Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad vs TB

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Karl Klammer
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:19 am
Location: Old Europe

Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad vs TB

#1 Post by Karl Klammer »

Hi folks,

I've got my second CF-19 last week and thus decided it's time to join the forums.


Introduction
About me
I'm a 30 year old prototype nerd from Munich/Bavaria/Germany/Old Europe/Earth/Milky Way,
running a small 2-man consulting firm for Unix/Oracle/Networking stuff within telecommunications and financial industries.
My interests range from longboarding and psychedelic rock to chess and information security.

Journey to Toughbookhood
I used to be a thinkpad X-series fanboy (basically their version of the CF-C2),
even tough they kept dying on me every 1 to 2 years, mostly due to fan issues and overheating.
My last model - a x230t convertible - had such a disgusting build quality,
that it drove me towards buying my first CF-19 sheer out of spite.
This turned out to be a real eye-opener.
The few months old x230t basically hasn't been touched since I got the 5 times slower CF-19 mk3 in 2014.

As of last week, I am the proud owner of a CF-19 mk6 with VEB181 dock, which will be my main workstation.
I'm pretty sure my future computers will also be CF-19s.
Hopefully, Panasonic will have released a CF-19/20 dock with two high resolution monitor ports by then.

Why I love my CF-19s
1) Peace of mind from knowing that these are tools, not mere laptops.
2) Form factor and versatility (serial port + 3g/umts combo proved to be very useful during my last datacenter gig)
3) no moving parts == no noise, never ever
4) ability to rinse them in the kitchen sink (about twice a month, I'm a bit germophobic when it comes to keyboards and touchscreens)
5) selective disabling ports in bios provides effective countermeasure to most hardware-based attacks like BadUSB and Firewire Inception


Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad vs Toughbook
I did a quick'n'dirty benchmark between x230t and cf-19 mk6 by running PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0 and discovered something odd:
The X230T seems to provide
• 40% better overall performance and
• 30% better processor performance
than the CF-19mk6, even though both utilize the same I5 3320M chip with 16gb memory.

Any thoughts on the attached numbers? Just curious about your explanations for the difference.
Anyone else running a I5 3320M? Maybe a CF-53J / SX-2J / CF-31S owner would like to jump in with his/her PassMark results.

I guess this must be due to
• throttling/passive cooling,
• probably older sata interface (specs anyone?) and
• maybe Win8.1 vs Win7 (OS differs but all drivers are up2date).

BTW: This is not intended as toughbook bashing/trolling, as they have a completely different value proposition.
A refurbished CF-19 mk6 still costs about the same as a new x230t did 2.5 years ago, but it's well worth it as far as I'm concerned.
My mk3 has run for over 14,700hrs and is still going strong. X series thinkpads barely survive a quarter of that, even when I try to be careful with them.

BR,
Karl Klammer
Attachments
PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0 for Intel i5 3320M on Thinkpad X230T vs Toughbook CF19mk6
PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0 for Intel i5 3320M on Thinkpad X230T vs Toughbook CF19mk6
passmark-x230t-cf19mk6-cf19mk3.png (38.63 KiB) Viewed 8871 times

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Shawn
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Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:35 am

Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#2 Post by Shawn »

It's pretty standard for Panasonic to detune fully rugged models.
Reasons are durability and heat, combined with battery life.
Life will beat you into submission.

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Karl Klammer
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:19 am
Location: Old Europe

Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#3 Post by Karl Klammer »

Thanks for the cpu info, Shawn.

Do you happen to have the specs for mk6 sata interface?
I guess it must be v1(1,5Gbits) as this roughly translates to the 200MBytes I'm getting.
This, however, would seem unlikely for a 2012 toughbook, as the 2013 thinkpad has sata3.

BR
Karl Klammer

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Karl Klammer
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:19 am
Location: Old Europe

Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#4 Post by Karl Klammer »

just realized that they also throttle the sata3(6Gbps) interface down to sata1(1.5Gbps).
This is kind of a bummer, as my ssd could otherwise be operated at nearly 3x it's current speed.
source: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads ... ry.580720/

BR,
Karl Klammer

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Shawn
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Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:35 am

Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#5 Post by Shawn »

It's been throttled to SATA1 for a long time..

