Is there anything wrong with 1st generation mobile Intel Core i CPUs (for notebooks)?

[virtuality]

@dave_the_nerd had this to say about 1st gen. Intel Core i CPUs:

Look for something with at least an LGA-1155 CPU. (i3/i5/i7-2xxx series or comparable Pentium/Celeron). Core 2 and first-gen Core i3/i5/i7 had much higher idle power use. (20-30w vs. <10w. You'll be paying next to nothing for the computer anyway, but the power use adds up.)

OK. Where to look for the CPU's idle power consumption on ark.intel.com? For example: http://ark.intel.com/products/95443/Intel-Core-i5-7200U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz - It's a current gen. CPU, but the specs. sheets are the same.

When looking at the history of Apple's notebook lineup I noticed they seem to skip first generation Intel Core i CPUs altogether (even though they delivered much higher performance than last generation Core 2 Duo chips).

Mid 2010 MacBook Pro: Intel Core 2 Duo (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP583)
Early 2011 MacBook Pro: Intel Core i5/i7-2xxx series (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP619)

I became suspicious. Does this all mean anything? Should I avoid notebooks with first generation Intel Core i CPUs? Speaking of retro machines.

 

[cfenton]

Not necessarily. Sandy Bridge was a pretty big jump over the first gen Core i series, but I wouldn't say there's something wrong with the first gen. If you're looking to use the notebook as a notebook, portably I mean, then I'd say anything pre-Haswell is a bad idea. If I recall correctly, Haswell dramatically improved idle power consumption. If you're just going to hook it up to a power supply and never move it, then you should still get at least a Sandy Bridge because it's better and not much more expensive, but the first gen Core i series will work fine. Just my two cents.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

@dave_the_nerd had this to say about 1st gen. Intel Core i CPUs:


OK. Where to look for the CPU's idle power consumption on ark.intel.com? For example: http://ark.intel.com/products/95443/Intel-Core-i5-7200U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz - It's a current gen. CPU, but the specs. sheets are the same.

When looking at the history of Apple's notebook lineup I noticed they seem to skip first generation Intel Core i CPUs altogether (even though they delivered much higher performance than last generation Core 2 Duo chips).

Mid 2010 MacBook Pro: Intel Core 2 Duo (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP583)
Early 2011 MacBook Pro: Intel Core i5/i7-2xxx series (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP619)

I became suspicious. Does this all mean anything? Should I avoid notebooks with first generation Intel Core i CPUs? Speaking of retro machines.

Intel doesn't publish idle power. But CPU reviews tend to try to approximate it.

Intel does, however, provide something called the Intel Power Gadget. If you run that on a bunch of hardware from Sandy Bridge onwards, you'll probably notice a trend.

To the thread question: not really. For total system power consumption, with the mobile versions of the chips, the difference in power use is much smaller. It's there, but the reasons to avoid an older laptop are the old/worn/saggy screen hinges, potentially bad battery, and the increases in quality of trackpads and keyboards over the last 5-8 years, not the CPU power use.

I don't know why Apple skipped the first-gen i-series. There were certainly plenty of them in laptops at the time.

 

[Valantar]

I have a ThinkPad X201 with an i5-520 (35W). Besides some serious coil whine from the CPU power delivery, it's a very good notebook. However, I remember from when I bought it that it was a standout in terms of battery life - around 8 hours from a 6-cell battery. At that time, most laptops got around ⅓-¼ of that, including laptops with the same chip. Lenovo obviously did an amazing job with power optimization on that design. Still, the normal SKUs at that time were the 25-35W 'M' SKUs, not the 15W 'U' or 'UM' ones - they had very significantly reduced base clocks, and were slow. I believe Sandy's Bridge changed that, at least somewhat. Still, the i5-520 clocks down to around 800MHz at idle, and doesn't seem to burn unnecessary power when idle. I doubt this affected Apple's CPU choice, though, as they have consistently used >15W chips.