Mobile CPU vs. Ultra-low voltage CPU: performance [closed]

Question

I'm choosing a new laptop and one of the questions is a type of CPU — mobile or ultra-low voltage. If to be more precise, I'm torn between two models of Intel Core i5 — i5-2410M (Sandy Bridge) and i5-3317U (Ivy Bridge). Here is a comparison table of these models.

According to official specs the first-one has 2.3 GHz clock speed, while the second-one has only 1.7 GHz, that's about 25% difference. Is it really important parameter and which CPU is more preferable for a laptop for development, running VMware virtual machine, media and internet purposes?

Answer 1

You can't deduce anything from the frequency when comparing different ranges of processors. You need to find benchmarks for the processors you are interested in.

It looks like the i5-3317U is slightly faster than the i5-2410M in this benchmark

Answer 2

I had a machine with a Core 2 Duo ULV 1.6 GHz and it was definitely fast enough for development (this might have been in part due to the SSD too). What you should keep in mind is that the faster the CPU is the warmer it likely gets and thus you'll more often hear the fans or cannot use the laptop comfortably on your lap because you're grilling important parts of you.

So unless you really expect to need much processing power, go with the U variant. Software development (unless it's a million LOC of C++ or something), media playback (heck, the Raspberry Pi can play 1080p video ...) or internet browsing certainly don't need that much power. Virtual machines only need plenty of memory, they run at pretty much the same performance as the host system nowadays.