Base Performance Profile Differences: Two Different Processor Upgrades
In this article, we will explore the base performance differences between two different processor upgrades in a laptop system. Specifically, we will compare the Acer Aspire E1-731-4 with two possible processor upgrades.
System Overview
The Acer Aspire E1-731-4 is a budget-friendly laptop with a dual-core AMD E1-1200 processor, which has a base clock speed of 1.4 GHz and a maximum clock speed of 1.8 GHz. The laptop has 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 320 GB hard drive.
Processor Upgrades
We will compare the base performance of the Acer Aspire E1-731-4 with two possible processor upgrades:
- AMD A4-4300M
- AMD A6-4400M
AMD A4-4300M
The AMD A4-4300M is a quad-core processor with a base clock speed of 2.5 GHz and a maximum clock speed of 3.0 GHz. It has a thermal design power (TDP) of 25 watts, which means it can consume up to 25 watts of power. This processor has 1 MB of Level 2 (L2) cache and 512 KB of Level 3 (L3) cache.
AMD A6-4400M
The AMD A6-4400M is a quad-core processor with a base clock speed of 2.7 GHz and a maximum clock speed of 3.2 GHz. It has a TDP of 35 watts, which means it can consume up to 35 watts of power. This processor has 2 MB of L2 cache and 1 MB of L3 cache.
Performance Comparison
To compare the performance of these processors, we will use the PassMark benchmarking software. The PassMark benchmark score is a measure of the performance of a computer's processor, memory, and disk. The higher the score, the better the performance.
| Processor | PassMark Score |
|-------------------|---------------|
| AMD E1-1200 | 513 |
| AMD A4-4300M | 1,581 |
| AMD A6-4400M | 2,153 |
As we can see from the PassMark scores above, both the AMD A4-4300M and the AMD A6-4400M offer a significant improvement in performance over the base AMD E1-1200 processor. The AMD A6-4400M, which has a higher clock speed and a larger cache, offers the best performance of the three processors.
Energy Efficiency
While the performance of the two upgraded processors is higher than the base processor, it is important to consider the energy efficiency of these processors. The energy efficiency of a processor is measured in terms of how much performance it provides per watt of power consumed. This is known as the processor's performance-per-watt (PPW) ratio.
| Processor | PPW Ratio |
|-------------------|---------------|
| AMD E1-1200 | 20.56 |
| AMD A4-4300M | 63.24 |
| AMD A6-4400M | 61.51 |
As we can see from the PPW ratios above, both the AMD A4-4300M and the AMD A6-4400M offer better energy efficiency than the base AMD E1-1200 processor. However, the AMD A6-4400M, which has a higher TDP, has a slightly lower PPW ratio than the AMD A4-4300M.
Upgrading the base processor in the Acer Aspire E1-731-4 with either the AMD A4-4300M or the AMD A6-4400M offers a significant improvement in performance. However, the energy efficiency of these processors varies, with the AMD A4-4300M offering the best energy efficiency of the two upgraded processors.