{"id":1155,"date":"2017-01-25T14:56:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T22:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3.209.169.194\/blogs\/glenn\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2017-01-25T14:56:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T22:56:24","slug":"two-recent-laptops-compared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Recent Laptops Compared"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have two fairly recent-vintage 13\u201d personal laptops that I use primarily for teaching and presentations that I thought would be interesting to compare from some common performance perspectives. The first one, which is slightly over a year old is a Lenovo Yoga 900<\/a>, which has a 14nm Intel Core i7-6500U<\/a> Skylake-U processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB Samsung PM871 SATA III SSD, one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, one USB-C port and a 3200×1800 touch display.<\/font><\/p>\n

The newer machine is an HP Spectre x360 13-w023dx<\/a>, which has a 14nm Intel Core i7-7500U<\/a> Kaby Lake-U processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB Samsung SM961 M.2 NVMe SSD, one USB 3.0 port, two USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports and a 1080P touch display.<\/font><\/p>\n

The high-level processor specifications and CPU-Z benchmark results for these two systems are shown below:<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

Processor <\/u><\/strong>                    Base Clock<\/u><\/strong>      Turbo Clock<\/u><\/strong>      Single-threaded CPU<\/u><\/strong>          Multi-threaded CPU<\/u><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Intel Core i7-6500U        2.5GHz            3.1GHz              1467                                    3391<\/font><\/p>\n

Intel Core i7-7500U        2.7GHz            3.5GHz              1743                                    3958<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These Skylake-U and Kaby Lake-U processors are quite similar, with the Kaby Lake having an optimized \u201c14nm plus\u201d process technology that lets Intel set the clock speeds slightly higher at the same power usage levels. Kaby Lake also has improved integrated graphics and an improved version of Intel Speed Shift technology<\/a> that lets Windows 10 throttle up the clock speed of the processor cores even faster than with a Skylake processor.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Figure 1: Improved Intel Speed Shift in Kaby Lake<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

The single-threaded CPU-Z 1.78.1 benchmark result is 18.8% higher with the new system, while the multi-threaded CPU-Z benchmark result is 16.7% higher on the new system. I attribute this increase to the higher base and turbo clock speeds, the optimized process technology, and the effect of the improved Intel Speed Shift. The results are shown in figures 2 and 3.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 2: Intel Core i7-6500U CPU-Z Benchmark Results<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 3: Intel Core i7-7500U CPU-Z Benchmark Results<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/strong> <\/p>\n

Honestly, these current generational CPU performance improvements are slightly better than nothing (but not much), and are certainly not a good enough reason to upgrade from an equivalent Skylake-U system to a Kaby Lake-U system. Where we see a big improvement is with basic storage performance and peripheral connectivity between these two systems.<\/font><\/p>\n

I was happily surprised that the new HP system came a very fast 512GB Samsung SM961 M.2 NVMe OEM SSD<\/a> that is equivalent to a Samsung 960 PRO. The reason I was surprised was because some reviews I had read indicated that these HP machines had a much slower Samsung OEM M.2 NVMe SSD. This probably varies by when your machine was manufactured, so perhaps the earliest review machines had the older, slower drives.<\/font><\/p>\n

As you can see, the difference in the CrystalDiskMark performance between these drives is pretty dramatic.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 4: 512GB Samsung SM961 M.2 NVMe SSD<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 5: 512GB Samsung PM871 SATA 3 SSD<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

For day to day average PC usage, you probably won\u2019t really notice the difference between a fast SATA 3 SSD and an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD, but if you are using SQL Server on a laptop, having that extra sequential bandwidth and much better random I\/O performance is really noticeable. It is also very nice to have Thunderbolt 3 support, which will allow you to have really fast transfer performance to an appropriate external drive.<\/font><\/p>\n

So the moral of all this is that the best reason to consider upgrading to a new laptop or new desktop machine for many people are the additional storage and peripheral connectivity options that you can get with a new machine. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have two fairly recent-vintage 13\u201d personal laptops that I use primarily for teaching and presentations that I thought would be interesting to compare from some common performance perspectives. The first one, which is slightly over a year old is a Lenovo Yoga 900, which has a 14nm Intel Core i7-6500U Skylake-U processor, 16GB of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,241,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sql-server-hardware","category-nvme","category-ssd"],"yoast_head":"\nTwo Recent Laptops Compared - Glenn Berry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Recent Laptops Compared - Glenn Berry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have two fairly recent-vintage 13\u201d personal laptops that I use primarily for teaching and presentations that I thought would be interesting to compare from some common performance perspectives. The first one, which is slightly over a year old is a Lenovo Yoga 900, which has a 14nm Intel Core i7-6500U Skylake-U processor, 16GB of […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Glenn Berry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-25T22:56:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Glenn Berry\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn Berry\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/\",\"name\":\"Two Recent Laptops Compared - Glenn Berry\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-01-25T22:56:24+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#\/schema\/person\/57a8972435106bac7970692fcf5edfa7\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629\",\"contentUrl\":\"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Two Recent Laptops Compared\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/\",\"name\":\"Glenn Berry\",\"description\":\"Semi-random musings about SQL Server performance\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#\/schema\/person\/57a8972435106bac7970692fcf5edfa7\",\"name\":\"Glenn Berry\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/64bdac8830f25f2f8cc780f8a1286c66ff1182218009271e7a953639596f7e25?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/64bdac8830f25f2f8cc780f8a1286c66ff1182218009271e7a953639596f7e25?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Glenn Berry\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/author\/glenn\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Two Recent Laptops Compared - Glenn Berry","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Two Recent Laptops Compared - Glenn Berry","og_description":"I have two fairly recent-vintage 13\u201d personal laptops that I use primarily for teaching and presentations that I thought would be interesting to compare from some common performance perspectives. The first one, which is slightly over a year old is a Lenovo Yoga 900, which has a 14nm Intel Core i7-6500U Skylake-U processor, 16GB of […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/","og_site_name":"Glenn Berry","article_published_time":"2017-01-25T22:56:24+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"Glenn Berry","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Glenn Berry","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/","url":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/","name":"Two Recent Laptops Compared - Glenn Berry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629","datePublished":"2017-01-25T22:56:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#\/schema\/person\/57a8972435106bac7970692fcf5edfa7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629","contentUrl":"http:\/\/images.anandtech.com\/doci\/10959\/1-7.png?_ga=1.112308228.147595600.1448747629"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/two-recent-laptops-compared\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Two Recent Laptops Compared"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/","name":"Glenn Berry","description":"Semi-random musings about SQL Server performance","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#\/schema\/person\/57a8972435106bac7970692fcf5edfa7","name":"Glenn Berry","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/64bdac8830f25f2f8cc780f8a1286c66ff1182218009271e7a953639596f7e25?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/64bdac8830f25f2f8cc780f8a1286c66ff1182218009271e7a953639596f7e25?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Glenn Berry"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/author\/glenn\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}