i5-6200u has really impressed me

[XiandreX]

I just organised an HP 240 G4 for my brother, to replace his Core duo with Windows XP.
Needless to say its a healthy upgrade.
I upgraded the memory to 8Gig, threw in an SSD and chose the i5-6200u upgrade.
I am blown away by the performance for the money this little setup offers.
I would use this CPU in a desktop and be completely happy.

 

[nerp]

I have the same CPU in my ThinkPad and it is a great performer considering it uses so little power. Since I just use my machine for writing and general stuff while on the road, it's more than enough for sure.

 

[KTE]

5300U is even better

Sent from HTC 10
(Opinions are own)

 

[JoeRambo]

6100u and 6200u are fun CPUs in ridiculously low wattage. And you can also downvolt them pretty hard for extra headroom with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. With -66mV or even more they will run max clock all day long while also running graphic clock high.

Skylake has really made strides in low wattage performance. Also stuff like Skylake Celerons/Pentiums are very performant as long as you don't have AVX workloads for them. G3900 is stuff of legends for office PC work.

 

[KTE]

6100u and 6200u are fun CPUs in ridiculously low wattage. And you can also downvolt them pretty hard for extra headroom with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. With -66mV or even more they will run max clock all day long while also running graphic clock high.

Skylake has really made strides in low wattage performance. Also stuff like Skylake Celerons/Pentiums are very performant as long as you don't have AVX workloads for them. G3900 is stuff of legends for office PC work.

Why not the 5x00U series, may I ask?

Sent from HTC 10
(Opinions are own)

 

[lolfail9001]

Why not the 5x00U series, may I ask?

Sent from HTC 10
(Opinions are own)

Well, from what i see, 6200U is about as fast as 5500U ^_^

 

[dark zero]

The i5u are the new basic Core 2 Duo of this ages. Nothing bad BTW.

 

[XiandreX]

I have the same CPU in my ThinkPad and it is a great performer considering it uses so little power. Since I just use my machine for writing and general stuff while on the road, it's more than enough for sure.

Thats the part that has blown me away. Its Ac adapter is 45W. I work in the Laptop part replacement industry and to run an i5 in such a small power envelope is really cool.
Skylakes power gating is truly awesome.

6100u and 6200u are fun CPUs in ridiculously low wattage. And you can also downvolt them pretty hard for extra headroom with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. With -66mV or even more they will run max clock all day long while also running graphic clock high.

Skylake has really made strides in low wattage performance. Also stuff like Skylake Celerons/Pentiums are very performant as long as you don't have AVX workloads for them. G3900 is stuff of legends for office PC work.

If it were a personal system I would mess with this, however its a work system so dont want to tinker around too much.

The i5u are the new basic Core 2 Duo of this ages. Nothing bad BTW.

Its the first time I have been excited about low power laptops in a long while.
Other than the very meh.. entry level screen its a very pleasing package.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Skylake has really made strides in low wattage performance. Also stuff like Skylake Celerons/Pentiums are very performant as long as you don't have AVX workloads for them. G3900 is stuff of legends for office PC work.

My overclocked Skylake G4400 Pentiums, and even my G3900 Celerons, are all fairly snappy, the Pentiums more so, but that may be down to the video card, a 7950 rather than a 250X.

Edit: Or, possibly the bigger L3 cache (3MB versus 2MB). Whatever it is, there is a slight difference between them.

 

[KTE]

Well, from what i see, 6200U is about as fast as 5500U ^_^

Sorry, that was a trick question

5x00 vs 6x00 have practically little to no difference in the real world. In some 5300U beats the 6200U by a tiny unnoticeable percent, and in others it's the other way round.

Now I'm not quite sure when it comes to power at stock tho... but if you do use Intel XTU, there won't be any.

We have just deployed a mixture of 5x00/6x00U laptops at work, you see.

Sent from HTC 10
(Opinions are own)

 

[XiandreX]

Sorry, that was a trick question

5x00 vs 6x00 have practically little to no difference in the real world. In some 5300U beats the 6200U by a tiny unnoticeable percent, and in others it's the other way round.

