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11" i7 vs i5 Test(s)

Jazwire

Jazwire

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 20, 2009
900
118
127.0.0.1
Streaming a HD Netflix (The Lorax) movie test.
====================
Right now I have my MBA 11" i7/8/256 vs my wife's 11" i5/4/128.


I made sure every program was shut down, checked activity monitors to make sure they were exactly the same before I started. Turned off Time Machine.

Both charged to 100% Let them even charge for 30 min after they reached 100% to make sure they were maximum charged.

Both set to 8 brightness ticks and 1 keyboard brightness tick.

I am streaming both in full screen using Safari simultaneously side by side.

Results as I have them below:
===================================

22 min into movie:

i5 - 92%
i7 - 97%

i7 is actually cooler on the bottom, neither are really warm, but the i7 heat is actually almost undetectable. Was not expecting these results so far.

(Double checked activity monitor, nothing different running on the i5, no fans on either machine)

**
45 min into movie:
i5 - 70%
i7 - 84%

Here is something interesting I observed, higher cpu usage on the i5 for Safari and silverlight (netflix player plugin.)
i5 is definitely "warm"
i7 is very slightly "warm"

If I were to give a value 1-10 on heat/warmth.
i5 - 4.5
i7 - 3

**
70 min into movie:
i5 - 54%
i7 - 76%

Heat is the same as earlier with the i5 actually running a little warmer.
No fans running on either machine at any point thus far either.

**
End of movie 1hour 25 min:

i5 - 42% (1:04 Remaining)
i7 - 70% ( 3:24 Remaining)

---------------------------------------------------------
Ending thoughts: Was totally blown away, I was expecting the i7 do do slightly worse than the i5 for both heat and battery.


Possible Conclusion: I did check activity monitor on both machines around the 45 minute mark and watched it for a min or two.
I noticed the i5 cpu load mainly between 45-70 it bounced around a lot in that range.
The i7 cpu load stayed in a much tighter range of 39-45. Did not bounce around like the i5 did.

The cpu load was nearly completely on both machines Safari & Silverlight (Plug-in), the i5 wasn't using CPU cycles on anything else.

So my thoughts are in this test the i7 just handled the job more efficiently, the i5 was throttling up and down a lot and that caused heat and greater battery loss, the i7 was able to maintain a consistant threshold and didn't suffer from having to "turbo boost" as much because the base speed was sufficient.

Thoughts??


(More tests coming, Next, League of Legends (Game) heat, battery & FPS test, side by side... tomorrow night. )
 
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Jazwire

Jazwire

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 20, 2009
900
118
127.0.0.1
** League of Legends Test**

Setting on both machines.
Resolution - 1368x768
Character Quality - High
Effect Quality - Medium
Environment Quality - High
Shadows - Off

i5 results:
Avg FPS:41
FPS Range:37-50
Heat: Warm, maybe slightly less warm than i7 , fans running fairly loud

i7 results:
Avg FPS: 48
FPS Range:44-58
Heat: Warm - No Fans (Actually ran i7 test twice, because thought maybe I didn't hear fan on 1st run.)

I did not test batter drain on this test. Ill save that for the next text. I just wanted to compared performance and heat.

I was surprised the i5 fans spun up and the i7 did not. Heat was about even, maybe slightly cooler on i5, but it had the fans running where the i7 did not.
***********************************************************


More test tomorrow. (General Usage Test) *Details later* (Sorry tired tonight)
 
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K

Kevbodian

macrumors member
Dec 23, 2005
41
0
Nice Jazwire. Probably not the case, but I wonder if the 4GB device had to use swap for the stream more often than the 8GB device... may explain the extra CPU usage.

Playing a video is a matter of loading the video into memory and decoding whereas streaming is using wifi, downloading, placing portions into memory, decoding, rinse repeat.

Can you do a CSGO test? I believe the game is natively supported on OS X. I know it may be hard to do a similar test as it's different every time.
 
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L

Leikocyte

macrumors newbie
Jun 23, 2013
13
0
Ifti said:
You dont find it useful, but others do.

Unexpected results, but truely positive...............for me anyways! ;)
Click to expand...

This

----------
Kevbodian said:
Nice Jazwire. Probably not the case, but I wonder if the 4GB device had to use swap for the stream more often than the 8GB device... may explain the extra CPU usage.

Playing a video is a matter of loading the video into memory and decoding whereas streaming is using wifi, downloading, placing portions into memory, decoding, rinse repeat.

Can you do a CSGO test? I believe the game is natively supported on OS X. I know it may be hard to do a similar test as it's different every time.
Click to expand...

In that case I still think i7 is going to come out on top.

I'm fairly surprised by the battery results. One would think video decoding is a piece of cake for both current gen i5 and i7, and the battery usage shouldn't really differ much.
However the base clock speed is pretty low for the i5. 1.3 is probably sufficient for web surfing and PDF/office work, anything higher than that would need turbo boost. If I want to squeeze out extra Battery life, utilities like ThrottleStop or any equivalents in OS X might help.
 
