/sec DMI Bus

I seem to remember somebody mentioned a ways back that the memory bus was a bottleneck in the Arrandale lineup. So, to that end, i think that i would rather have a faster memory pipe than +266Mhz in single core mode.

 

I might be wrong but the turbo boost in 450M gets both cores to 2.66, where as for 520M only one gets to 2.93, and the other gets to 2.66, so the difference gets even smaller if you don't care about extra features on 520M.

 

Correct, that's exactly what I have found by reading everything that has been posted and why the 450m out performs the 520 AND 540 (by 1) in multi tasking bench which is already posted.

That's right, that's why he only posted for single core as dual core is the same which is 2.66 for turbo.

 

you mention something about running multiple operating systems with the i5 520...does this mean it will be able to do this better than the 450 or that the 450 cannot run multiple operating systems. i ask because i was informed i may need to run windows and linux at the same time for computer science in college

 

they mean running multiple virtual PCs at the same time.

so running multiple virtual OSes within 7 at the same time.


if you want to dual boot, that's not an issue.

 

So what we really want is the i5-560m that has all of the 500 series extras AND the 4.8 GT/s DMI speed....

As it is scheduled for a Q4 2010 release (the i3-370m was scheduled for Q3) I think we should start a Intel Core i5-560m Availability, etc. thread to post rampant speculation for the next few months

In all seriousness though, the i5-450m seems like a good choice for most people.

One small thing, I think sonny is slightly wrong though when he says 'memory bus' because on the HM55 chipset DMI is not used to access memory, its used to connect the northbridge (CPU, Memory) and the southbridge (which controls things like the HDD, Network, USB, Video etc. connect to).

Mobile Intel® HM55 Express Chipset

 

I don't recall posting about memory bus, unless you mean one33_bpm. I actually asked questions about how GT/s work and etc in another thread.

 

Yep, sorry, wrong person.

 

np. The i5-560m would be sweet...

 

Well regardless... I'm a Biology/Computer Science dual major and for computer science... You need the most top of the line processor and so I just went with the i5-520 because I wanted to be able to do switchable graphics still. My professor told us to get the 520 or the 540 if we could and I was really hoping to get the 540... but whatever, i'm fine with the 520 in this beast of a laptop... especially if it is projected to get 7 hours of battery life... which will actually amount to 5 hours... or something...

 

I'm sorry but everything you've read is speculation. The benchmarks you're referring to is the Passmark website, which has the 430m preforming better than the 520m. Which is impossible.

Until there are solid uniform benchmarks between the two, I believe you can safely assume the 520m performs better. How much? NO ONE can say for sure right now.

 

Can someone compare 450M vs 520M referencing their respective performance with regard to PCSX2 or Dolphin? Would I need the extra ghz in the 520M or would it not matter since it's just more ghz in single-core mode?

Please advise. Thanks!