NotebookCHECK - Notebook Forum

Eagerly waiting for Yoga X380 performance! I would like to know if it is close to Yoga X1 performance.

It's as if  these machines have a Ferrari engine in a Fiat Punto body. They can be very fast on straight lines (but not for too long!), but when it's time to brake or turn it's a catastrophe. What's the goal, really ? With all the heat, noise, and battery drain,  are these still notebooks ?
A Thinkpad with a Core-M, passive cooling and looooong (real) battery life, when ?
 

I like this article. Since all devices with quad-core ULV processor has a weak cooling system,  I think using a Laptop Cooling Pad can complete the cooling system and help to have more constant performance.

I think this post can be more useful and completed if you also run the tests with a Laptop Cooling Pad.  I am interested to know how much a cooling pad can boost the constant performance at home.

The P52s really disappointed me  :-[. I expected a lot better.

What a great, informative article! Thank you

Don't forget that, on a day to day basis, we never use these machines at these high levels, so don't choose your future computer only by the result of this comparative.

Quote from: frogg on February 26, 2018, 14:25:35
It's as if  these machines have a Ferrari engine in a Fiat Punto body. They can be very fast on straight lines (but not for too long!), but when it's time to brake or turn it's a catastrophe. What's the goal, really ? With all the heat, noise, and battery drain,  are these still notebooks ?
A Thinkpad with a Core-M, passive cooling and looooong (real) battery life, when ?

You're kidding, right? Most Thinkpads have excellent battery life, at least if you stay away from the entry level series or the workstation models -
which are meant to be respectively cheap or have a high level of sustained performance. Increasing bursty performance like this is extremely valuable in most computing tasks today, and being able to do that in an "ultrabook" without it exploding is in and of itself a huge feat. Sustaining that performance over a significant amount of time is not really what these chips are made for (can't do that within a 15W TDP anyhow), but Intel allowing OEMs to configure this how they want is great for end users. That the T480s can sustain a 44W load is kind of crazy, but hey - you get 7700HQ performance for cheaper, and in a much smaller chassis! You really can't complain about that. As for battery life, it's a given that sustained performance equals higher battery draw - which is why Windows has power profiles, and separates battery powered operation from plugged in operation. Remember, Core-M is the exact same hardware (well, as the previous gen dual core chips, that is) just with even lower power limits. Given that these limits are often configurable through Intel XTU, why not get a notebook capable of higher performance and tune it to your needs? You'll get more features (ports, battery size, max performance) for the same price, just slightly thicker and heavier. You'd likely get better battery life too, given the bigger batteries.

Did you also test the i7-8650 on the X1 Yoga... Was there any difference to the 8550

I am leaning either for X1 Yoga or X380 Yoga. I do not mind FHD resolution of X380 Yoga as long as the X380 has dual channel memory and the power limit and temperature limit allows the intel gen 8 processor run in their full turbo boost speed. Can you test Yoga X380 please?

Excellent and professional benchmarks, thank you very much.

It is really surprising to see that the power and temperature strategy differs so much between all the ThinkPads.

Thanks to these benchmarks, now the customer is able to choose the one that fit best for his own need.

The t580 is essentially the same chassis... without the option for a dedicated GPU.  With its size it seems cooling would be a strong suit...  but it looks like it has one of the worse cooling solutions in the mix.

More than with most processors... the new 8550u/8250u are really cooling depending when it comes to performance.  Definitely not all created equal.  Its looking more and more than unless a system is designed specifically to handle cooling and have higher TDPs...  the 8250u is going to be the most bang for the buck as the 8550u isn't ever going to get a chance to stretch its legs.

Is it possible to change power limits? so for example allow P52s to go to 90C?

Nice review but there's something I don't get: with a TDP of 44W, both the i5 and i7 in the T480s score 720 points on the first run. Yet the i5 clocks at 3.4Ghz while the i7 clocks at 4.0Ghz. How's that possible? I understand that these are turbo clocks that will drop due to CPU temperatures but this should only affect long term performance. But it's unclear to me why the first run of the benchmark leads to the same score when the i7 effectively runs at 4.0Ghz while the i5 clocks 600Mhz lower...