Performance is not top on Panasonic's priority list

This is a good read. They are concern about specific hardness of the paint/powder coat....WOW...That's detail.

http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_noteboo ... _cf31.html
Life will beat you into submission.

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Karl Klammer
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:19 am
Location: Old Europe

Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#6 Post by Karl Klammer »

I'm still very happy with my new toy, as it's still a huge improvement to the mk3.
I've added this specific throttling info to the CF-19 Guide at viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1645&start=10

Performance is not top on Panasonic's priority list.
It's pretty standard for Panasonic to detune fully rugged models down to SATA 1 and about 80% CPU speed.
Reasons are durability and heat, combined with battery life.

BR,
Karl Klammer
Last edited by Karl Klammer on Tue Oct 13, 2015 2:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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ADOR
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Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2010 12:51 pm
Location: Northeast Louisiana

Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#7 Post by ADOR »

I have also notice some nice speed gains in doing a lot of OS tweaking in Toughbooks. But the toughbook is going to still be a little bit slower because they want them to keep going and going. I do think another member here a while back swapping out some drivers and did get SATA 2 speeds with his SSD. I would have to dig up the thread. If you have a extra caddy it would be nice to drop the OS of your choice on it and play with it with out messing up your main install.
CF-28 MK2,Mk3 / CF-29 Mk3 / CF-30 MK2 / CF-25 Mk1 ATI / CF-19 MK3/Mk3/Mk5 / CF-U1 Mk1,Mk2 / CF-M34 Mk7/Mk3 / CF-17 Mk1 / CF-07
Voodoo Envy M355 / M360 / M515 / M780 / U703 / Voodoo Hexx / Voodoo Idol / Voodoo Rage F1 / Voodoo Rage F1 / Voodoo Rage F1 "signed case" / Voodoo Omen
Alienware M11x R1, Alienware 17 R5

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Karl Klammer
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:19 am
Location: Old Europe

Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#8 Post by Karl Klammer »

mnementh over at NBR has posted this more detailed history about ssd limiting back in oct 2011:
You know... I've been reading the forum and thinking back on the several threads on this subject, and I suspect I know why Panasonic deliberately throttled back the bus speed here, and you probably aren't going to like it.

Heat management. Just bear with me.

Panasonic actually took a fair bit of heat with earlier models of Toughbooks and brick PCs by throttling back the CPU clock to reduce heat generated, especially in passive-cooled designs. Smart people know underclocking is a good idea; dumb people think they're somehow getting cheated. Well, what if there was a way to slow down EVERYTHING without taking the PR hit of underclocking the CPU again?

With Windows-powered machines, there is. Because of the way it manages virtual memory, EVERYTHING the computer does follows the timetable of a single point - the data bus of the HDD. Slow that down, and the CPU gets a bunch more idle cycles, the RAM and video do too. Now I suspect that with the limitations of the PATA HDD bus that wasn't much of a problem; though I do seem to remember some talk, even back with the CF-29s, of people being frustrated with their shiny new SSDs because of Panny using an ATA-166 capable controller and throttling it back to ATA-100 or ATA-66 speeds. The IDE standard was always the bottleneck on any machine that suffered with it, especially on later 3GHz P4 powered and similar era machines of any manufacturer. In desktops, we run RAIDs to eliminate this bottleneck; in a laptop, it suddenly becomes a brick wall to beat your head against, unless you WANT to slow down a machine exponentially.

Now... a few years later, and the standard is SATA. Gotta use SATA, cuz the chipsets don't support IDE anymore and nobody's gonna buy your machine if it still uses PATA, as SATA has been the standard long enough even dumb@sses know IDE is old stuff. But SATA can actually handle the speeds that your new processor operates at, so you don't have the natural governor of that bus working in your favor anymore. So... you throttle back the SATA bus to the slowest speed, and presto. Your CPU gets to rest, your video gets to rest, everything stays nice & frosty even under the desert sun and only a few freaks like Alex and Toyo who bother to put an SSD in a laptop whose daddy was a bulldozer and expect it to go fast ;) would ever notice.

Does any of this sound even a little bit like a design of a company motivated by business as a major Defense Industry manufacturer?

mnem
Cynicism - Just one more service we offer.

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Shawn
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Re: Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad v

#9 Post by Shawn »

Good quote...
Life will beat you into submission.

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