"If one backs up a few hundred gigabytes for an initial encrypted Time Machine snapshot, a particular instruction available on Intel i7 chips enables encrypting on the CPU. The Intel i5 chips, which lack that instruction, require running the encryption in software. The result is that an i7 will run much cooler and take far less time."
My reading of a past generation i5/i7 specs made me conclude the statement above. Is this conclusion accurate?
I'm mainly interested in the answer for macOS, if that matters. Update: The scenario is the following. Say you're out shopping for a Mac. You know you'll encrypt both the internal disk (the boot disk) using FileVault as well as the Time Machine disk(s) using ... and here I'm not clear. Doesn't Time Machine encryption also use FileVault under the hood? In any case, would you select an i7 over an i5, to keep the CPU load (reading/writing from disk and from TM disk) low?
My reading of a past generation i5/i7 specs made me conclude the statement above.
- What exactly in their specs made you come to that conclusion? E.g. what's thatparticular instruction available on Intel i7 chips
you speak about?