K

Kevbodian

macrumors member
Dec 23, 2005
41
0
Leikocyte said:
This

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In that case I still think i7 is going to come out on top.

I'm fairly surprised by the battery results. One would think video decoding is a piece of cake for both current gen i5 and i7, and the battery usage shouldn't really differ much.
However the base clock speed is pretty low for the i5. 1.3 is probably sufficient for web surfing and PDF/office work, anything higher than that would need turbo boost. If I want to squeeze out extra Battery life, utilities like ThrottleStop or any equivalents in OS X might help.
Click to expand...

I bought an i7/8/128 and it was delivered the day after I went to Japan for 2 weeks (still there now). For the last week or so I've been thinking long and hard whether I should return the i7 and get an i5/8/256. I'm beginning to think I'm alright with the i7.

For me battery life is important as most of the work I do on the laptop will be while on battery. It's just nice to be able to play a game or two once in a while when I'm away from home (I have a nice gaming PC..). Lol, I love when people like kodeman come in and say nothing productive... or come in with "if you want to game, why'd you buy an air"? haha
 
mayuka

mayuka

macrumors 6502a
Feb 15, 2009
609
66
@Jazwire: Could you test idling performance? :confused: At least, that's what's most important for students that are writing during courses or in the library.
 
J

johnjey

macrumors regular
Jun 17, 2013
245
2
Northern CA
Before jumping on to the bandwagon of how awesome i7 is - let it go through some more practical real world usage of:

1. Heavy surfing - atleast 3 different browsers and 12 different tabs in them
2. Heavy word processing - 20 files open at once
3. Heavy PDF processing - 10 files open
4. 3 hour video - 4 hour audio
5. Flash videos (the xxx sites) - let them run in background :)

& then do the same on i7

I am not a graphic designer & video encoding isn't something I will ever do ..: max - I am going to use adobe products on it like Lightroom - photoshop & some other word/PDF programs & it's mostly will be a business laptop (NO gaming) - so I think my 11" 15/8/512 should be good enough to handle it all nice and cool ...
 
D

DoctorK4

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2011
142
3
johnjey said:
Before jumping on to the bandwagon of how awesome i7 is - let it go through some more practical real world usage of:

1. Heavy surfing - atleast 3 different browsers and 12 different tabs in them
2. Heavy word processing - 20 files open at once
3. Heavy PDF processing - 10 files open
4. 3 hour video - 4 hour audio
5. Flash videos (the xxx sites) - let them run in background :)
Click to expand...

Is this really practical? How many people have 36 tabs or 20 word docs open simultaneously?
 
musika

musika

macrumors 65816
Sep 2, 2010
1,285
459
New York
DoctorK4 said:
Is this really practical? How many people have 36 tabs or 20 word docs open simultaneously?
Click to expand...

Sometimes when johnjey is viewing his 36 different "xxx sites", he likes to knock out a few word documents and a spreadsheet or two. Is that really so wrong!?
 
M

mattferg

macrumors 6502
May 27, 2013
380
22
Unless the two models were identical apart from the processor change, you can't draw any conclusions from this test. It could be the extra RAM/SSD benefitted the i7, and there also could be software conflicts that the OP isn't listing. Not really a true test at all.
 
T

trondah

macrumors 6502
Dec 1, 2008
344
0
Your results does not make sense. Obviously the i5 was doing something in the background, spotlight indexing perhaps? You certainly won't have better battery life with the i7 and definitely not that much.
 
falconeight

falconeight

Guest
Apr 6, 2010
1,866
2
Streaming a netflix movie isn't a CPU intensive test. Its an easier task for a more powerful machine.
 
K

Kevbodian

macrumors member
Dec 23, 2005
41
0
johnjey said:
Before jumping on to the bandwagon of how awesome i7 is - let it go through some more practical real world usage of:

1. Heavy surfing - atleast 3 different browsers and 12 different tabs in them
2. Heavy word processing - 20 files open at once
3. Heavy PDF processing - 10 files open
4. 3 hour video - 4 hour audio
5. Flash videos (the xxx sites) - let them run in background :)

& then do the same on i7

I am not a graphic designer & video encoding isn't something I will ever do ..: max - I am going to use adobe products on it like Lightroom - photoshop & some other word/PDF programs & it's mostly will be a business laptop (NO gaming) - so I think my 11" 15/8/512 should be good enough to handle it all nice and cool ...
Click to expand...

John, don't turn this into another of your flame threads. The point of this thread is to provide insight into the differences in performance between the i5 and i7. It's really just to let people make up their own minds as to what's important for their computer. It's not about bandwagons or super thorough benchmarks -- none of 1-5 actually mean anything.

Jazwire is using his personal time to do some basic comparisons so that the rest of us have some idea.

