Introduction - and Performance of I5-3320M on Thinkpad vs TB
Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2015 9:34 am
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
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