i5 450 -VS- i5 520?

[zsero]

Guys, please stop writing nonsense about Virtualization technology. Please look up VT-x and VT-d and have one more look at the Intel specs sheet!
x86 virtualization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I cant believe how could everyone just write that if you need virtual os, you need the more expensive. VT-d is only good for some experimential scenarios, when you want to access the PCI cards directly for some specialized stuff, and I think only Parallels Workstation Extreme has experimential support for it!

When you really think "virtualisation technology" look for VT-X, which is pretty much supported in all todays processors!!! Even new Atoms and Celerons have it!

[iofthestorm]

So the 450M has VT-x? I was going to say, Intel are really jerks if it doesn't because I'm used to having it with my crappy old AMD CPU, and I do use it all the time. If that's the case, then I have no need to get a 520M. Thanks zsero!

[MagusDraco]

all the i5s have VT-x.

the 520m has VT-d

[e14]

I just read an article about it, it says that VT-d speeds up IRQ interrupt requests by about 10%, thats all it does! That doesn't look very useful to me at all.

[one33_bpm]

So One33, are you relatively certain that there is indeed a Smart Cache difference between the two CPUs?

yep. I'm sure. Talked to a techinal rep from intel about the differences between the 450 and 520 to confirm. He said that it was a "business" decision, but I believe that the exclusion of smart cache was to balance out the inclusion of the 4.8GT/sec DMI bus. The reasons beyond this, I won't speculate upon.

Personally, I believe that smart cache is more useful with current systems, while a faster DMI bus will be more useful in future system configurations... That is to say that current systems don't max out the memory <=> I/O bandwidth, much like when AMD introduced the Hypertransport bus. It didn't make a hooj difference immediatly, but it set the stage for big I/O gains to be made later on.

[bsoft]

yep. I'm sure. Talked to a techinal rep from intel about the differences between the 450 and 520 to confirm. He said that it was a "business" decision, but I believe that the exclusion of smart cache was to balance out the inclusion of the 4.8GT/sec DMI bus. The reasons beyond this, I won't speculate upon.

Personally, I believe that smart cache is more useful with current systems, while a faster DMI bus will be more useful in future system configurations... That is to say that current systems don't max out the memory <=> I/O bandwidth, much like when AMD introduced the Hypertransport bus. It didn't make a hooj difference immediatly, but it set the stage for big I/O gains to be made later on.

I'm nearly 100% certain that "Smart Cache" is just a marketing term and that both the i5-450 and i5-520 use the same 3MiB 16-way set associative L3 cache, the same 256KiB 8-way set associative L2 caches (per core), and the same 8-way 32KiB I / 32KiB D L1 caches (per core) that every Intel CPU has used for ages (with obvious manufacturing/architectural improvements).

Don't worry about DMI bandwidth, because it's not used for much that's I/O heavy. Arrandale has both an integrated memory controller and an integrated PCIe x16 Gen2 controller, so neither main memory nor your GPU (both of which need multiple GB/s of bandwidth) go through DMI. DMI is used for connecting to the IO hub (traditionally, "southbridge"), which handles lower-bandwidth devices like your network, audio, SATA, and USB devices. None of these buses come close to saturating the DMI link, and in a laptop you're not in a position to add devices that can.

Basically, if you need VT-d, Trusted Execution Technology, or AES-NI (if you don't know what those are, you almost certainly don't need them) or if you want a little more performance (the i5-520 turbos to 2.93GHz instead of 2.66GHz like the i5-450), get the i5-520. Otherwise consider the i5-450 or even the i3-370.

If I had the choice of an i3-370 with an SSD or an i5-520 with a hard drive, I'd pick the i3-370. You're going to see a lot more of a difference with an SSD than you're going to see with the 20% faster i5. Of course you have to consider other factors like the limited size of the SSD (even my $400 x25-m G2 is only 160GB) and whether your workload is I/O bound (startup, launching apps, most game load times), GPU-bound (games with higher settings) or CPU bound (games at lower settings or with a very-high end GPU, video encoding, most scientific computing, etc.). There's no one right answer here, but in general I find that people spend too much on the CPU and neglect things like the GPU or disk performance (SSD) which can have a bigger impact.

[dookie11]

@ Everybody,

So which do you need for SC2 on ultra-settings? 450M or 520M? Please use non-tech lingo to explain. And provide examples if those'll help to explain :P

Thanks!

[jtcady]

Either one would be fine. I would get the 520M though.

[psreloaded]

Actually the i5-450 does support the VT-x virtualization technology.

see this Intel® Core? i5-450M Processor (3M cache, 2.40 GHz) with SPEC Code(s) SLBTZ

I does not support VT-d, which is a slightly better one.

What this means is that you can use Windows XP mode on windows 7 on the i5-450 as well.

[psreloaded]

Guys, please stop writing nonsense about Virtualization technology. Please look up VT-x and VT-d and have one more look at the Intel specs sheet!
x86 virtualization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I cant believe how could everyone just write that if you need virtual os, you need the more expensive. VT-d is only good for some experimential scenarios, when you want to access the PCI cards directly for some specialized stuff, and I think only Parallels Workstation Extreme has experimential support for it!

When you really think "virtualisation technology" look for VT-X, which is pretty much supported in all todays processors!!! Even new Atoms and Celerons have it!

Exactly. Thats the point. So no need to go for 520 for win xp mode. 450 will run it just fine.