----------
falconeight said:
Streaming a netflix movie isn't a CPU intensive test. Its an easier task for a more powerful machine.
Click to expand...

It wasn't really supposed to be CPU intensive. It was just a simple way to run down the batteries of each machine.

For the sake of the world, maybe thread title should be changed from "test" to "ramblings" so that people don't take it so f'n seriously. :p
 
K

Kevbodian

macrumors member
Dec 23, 2005
41
0
trondah said:
Your results does not make sense. Obviously the i5 was doing something in the background, spotlight indexing perhaps? You certainly won't have better battery life with the i7 and definitely not that much.
Click to expand...

Jazwire said:
The cpu load was nearly completely on both machines Safari & Silverlight (Plug-in), the i5 wasn't using CPU cycles on anything else.
Click to expand...

Lol, the proof is in the pudding.

----------
Jazwire said:
Sure I can do that.
It will have to be later, wife took her i5 to work. :/
Click to expand...

Lol no don't! Haha I was being sarcastic to the poster above. :) Wait... I see what you did..
 
Jazwire

Jazwire

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 20, 2009
900
118
127.0.0.1
johnjey said:
Before jumping on to the bandwagon of how awesome i7 is - let it go through some more practical real world usage of:

1. Heavy surfing - atleast 3 different browsers and 12 different tabs in them
2. Heavy word processing - 20 files open at once
3. Heavy PDF processing - 10 files open
4. 3 hour video - 4 hour audio
5. Flash videos (the xxx sites) - let them run in background :)

& then do the same on i7

I am not a graphic designer & video encoding isn't something I will ever do ..: max - I am going to use adobe products on it like Lightroom - photoshop & some other word/PDF programs & it's mostly will be a business laptop (NO gaming) - so I think my 11" 15/8/512 should be good enough to handle it all nice and cool ...
Click to expand...

I should be able to accommodate some of these tests to some degree.
I'll come up with a stress test that I run on both machines side by side.
Once again it will have to be several hours from now, wife has her i5 at work.

----------
mattferg said:
Unless the two models were identical apart from the processor change, you can't draw any conclusions from this test. It could be the extra RAM/SSD benefitted the i7, and there also could be software conflicts that the OP isn't listing. Not really a true test at all.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with you if the tests were reversed.

The i7 SSD should and likely does actually draw more power. Each machine had 0 page outs, and were only using around 1 GB of active ram.

Also there was NO software conflict, I opened up activity monitor an triple checked nothing was running that was not running on either machine. I looked before I started the test and look while I was running the tests.
 
Jazwire

Jazwire

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 20, 2009
900
118
127.0.0.1
trondah said:
Your results does not make sense. Obviously the i5 was doing something in the background, spotlight indexing perhaps? You certainly won't have better battery life with the i7 and definitely not that much.
Click to expand...

It was not, i checked Activity Monitor prior to starting the test nothing else was running that was not on both machines. I checked the Activity Monitor at 45 min into the movie again. Nothing different was running, (though like i said earlier, the i5 was working harder on the safari and silverlight process than the i7).

It does not make sense which is why I checked the Activity monitor 45 min into the movie.

Also my wife got her i5 the day after launch, she hardly has anything on it about 25 gb, everything on her end was indexed by spotlight last week and I had time machine turned off on both units.
 
Jazwire

Jazwire

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 20, 2009
900
118
127.0.0.1
falconeight said:
Streaming a netflix movie isn't a CPU intensive test. Its an easier task for a more powerful machine.
Click to expand...

Never was meant to be a CPU intensive test, more a real world test.
People do stream a lot, this was more for heat and battery.

And if you read my entire post, I came to the same conclusion , basically you did. i7 is the more powerful machine and did not have to "turbo boost" as much.

I do plan on doing a more CPU intensive test, which logically the i7 should not win in battery time and most likely heat. (Of course I didn't expect it to win this test either)

However, what ever I do to do that test, its far more likely people are going to stream video than run their cpu at 100% until it dies.

I am doing some practical and willing to do some impractical tests on both machines. But I am just doing these on the side on my time. And I am doing a thorough job making sure the conditions are exactly the same. Heck, I even ran them side by side at the same time, so that they would have matching room temperatures and same amount of air circulation in the room.

Do not shoot the messenger with the results.
 
L

Leikocyte

macrumors newbie
Jun 23, 2013
13
0
Kevbodian said:
For me battery life is important as most of the work I do on the laptop will be while on battery. It's just nice to be able to play a game or two once in a while when I'm away from home (I have a nice gaming PC..).
Click to expand...

I don't think you need i7 to run the games. From what I read about gaming performances, i5 or i7 doesn't really make much of a difference. I'll expect i5 to give more loading time but frame rate-wise you probably won't be able to distinguish between them.

What I concluded from all these i5/i7 hassle is what some people have always been saying: if you're not absolutely sure what you need the i7 for, you probably don't need it.
 
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