New Intel Arrandale Notebook Processor Gets Benchmarked

Intel's new Arrandale mobile processor which may be used for the MacBook Pro has been benchmarked by AnandTech.

The Arrandale processor is closely related to the desktop Clarkdale processor; both use dual-core dies based on the 32 nm Westmere version of the Nehalem microarchitecture and have integrated Graphics as well as PCI Express and DMI links [W].

Arrandale is going to deliver the single largest performance improvement we've seen from a new mobile processor in years. Hyper-Threading brings the many of the benefits of having a quad-core processor without the added power consumption. Turbo is also extremely useful in mobile since it's one of the most TDP-constrained environments you can imagine.


SYSMark 2007 shows an overall performance gain of almost 20% on a 2.53GHz Core i5-540M vs. a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo P8700.


Video encoding performance gets a huge improvement as well. In their x264 HD 3.03 encoding test AnandTech found that performance improved 26% and 46% in the first and second encoding passes respectively.


A World of Warcraft test running at 800 x 600 at the lowest quality settings showed an improvement of 129% leading the reviewer to comment that the Arrandale's integrated graphics may actually be playable.


Battery life doesn't improve with this processor; however, a second version is expected later this year which will have better power characteristics.


Hit the link below for even more benchmarks and a detailed review of the processor.

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