Kilou: the thing is that a single Cinebench test run takes about ~1 minute to complete and limits kick in earlier. So the result of the first run is already some kind of average of max performance and throttling.

Still waiting for Yoga X380 PL1 and PL2.

Seems that both T480 and P52s are victims of power limit. T480 suffers from around 80℃ while P52s suffers from around 70℃ which is the lowest temperature of all laptops.
Looking very forward to these two laptops' performance after power unlocked.

I very much like this article.  Thinkpads routinely get rave reviews, so it's nice to see side-by-side comparisons within the family.  Also, throttling is becoming a greater issue of concern to laptop shoppers who do their research, mainly because the problem is getting highlighted by reviewers. The processor throttling issue is not new.  Most small laptops show significant throttling when matched with a core i7 processor.  It was very apparent last year as well with intel's dual-core, 7th-gen chips.  If I remember correctly, the T470s with an i5 processor, reviewed by this website, outperformed last year's thinkpad models sporting i7 processors in Cinebench.  Ultimately, a Core i7 in a Thinkpad typically means slightly reduced battery life, increased heat, longer fan noise, and an extra $200 for no significant performance gain.  It doesn't seem worth it.

What are the key rollovers/KRO on each one? Aka n-key rollover? On my T470S if I type fast enough it'll miss keys if three were pressed in a too-rapid succession, which is an issue I've not had in previous macbooks/dells/everything else. Seems the n-key rollover is a cheap 2/3 on this model. What about the X1?

Google thinkpad n-key rollover for many others with this issue, I'm shocked at lack of mention in reviews.

Is it possible to tweak limits in BIOS of the Thinkpads (or on Linux)?

Hi, I wish to see the comparison of X1 carbon i5-8250U and the i7-8550U. As mentioned above, the i7 version is limited to the max of 29 w and the i5-8250U can only run at full capacity with 30 w. Assuming the X1 carbon i5-8250U hold the same 29/23 w setting, does it mean that X1 carbon i5-8250U and the i7-8550U model have really little difference  in most of the work situaitons?

I wanted to buy the T480s with i7 processor, but now I'm wondering if it's better to buy with i5? The price doesn't matter, I care about performance, but I would like my laptop to be quiet. The laptop will be used for programming (Visual Studio, PhpStorm, huge MySQL databases, Virtual Box with Linux, etc.). What would you choose in my place?

Where can I download the log viewer you use?

It will be very nice to compare X1C6 i5-8250U but specially i5-8350U (I don´t mind extra 7$ from i5-8550U for v-Pro feature). i5-8250U is not available for X1C6 with 16GB RAM, but i5-8350U is. I need a small package to run long period multithreated applications at full load (chess engines). If I can get about the same performance with an i5-8350U vs i7-8550U but with less heating an power consumption during this usage it will be worth the extra 7$. I don't think I'll notice any practical difference in single threated applications in every average use.

This is why some users are disappointed with low powered chips. In some cases I have seen users try and game or do other tasks that really require a constant performance draw from these chips and even in some cases these low powered chips simply don't have the capacity to do such demands. Either because of throttling, or because they are not designed to do so. The thinner designs have created notebooks built for low power, portability, and basic tasks. If performance is a primary need, you have to skip these lower powered chips.

Just checked my X380 with i5-8250U and it seems that the power is limited to 6.5W (way below 15W!). The package was never above 59 °C. This is massively dissappointing!

I know this is years and years old, but my Thinkpad x380 yoga goes all the way up to 20 watts. With that being said, I found this article looking for ways to increase that XD

With a very slight undervolt and using the Yoga in "tent" configuration, it can sustain the full 20 watts with a prochot set to 93 - around 2.7GHz indefinitely, which isn't too shabby!