i5 450 -VS- i5 520?

As someone who is trying to decide between the 450 and 520, I find this all very confusing haha

 

I really don't think it matters unless you are doing something special like virtual, encryption, etc. My home desktop gaming machine is still running a core 2 duo, because I have had no reason to upgrade.

For most people just stick with base...extra money well be better spent in an SSD upgrade. For me? I am going to have virtual OSs running, the 520 was a must. But that is the only reason I picked it.

 

Dolphin is very CPU intensive so i would go with the 520

 

430m has about 900 samples to determine the passmark score
520m only 300 samples
450m only 8 samples

According to the ram and especially things like turbo boost being on or off at different levels due to different heat or TDP during the test... this is quite irrelevant but is still an hint about how the 450m perfoms.
At least it shows the whole i5 familly average performances are really close to each other on such a general purpose benchmark.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_test_info.html

 

Another element to the 450 vs 520 debocle!!! This one is very significant... (I was firmly in the 450 camp, prior to learning this, but now i am back to waiting for benchmarks. D'oh!)

The 450 utilizes standard cache, while the 520 has "Smart Cache".

So the list of differences, updated:

i5-450:
~ 4.8GT/sec System Bus (DMI)
~ 2.66 GHz Max Single Core Turbo Boost
~ Standard Cache (1.5MB Cache per core)

i5-520:
~ 2.5GT/sec System Bus (DMI)
~ 2.93 GHz Max Single Core Turbo Boost
~ Intel® Smart Cache (3MB cache accessible by both cores)
+ 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)

(~ different, + additional)

NFO on Smart Cache
Intel® Smart Cache

So how much cache can a single core have for each type?
i5-450 has a fixed 1.5MB of cache per core
i5-520 can dynamically allocate up to 3MB on a single core.

here's a nice little formula i came up with to describe the cache usage for the 520...
[x*3MB] + [[1-x]*3MB] = 3MB, where x is the normalized cache utilization w.r.t. either of the cores)

How is this significant? Here are some scenarios...

Scenario 1: single core operation w/ max Turbo Boost
An i5-450 can run 2.66GHz w/ 1.5MB cache, while an i5-520 can run 2.93GHz w/ 3MB cache.

Scenario 2: dual core operation w/ max Turbo Boost
An i5-450 can run 2.66GHz w/ 1.5MB cache for each core, while an i5-520 can run at the same speed, but relatively allocate the available cache based upon the demands of the active thread(s)

What does this mean?
1. If you are running a single application, which is designed to run on no more than a single core, that app will be faster on the 520 because of the +233 MHz on the single core, and have access to twice as much cache, when compared to the 450.

2. If you are multitasking on a 520, the core which has the set of applications assigned to it, utilizing memory accesses the most frequently, will have access to more of the cache.

Given that most users on looking at this forum will have multiple apps running, ignoring the OS itself, i think that the second scenario is what you will see more of. Another thing to note is that windows tries to assign jobs to each core so that the workload is evenly distributed as far as it can foresee, so it is somewhat questionable as to how much benefit you will actually get from this. Basically, it once again comes full circle to looking at benchmarks that are associated with your usage patterns.

In the case of gaming, i have a feeling that the 520 will be much better than the 450, due to the fact that you will typically run the game by itself. If setup correctly, the game can be run on one core while the OS is running on the other, thus enabling it to use more of the cache than the OS.

Hopefully, the OP can be updated with this information.

 

More marketing than anything else imo. Dual core CPUs have used 'smart' cache controllers since a while. Presumably Intel feels that the one on the Core i7 CPUs is particularly smarter than the smart cache they used in core 2 duos.

 

I agree. Intel has been known to get really creative with their marketing in the past. I highly doubt there is much difference here but certain people will pick up on the wording and no doubt shell out the extra money for the 520 and that is probably what intel is hoping for. I don't think the majority of us will see the difference in performance if any but if someone has the money and just wants to say they have something "better" than the next guy then why not the 520.

 

FWI, I posted earlier on page 3 that Intel specs listed a Smart Cache difference. PigInaMig answered that he thought that was a typo, that all Arrandale CPUs have Smart Cache. Everybody seemed to accept PigInaMig's read on the matter until now.

So One33, are you relatively certain that there is indeed a Smart Cache difference between the two CPUs?

I suspect that you are correct!

 

Wasn't there a bench test that you wanted the few owners to try out, I forgot the name of it.

Hopefully, we can find out one way or another lol.

 

A higher turbo of 0.33GHz, that is 330Mhz, thats like having an extra PentiumII in there... who cares, and it only turbos under certain conditions it isn't going to be turboing all the time.

Higher GT/s doesn't give any real noticeable performance increase. That means all you are really paying for is the virtualization stuff, and if you don't know if you need it, then that means you don't!

The AES and the rest are nothing to worry about.

 

Guys, please stop writing nonsense about Virtualization technology. Please look up VT-x and VT-d and have one more look at the Intel specs sheet!
x86 virtualization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I cant believe how could everyone just write that if you need virtual os, you need the more expensive. VT-d is only good for some experimential scenarios, when you want to access the PCI cards directly for some specialized stuff, and I think only Parallels Workstation Extreme has experimential support for it!

