Intel Core i5-520UM vs Intel Atom Z3680D

Intel Core i5-520UM

Intel Atom Z3680D

The Intel Atom Z3680D is a power-efficient dual-core SoC for Windows and Android tablets. It is clocked at 1.33 - 2.0 GHz and is part of the Bay Trail-T platform. Thanks to the specially optimized 22nm low-power design process (P1271) with Tri-Gate transistors, performance and energy efficiency have been significantly improved compared to its predecessor. In contrast to the Z3680, the Z3680D offers a different memory controller and a lower display resolution.

Architecture

The processor cores are based on the new Silvermont architecture, which is an out-of-order design for the first time. The increased utilization of the pipeline and many other improvements (optimized branch prediction, increased buffers, and enhanced decoders) have increased the performance per clock by about 50 percent. At the same time, however, the Hyper-Threading feature of the previous generation has been removed. Other major additions are the support for new instruction set extensions such as SSE 4.1 and 4.2 as well as AES-NI (depending on the model).

Performance

Thanks to the improved performance per clock, the Z3680D is faster than previous Intel Atoms like the Z2760. Presumably, the Z3680D even competes with AMD APUs like the AMD A4-4355M. For simple everyday tasks such as Internet or Office the performance is adequate, but not for complex software or modern games.

Graphics

The HD Graphics (Bay Trail) is based on the Intel Gen7 architecture, which supports DirectX 11 and is also found in the Ivy Bridge series (e.g. HD Graphics 4000). With only 4 EUs (Execution Units) and a relatively low clock speed of up to 688 MHz, the GPU is even slower than the HD Graphics (Ivy Bridge). Therefore, only older and less demanding Windows games will run fluently. However, video acceleration and display resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 pixels are no problem for the chip.

Power Consumption

The entire SoC should be rated at an SDP of about 2 W, which would indicate a TDP of less than 4 W. Thus, the chip can be used in passively cooled tablets.