Intel Core i5-2520M and The Asus K53E Notebook

by Dave Altavilla — Wednesday, March 23, 2011, 10:04 AM EDT

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Test Systems and PCMark Vantage

For this article we were presented with a bit of a challenge with respect to providing relevant and reasonably balanced reference numbers for benchmark comparisons. The Asus K53E is more of a mainstream configuration, rather than a performance or gaming-targeted model. As such, for productivity, content creation and multimedia testing, we wanted to compare it to other machines in its class with previous generation Intel architectures. These test machines are listed in detail below here.

Also, for a few of our media encoding and gaming tests we're going to compare the Asus K53E and its Core i5-2520M processor, to a few of our reference machines in our original Sandy Bridge mobile launch article here. The high level processor specs will of course be duly noted in each graph but we thought to offer a quick heads-up to you on this, so there is no confusion.

Primary Test System

PROCESSOR	Intel® Core™ i5-2520M Processor (3MB Cache, 2.5 GHz)
SYSTEM	ASUS K53E
BIOS	K53E.207
CHIPSET INF	9.2.0.1015
GRAPHICS CARD	Intel® HD Graphics 3000
GRAPHICS DRIVER	15.21.64.2287
DISPLAY	15" LED Display - 1366 x 768
MEMORY	4 GB Hynix DDR3-1333, 2GB Samsung DDR3-1333
HARD DRIVE	Seagate Momentus 640 GB ST9640423AS
OPERATING SYSTEM	Microsoft® Windows® 7 Ultimate 64-bit
BATTERY CAPACITY	56 WHr

HotHardware's Reference Test Systems

A wide spread of technologies

Toshiba Portégé R705-P40
Intel Core i5-460M
(2.53GHz)
4GB DDR3
Intel GMA HD
On-Board Ethernet
On-Board Audio
1x520GB Hard Drive
5400 RPM SATA
Windows 7
Home Premium (64-bit)
13.3" LED LCD Display
(native 1366x768)

Asus U43F
Core i5-450M
(2.4GHz)
4GB DDR3
Intel GMA HD
(Arrandale)
On-Board Ethernet
On-Board Audio
1x640GB Hard Drive
5400 RPM SATA
Window 7
Home Premium (64-bit)
14" LED LCD Display
(native 1366x768)

Asus U30Jc
Intel Core i3-350M
(2.26GHz)
4GB DDR3
512B NVIDIA GT 310M +
Intel GMA
On-Board Ethernet
On-Board Audio
1x320GB Hard Drive
5,400 RPM SATA
Windows 7
Home Premium (64-bit)
13.3" LED backlit Display
(native 1366x768)

Samsung R580
Intel Core i5-430M
(2.26GHz)
4GB DDR3
512B NVIDIA GT 310M
On-Board Ethernet
On-Board Audio
1x500GB Hard Drive
5,400 RPM SATA
Windows 7
Home Premium (32-bit)
15.6" LED backlit Display
(native 1366x768)

First, we ran a number of different test systems through Futuremark’s latest system performance metric, PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including HD TV and movie playback and video manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity. Most of the tests are multi-threaded as well, so the tests can exploit the additional resources offered by multi-core CPUs.

If there's one test in this benchmark suite that clearly calls out Intel's latest Sandy Bridge core architectural enhancements, it would be the Communications test. Here, Intel's new AES instruction set with dedicated hardware processing for security algorithms offers a 2X improvement in performance over the previous generation Core i5 series of chips. Moving forward security and security processing is going to become an even bigger deal for the average end user.

Beyond the Communications test, we see a significant advantage across the board for the Core i5-2520M-infused Asus K53E, with a 32% lead over the fastest Core i5 Arrandale score we recorded.