When you really think "virtualisation technology" look for VT-X, which is pretty much supported in all todays processors!!! Even new Atoms and Celerons have it!

 

So the 450M has VT-x? I was going to say, Intel are really jerks if it doesn't because I'm used to having it with my crappy old AMD CPU, and I do use it all the time. If that's the case, then I have no need to get a 520M. Thanks zsero!

 

all the i5s have VT-x.

the 520m has VT-d

 

I just read an article about it, it says that VT-d speeds up IRQ interrupt requests by about 10%, thats all it does! That doesn't look very useful to me at all.

 

yep. I'm sure. Talked to a techinal rep from intel about the differences between the 450 and 520 to confirm. He said that it was a "business" decision, but I believe that the exclusion of smart cache was to balance out the inclusion of the 4.8GT/sec DMI bus. The reasons beyond this, I won't speculate upon.

Personally, I believe that smart cache is more useful with current systems, while a faster DMI bus will be more useful in future system configurations... That is to say that current systems don't max out the memory <=> I/O bandwidth, much like when AMD introduced the Hypertransport bus. It didn't make a hooj difference immediatly, but it set the stage for big I/O gains to be made later on.

 

I'm nearly 100% certain that "Smart Cache" is just a marketing term and that both the i5-450 and i5-520 use the same 3MiB 16-way set associative L3 cache, the same 256KiB 8-way set associative L2 caches (per core), and the same 8-way 32KiB I / 32KiB D L1 caches (per core) that every Intel CPU has used for ages (with obvious manufacturing/architectural improvements).

Don't worry about DMI bandwidth, because it's not used for much that's I/O heavy. Arrandale has both an integrated memory controller and an integrated PCIe x16 Gen2 controller, so neither main memory nor your GPU (both of which need multiple GB/s of bandwidth) go through DMI. DMI is used for connecting to the IO hub (traditionally, "southbridge"), which handles lower-bandwidth devices like your network, audio, SATA, and USB devices. None of these buses come close to saturating the DMI link, and in a laptop you're not in a position to add devices that can.

Basically, if you need VT-d, Trusted Execution Technology, or AES-NI (if you don't know what those are, you almost certainly don't need them) or if you want a little more performance (the i5-520 turbos to 2.93GHz instead of 2.66GHz like the i5-450), get the i5-520. Otherwise consider the i5-450 or even the i3-370.

If I had the choice of an i3-370 with an SSD or an i5-520 with a hard drive, I'd pick the i3-370. You're going to see a lot more of a difference with an SSD than you're going to see with the 20% faster i5. Of course you have to consider other factors like the limited size of the SSD (even my $400 x25-m G2 is only 160GB) and whether your workload is I/O bound (startup, launching apps, most game load times), GPU-bound (games with higher settings) or CPU bound (games at lower settings or with a very-high end GPU, video encoding, most scientific computing, etc.). There's no one right answer here, but in general I find that people spend too much on the CPU and neglect things like the GPU or disk performance (SSD) which can have a bigger impact.

 

@ Everybody,

So which do you need for SC2 on ultra-settings? 450M or 520M? Please use non-tech lingo to explain. And provide examples if those'll help to explain

Thanks!

 

Either one would be fine. I would get the 520M though.

 

Actually the i5-450 does support the VT-x virtualization technology.

see this Intel® Core? i5-450M Processor (3M cache, 2.40 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBTZ

I does not support VT-d, which is a slightly better one.

What this means is that you can use Windows XP mode on windows 7 on the i5-450 as well.

 

Exactly. Thats the point. So no need to go for 520 for win xp mode. 450 will run it just fine.

 

Intel® Core™ i3 Mobile Processor - Overview

Core i3 page with Smart Cache listed.

edit: The 370m is listed as "3M invalid" ? hehe

 

Hi:

If I wanted to run Max OSX on my laptop (there is a certain DJ program that works on Mac and not PC), am I better off with the 450, the 520, or does not matter.

Please refrain from any "Mac stinks" comments.

Thanks all!

 

450M should do fine. According to most replies, they both perform relatively the same. Only diff is the single-core boost clocks in the 520M, which you prolly won't need.

 

Hey guys we finally got two benchmarks (Cinebench 10) regarding these two processors from the HP Envy 14. Here are the results:

MagusDraco's i5-520m
Rendering (Single CPU): 3802 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 8240 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.17

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 5093 CB-GFX


dannybht's i5-450m:
Rendering (Single CPU): 3520 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 8073 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.29

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 4934 CB-GFX


Turns out there is a performance boost with the 520m over the 450m. Whether or not it's great enough to consider paying $100 for is up to your discretion.

 

I had a couple things running when I ran mine originally. I ended those and all the HP things running at the start and well...things jumped up by 'bout 100-200 points

MagusDraco's i5-520m
Rendering (Single CPU): 3802 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 8240 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 2.17

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 5093 CB-GFX

 

I told ya, smart cache does make a difference, as shown by the multicore results. (same clock speed for both CPUs)

 

Well this was unexpected.

