Very interesting Intel Turbo Mode benchmarks (T410 and 3dmark06)

I was curious about Turbo Mode, so I just ran a series of 3dmark06 benchmarks on my T410. Here are my results. This is with a Core i5 540 (2.53GHz), Intel HD graphics, 4GB DDR3, and Windows 7 Home Premium x64.

Turbo Mode ON: CPU & GPU - 1901
Turbo Mode ON: CPU only - 1367
Turbo Mode ON: GPU only - 1880
Turbo Mode OFF: CPU & GPU - 1348

Obviously 3dmark06 is a synthetic benchmark, though they do use 2 CPU tests, but it's interesting to see how much of a difference Turbo Mode makes on the graphics chip, much more than the processor. 500MHz -> 733MHz GPU makes far more of a difference, than 2.53GHz -> 3.066GHz CPU.
That would also explain why Core i3 notebooks seem to score about 1700. Though the processor doesn't have Turbo Mode, the GPU does, and overclocks up to 667MHz.
Just very interesting.

 

It might be that the 3DMark06 CPU tests don't take advantage of the core i5/i7 architecutre properly. As you pointed out, they are a synthetic benchmark. They are also a few years old now.

 

Well, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think the turbo mode limit when both CPU cores are active for the i5-540 is ~2.79GHz. So going from 2.53GHz to 2.79GHz wouldn't make much of a difference in performance.
I'm just really surprised at how well the Intel HD graphics seem to scale. I can imagine in the future Intel would be more than capable to ramp up the clock speed on their integrated graphics and really boost performance.

 

Noobie question but how do i activate turbo mode? I have a t410 with i5-540 also but when i change the power settings to max i don't see the turbo mode pop up.

 

Detailed here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/480518-facts-turbo-boost.html#post6205427

 

hey talin, how do you control GPU/CPU turbo separately?

I can only enable/disable turbo boost, but don't know how to control one on and the other off.

thanks.

 

I turn off Turbo Boost for the graphics chip in the Intel control panel. Under Power if you select maximize battery life, that disables turbo boost. For the CPU just use Lenovo's power manager. In advanced options I just select System Cooling Policy to "passive", and Optimize Fan Control to "reduce noise dynamically". Then in the basic window you should see the green checkmark with Turbo Boost Enabled disappeared.

 

I'm still very impressed by the T410's performance. I just got done playing a ton of battlefield 2, 1024x768 @ medium settings, and it flies. Same with medieval 2. All with the Intel HD graphics. Arrandale is a very good update to the Core 2 series.
The last system I had to get this kind of performance, was the early 2009 Macbook, with 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo (1066MHz FSB), and Geforce 9400M. Not bad.