my unscientific, probably biased, benchmark vs. SP2-4200

[mtalinm]

picked up an SP3 and ran a speed comparison vs. my SP2.

task is heavy computation, using the Stata statistical package to crunch a database. lots of loading files, processing them in memory with string replacement and the like.

I clicked "go" at the same moment. SP3 finished in 2 minutes 54 seconds, whereas the SP2 did not finish until 6 minutes 3 seconds. that's more than twice as long. TWICE. I'm shocked.

note: my SP2 has the i5-4200 CPU.

 

[callihan_44]

picked up an SP3 and ran a speed comparison vs. my SP2.

task is heavy computation, using the Stata statistical package to crunch a database. lots of loading files, processing them in memory with string replacement and the like.

I clicked "go" at the same moment. SP3 finished in 2 minutes 54 seconds, whereas the SP2 did not finish until 6 minutes 3 seconds. that's more than twice as long. TWICE. I'm shocked.

note: my SP2 has the i5-4300 CPU.

how many times did you run this test? sounds odd that sp2 took twice as long when Im seeing sp2 blow away sp3 in gaming

 

[leeshor]

It may have come out with a different result has the SP2 been refreshed first but still pretty impressive.

 

[jnjroach]

It may also come down to how the application is tuned...gaming relies heavily on CPU/GPU where number crunching is CPU, my experience with the SP3 I find that typical business related tasks even heavy ones works really well.

 

[mtalinm]

yes I ran it twice. I couldn't believe the difference the first time around. of course the SSD could make a difference as I was loading/saving a lot of files.

mostly I was relieved b/c the anandtech review suggested that the SP3 has been de-tuned to preserve battery.

 

[leeshor]

Detuned compared to what? Goes to show you can't believe everything you read.

No review is worth its weight that doesn't make comparisons to comparable devices. Everything considered, including the aspect ratio, it would be difficult to find many comparable devices.

 

[mtalinm]

anandtech is usually quite careful though. I don't disbelieve his results. I do have the older SP2 chip, maybe that makes a difference?

 

[Atomic Walrus]

You said your test specifically uses file IO heavily, that's almost certainly what you're seeing here. It is completely impossible for the SP3 to outperform the SP2 with the 4300U (same chip, less cooling). Compared to the 4200U you could see at most 10-15%, and then only in short bursts because of the thermal overhead issue. Most likely the 840 EVO in the SP3 ends up being a far better SSD in practical usage (there's more to SSD capability than raw speed, especially when dealing with lots of small files).

Basically there's a reason that benchmarks are conducted one system at a time (CPU, then GPU only, then CPU + GPU, then storage). If you run something that uses multiple systems you can get an unclear performance picture, because one slow component may hold the others back or one faster component may make the system appear faster than it is. There's obviously nothing wrong with testing real world usage as well, but you can't then draw the conclusion that all of the components involved are faster or slower from the results.

Based on your description of the software, I would say that the speed gains are seen when the system loads one of those files or writes it back after it does some processing work. Because the CPU load is not constant (the CPU is frequently waiting for the next file to be loaded) the throttling becomes less of an issue and when the CPU is used it's able to operate at its full turbo capacity.

 

[mtalinm]

I'm sorry, my SP2 uses the 4200U not the 4300U processor. I mistyped. I should delete the thread as this is misleading. My apologies.

Ask: it is worse than that. The SP2 was set on Power Saver battery config whereas there SP3 does not allow power configs to be changed (much). So that is the primary source of the difference. I guess I'll take my SP2 out of Power Saver mode now :-(

 

[jnjroach]

I'm sorry, my SP2 uses the 4200U not the 4300U processor. I mistyped. I should delete the thread as this is misleading. My apologies.

No worries - I fixed it....still a valuable thread

 

[leeshor]

No worries - I fixed it....still a valuable thread

I've been scratching my bald head trying to figure out what went wrong with that first post, then saw your post. Thought there were ghosts in the machine.

 

[jnjroach]

So everything is back?????