Now I'm not quite sure when it comes to power at stock tho... but if you do use Intel XTU, there won't be any.

We have just deployed a mixture of 5x00/6x00U laptops at work, you see.

Sent from HTC 10
(Opinions are own)

I handed over the unit to my brother last night and he is very happy with the purchase.
It should also give a reasonable battery life as he will be overseas and needs to work remotely for 3 weeks

 

[daxzy]

Aside from the impressive power profile (my XPS 13 9350 gave me 13 hours on one charge via light usage once), the i5-6200U isn't that impressive performance wise. My 4 year old Thinkpad's i5-3320 matches it performance wise (but with a 4 hour battery). But a lot of that is also due to OEM/ODM's knowing how to build a laptop better these days. They've fixed a lot of annoying little issues (that affect usability), especially on the premium line-up.

And the questions of why not a i5-5xxx series? Unless you're getting a massive discount, why bother? The battery life and IPC is slightly behind Skylake. Furthermore (and probably most important from a usability standpoint), the OEM/ODM's may have addressed random small and finicky issues with the chassis. I know for the XPS 13 Broadwell/Skylake, they made the touchpad to be more responsive.

And for comparison of Ivy/Broadwell/Skylake i5-U cpu's.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=817&cmp[]=2459&cmp[]=2556

 

[dahorns]

Aside from the impressive power profile (my XPS 13 9350 gave me 13 hours on one charge via light usage once), the i5-6200U isn't that impressive performance wise. My 4 year old Thinkpad's i5-3320 matches it performance wise (but with a 4 hour battery). But a lot of that is also due to OEM/ODM's knowing how to build a laptop better these days. They've fixed a lot of annoying little issues (that affect usability), especially on the premium line-up.

And the questions of why not a i5-5xxx series? Unless you're getting a massive discount, why bother? The battery life and IPC is slightly behind Skylake. Furthermore (and probably most important from a usability standpoint), the OEM/ODM's may have addressed random small and finicky issues with the chassis. I know for the XPS 13 Broadwell/Skylake, they made the touchpad to be more responsive.

And for comparison of Ivy/Broadwell/Skylake i5-U cpu's.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=817&cmp[]=2459&cmp[]=2556

Uh, you realize you're comparing a 35W i5-3320m with a 15W i5-6200u? And that the 6200u actually outperforms the 3320m in many benchmarks?

See:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/compare/101629?baseline=468009

Both are Geekbench 4. I picked the highest single core Windows 64 for the 3320m and a mid-tier score for the 6200u.

 

[hemedans]

Aside from the impressive power profile (my XPS 13 9350 gave me 13 hours on one charge via light usage once), the i5-6200U isn't that impressive performance wise. My 4 year old Thinkpad's i5-3320 matches it performance wise (but with a 4 hour battery). But a lot of that is also due to OEM/ODM's knowing how to build a laptop better these days. They've fixed a lot of annoying little issues (that affect usability), especially on the premium line-up.

And the questions of why not a i5-5xxx series? Unless you're getting a massive discount, why bother? The battery life and IPC is slightly behind Skylake. Furthermore (and probably most important from a usability standpoint), the OEM/ODM's may have addressed random small and finicky issues with the chassis. I know for the XPS 13 Broadwell/Skylake, they made the touchpad to be more responsive.

And for comparison of Ivy/Broadwell/Skylake i5-U cpu's.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=817&cmp[]=2459&cmp[]=2556

what about gpu? hd 520 is better than hd 5500

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/three-generations-intel-hd-graphics-tested

 

[dogen1]

6100u and 6200u are fun CPUs in ridiculously low wattage. And you can also downvolt them pretty hard for extra headroom with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility. With -66mV or even more they will run max clock all day long while also running graphic clock high.

Can you do that with most laptops?

 

[daxzy]

Uh, you realize you're comparing a 35W i5-3320m with a 15W i5-6200u? And that the 6200u actually outperforms the 3320m in many benchmarks?

See:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/compare/101629?baseline=468009

Both are Geekbench 4. I picked the highest single core Windows 64 for the 3320m and a mid-tier score for the 6200u.

Yes, I realize the Ivy i5 is 35W and the Skylake i5 is a 15W. It is the general direction that x86 CPU's are going... slightly better IPC per clock, but much better power consumption (hence a lot of complaining about how CPU's haven't really improved much in the last 5 years). Geekbench certainly has its controversies on x86, but of the results in the above link I parsed, the major outliers are AES and SGEMM (which seems like an OpenCL one, so its more testing the GPU?). All the other ones are within an earshot.

Note I'm not saying an Ivy i5 laptop is as good as a Skylake i5 laptop, I'm noting that even though the processing power in the two is about the same, the additional platform benefits that a Skylake i5 would bring (lower power, better IGP, etc) is just as significant.

what about gpu? hd 520 is better than hd 5500

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/three-generations-intel-hd-graphics-tested

Yea good point, IGP is certainly a lot improved over the generations. Ivy wouldn't even hold a candle up to Skylake. Broadwell i5-5xxxU is noticeably behind the i5-6xxxU chips as well.

 

[KTE]

Yes, I realize the Ivy i5 is 35W and the Skylake i5 is a 15W. It is the general direction that x86 CPU's are going... slightly better IPC per clock, but much better power consumption (hence a lot of complaining about how CPU's haven't really improved much in the last 5 years). Geekbench certainly has its controversies on x86, but of the results in the above link I parsed, the major outliers are AES and SGEMM (which seems like an OpenCL one, so its more testing the GPU?). All the other ones are within an earshot.

Note I'm not saying an Ivy i5 laptop is as good as a Skylake i5 laptop, I'm noting that even though the processing power in the two is about the same, the additional platform benefits that a Skylake i5 would bring (lower power, better IGP, etc) is just as significant.



Yea good point, IGP is certainly a lot improved over the generations. Ivy wouldn't even hold a candle up to Skylake. Broadwell i5-5xxxU is noticeably behind the i5-6xxxU chips as well.

I'd agree with you from experience.

Users are getting duped to buy a new model just for the sake of it being new. A higher end 2-3 year old CPU will normally perform just as good, and clock better and be far cheaper. Except where new features/graphics are concerned.

I have AMD C50, E300, A4-4300m and Intel i7-3667U, i5-5300U and i5-6200U in laptops. The latter 3 are all Lenovo ThinkPads. They have the approx same perf and user experience, except when the graphics get concerned. The display ratings are also different.

The i7 clocks higher and stays there longer if I restrict the TDPs, which is what first alarmed me since it makes it perform better in the end.

In IXTU, I set most of them to 15W/25W, but the i7 can be clocked much higher than base, and even TDPs for when you need. 2.5GHz/3.2GHz it is sustaining with ease and it sustains 2.9GHz all cores when I benchmark it (under stock TDPs) which makes it perform ahead of the other two.

I don't notice any power/efficiency difference between the 5300U-6200U, absolutely none, which was disappointing. However, there is a ~1-3hr average usage gain from the 3667U which is certainly a boost.

In my experience, unless you really need a new feature, an older i7 ULV is a far better choice.

Sent from HTC 10
(Opinions are own)

 

[hojnikb]

I'm pretty happy with my i3 6100U. Works like a charm and eats anything i throw at it. And laptops stays passive most of the time too, which is pretty nice.

 

[nerp]

Yes, the advantage to the current generation of processors is all about power efficiency. My x260 for example offers a big leap in battery life over the x250 and especially the x240 and earlier. My machine has an internal and an external swappable battery and I can get 15 to 18 hours on a charge, easily, with comfortable brightness settings and dozens of browser tabs open. While the lack of major jumps in performance is disappointing, there's the bright side in that I don't really have to carry AC adapters with my laptop unless I'm actually staying in a hotel for more than 1 day.