When emulating the gamecube (not getting full speed on windwaker, get 80-90%) I ended up seeing core0 running from 2660Mhz to 2793 Mhz to 2924 Mhz

core1 was a constant 2660 Mhz.


the hell turbo boost? Do you not shut off the other core? And if so, hell yeah

was using cpuid to view the speeds

 

Izzat Excellent or NOT excellent?

 

Might wanna edit that its .33 GHz boost on ONLY ONE CORE
How useless. Gets me all flustered.

 

Someone with an i5 450m got similar numbers to mine after clean installing.


'course before they got those numbers their clean install had left them with access to only 1 core and 2 threads (they had to fix that in msconfig or something)

 

Howzzat work?

 

some setting in msconfig was messed up somehow

 

"Messed up" by default, or messed up with a clean Win7 install?

 

clean win7 install.

apparently.

I'll see what happens to me when I do my clean install tonight/tomorrow

 

There are plenty of bencharks showing the difference between different models in i5 line: Review Intel Core i3/i5/i7 Processors “Arrandale”

 

Regardless of "benchmarks" here 'n' there, is the general consensus that 450M is better bang for the buck than any other i5? Since E14 maxes to 520M for i5's, is it worth it to shell out an extra benjamin? (Taking into consideration all possibilities such as OCing, power consumption, etc etc).

 

well right now we can't OC the envy 14.

at all.

 

Izzat cuz of BIOS restrictions, Win7, or cuz noone's contacted SetFSB guy yet?

 

well the gpu, we dunno why it just dun work.


the cpu. yeah...setFSB guy probably (but he said one of the acer 3820TG's that bronksy got couldn't be done either so who knows)

 

SetFSB can be done on "random" 3820TG's, they say. Depends on the mobos, they say. Also, someone suggested running the free/shared version of SetFSB and picking G73 profile or something. Not sure what all this means.

 

Those benchmarks do not include a 450m. There has been no benchmark made in a *respectable* (ie Anandtech, NotebookCheck) hardware review enabling a fair comparison between the 450 and 520 thus far.

 

Smartcache has nothing to do with the multicore score anyway. Only single core may show a boost due to smartcache, and even then, the boost you'll see is more likely the extra 0.33 ghz in single core use of the 520m rather than smartcache, which is still to me a marketing branding since cache sharing exists on all dual core cpus since core 2 duos.
In dual core bench, both 450m and 520m are running at 2.66ghz per core. Hence the very similar if not identical scores. Nevertheless there is a slightly lower score in single core use of the 450m. (where the fight is about 2.66ghz vs 2.9ghz)

http://picasaweb.google.com/1128016...key=Gv1sRgCNKttMvXn6up3AE#5495600000225702594

 

@ derpderp

Until i see a controlled experiment, using two identically configured machines (other than the 450/520 cpu), i take all comments as nothing more than speculation.

Regarding Smart Cache, it is more than just a marketing term...

Getting Ready to Meet Intel Core 2 Duo: Core Microarchitecture Unleashed (page 6) - X-bit labs

While it is true that it has been around since Core 2 Duo, it is a technology that Intel chooses to implement or enable to differentiate their product line. So, while the technology may have existed in previous generations of Intel chips, it doesn't mean that you will get it by default.

If you want to refute the substance of my argument, please provide some supporting arguments *backed up* by a link to a study or experimental data documented by a reputable source.

 

Why are you guys saying the 450m doesn't have smart cache? It very clearly does.

Compare Intel® Products

edit: I guess there was a typo on that page before but it sounds ridiculous that Intel would take out the smart cache controller when all modern chips have it, and then not advertise it as a reason to upgrade to the 520m

 

To add an interesting hitch to this schism, is that Intel has updated their "Ark"... Now, they are indicating that the i5-450M does have Smart Cache in it, while the 370M does not.

Compare Intel® Products,

If this is in fact true, then the differences in performance between the 520 and 450 can not be attributed to smart cache, as derpderp stated.

-----

On a side note, i am really disappointed w/ Intel for incorrectly specifying this information when the chips were released, as it affected my decision, and probably cost me more than it was worth.

 

You are right... They just changed the spec sheet. Im mad about it.

 

It's not highlighted as a difference though (the green lines), which makes me inclined to believe that the 370M DOES have it and it's a typo again. And Smart Cache is a pretty basic thing nowadays, taking it out would be like taking out Speedstep or virtualization. Having features exclusive to higher processors only applies to the newest features (ie turboboost), you don't randomly take out old features as a marketing trick.

 

so, when i was investigating this issue, i called up Intel and talked to a technical rep. He said that the 370 & 450 did not implement smart cache. I asked him if he was absolutely sure, and all that, and he stated that they decided not to implement smart cache for business reasons. Now, i bet that he was just reading off the ARK spec just like us... Im pissed.

 

The sh*t of it is that i probably could call up and get hp to give me back some money, but then i'd risk losing my 30% BCB.

 

Well smart cache probably wouldn't have made a difference anyways, for most multithreaded applications it doesn't even come into play.

If you want to get your money's worth run programs that can use the AES instructions, start encrypting your zip files, etc