Reviews - Intel Core i5-4210Y (22nm Haswell)

[HEXUS]

How much performance can you expect from a 6W chip?

Read more.

[ik9000]

we've come to the conclusion that the Tap 11 is too compromised to warrant serious consideration. Build quality is mediocre, the plastic flap covering the USB port is nothing short of horrible, the stand doesn't prevent the tablet from toppling, it's virtually impossible to use on your lap, you can't physically connect the keyboard during use, the pen hangs onto a weak clip just waiting to be lost, and to wrap it all up, it costs £1,050 for a Core i5 model.

LOL. Proof I guess that Hexus don't do paid-for glossed-over reviews. At least not for Sony anyway!

[pfb201]

Would be interesting how this stands up against the new Z3000 series atom processors and their graphics capabilities and processing power. I assume that they will use slightly more power but since they have standard using these new measurements I don't know my S from my T (DP).

[Hicks12]

Is it me or is the 4210Y looking like a pretty terrible chip? They havent done anything clever here to reduce the power usage, probably not even the best bins...

The 4210Y has 1.5 GHz base and 1.9 GHz turbo and a 4200 @ 850 Mhz where as the 4200U has a base of 1.6 GHz and 2.6 Ghz turbo and a 4400 @ 1000 Mhz... the 4200U is miles above it as you see in your testing yet it only uses a handful of watts more in general use and gaming its got double the performance! Yes gaming requires more performance but who in the world is happy with 15fps on a game? No one I reckon, atleast 30 fps could be tolerable for some games .

Seems like a terrible product as its the same price too, simply cut back the clocks a lot and watched the TDP drop yet you pay more, simply buy the 4200U and drop it back yourself I am sure that will use similar power then... infact could you perhaps test that? Pretty sure you could underclock them could be way off though!.

Still at least its clear why Sony are moving out! Terrible kit, this is the problem with Sony they sat on their asses for far too long just like TVs they made great stuff years ago then stalled and just went by their name instead of quality and innovation which meant everyone passed them.

[gagaga]

Got a Lenovo Yoga 11s with one of these. Agree with the review - ran fine on my recent holiday with Firefox having a great number of tabs open so can't see a reason why this isn't enough power for a day to day laptop for a non-power user. Would be interested to see a head to head against one of the quad core atoms.

The 4250u is bloody impressive chip though, getting that down to 6-8w in the coming generations will mean that the majority of users would be happy with a convertible + dock type setup for home / away use.

[kingpotnoodle]

Seems like a terrible product as its the same price too, simply cut back the clocks a lot and watched the TDP drop yet you pay more, simply buy the 4200U and drop it back yourself I am sure that will use similar power then... infact could you perhaps test that? Pretty sure you could underclock them could be way off though!.

When overclocking you reach a point where power usage starts to climb out of proportion with increasing performance and I imagine the opposite is true, there are diminishing returns from reducing clock speed and voltage, performance drops off unreasonably for the savings.

This is why there is no 1 CPU architecture that scales from <1W smartphones to >200W servers.

I think the 4210Y is an attempt to fill the small wattage and performance gap between higher-end Atom and the 4200U, I think it's something of a fudge for the scenario, Core doesn't scale well down below ~15W and Atom probably doesn't scale up well above ~5W.

[Myss_tree]

Why is "many hours mobile gaming" seen as the holy grail for mobile devices. Surely hours shut away in your bedroom (until mum calls "dinners ready") pretending your an armed forces hero or a superhero/fantasy character is more than enough, do you really need to take the fantasy out with you when you should be working or properly socialising.

[ET3D]

Would be interesting how this stands up against the new Z3000 series atom processors and their graphics capabilities and processing power. I assume that they will use slightly more power but since they have standard using these new measurements I don't know my S from my T (DP).

That was my thought when seeing the benchmarks. Comparison with the Bay Trail Pentium CPU's would be even more interesting.

[stevo_125]

The choice of reference products in this review is bizarre. Why is it being compared with CPUs that have TDP's up to 100w? A little daft don't you think Hexus. A more sensible comparison would be against Kabini and Atom products which have similar power requirements - how about we get some of those benchmarks added to this for some sensible perspective!

[shaithis]

I think the CPU looks good (hell, I'd love a Microserver with one in!) but as a complete unit, this doesn't look that great, at least for the price!

[cjs150]

I think the CPU looks good (hell, I'd love a Microserver with one in!) but as a complete unit, this doesn't look that great, at least for the price!

+1

As a microserver, particularly for home use it looks ideal. No need for active cooling, sipping power at idle. Although 4250u is almost as frugal and considerably more powerful.

Come on someone build a microserver with windows server preloaded for us home boys

[devBunny]

The choice of reference products in this review is bizarre. Why is it being compared with CPUs that have TDP's up to 100w? A little daft don't you think Hexus.

I don't just want to know how these things compare with each other, I want to relate them to more powerful machines to give better context. I'd also be interested in comparisons to legacy machines, even an old P4. Interest in these small machines is coming from both directions as they step away from old machines, while providing useful power savings, and approach the performance of more powerful computers, enough to do the day-to-day computing.

I don't think Intel could bet the farm on it but they are right that this niche is going to grow and grow. I've been watching with keen interest. I'd very much like the power savings but the performance isn't quite enough for me yet. Another two or three of years, I reckon, when Intel have squeezed the efficiency and power savings down to the point of diminishing returns and are able to turn some of their attention back towards more seriously improving performance.