Intel Pentium 3560M vs Intel Pentium 3558U

The Intel Pentium 3560M is an inexpensive dual-core processor for laptops launched in Q2 2014. It is based on the Haswell architecture and manufactured in 22nm. Each core offers a base speed of 2.4 GHz and does not support CPU Turbo Boost. Compared to other CPUs of the Core i3, Core i5 or Core i7 series, many features like AES, AVX, Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading have been disabled.

Haswell is the successor to the Ivy Bridge architecture with improvements on both GPU and CPU performance. The CPUs are produced in 22nm and offer an optimized branch prediction as well as additional execution ports, improving the performance per clock by almost 10 percent.

Due to these changes, the performance is slightly above the Ivy Bridge-based and somewhat higher clocked Pentium 2030M. This provides sufficient power for typical office and multimedia purposes.

The integrated Intel HD Graphics (Haswell) offers 10 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at 400 MHz up to 1100 MHz with Turbo Boost, making it a bit faster than the old HD Graphics (Ivy Bridge). Compared to the HD 4000 or HD 4600, however, the performance is much lower.

The Pentium 3560M is rated at a TDP of 37 W including the graphics card, memory controller and VRMs.  Therefore, the CPU is suited for laptops 14-inches or greater.

The Intel Pentium 3558U is an entry-level, ULV (ultra low voltage) dual-core processor clocked at 1.7 GHz and was launched in Q1 2014. It is based on the Haswell architecture and is manufactured in 22nm. Compared to the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, many features like Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading, AVX and AES-NI are disabled. In contrast to the very similar Pentium 3556U, the 3558U supports Wireless Display (WiDi) and Quick Sync.

Haswell is the successor to the Ivy Bridge architecture with improvements on both GPU and CPU performance. The CPUs are produced in 22nm and offer an optimized branch prediction as well as additional execution ports, improving performance per clock by almost 10 percent.

The performance of the Pentium 3558U is somewhere in range of the slightly higher clocked Pentium 2117U and 2127U, which are based on Ivy Bridge. The CPU has sufficient power for most office and multimedia purposes.

The integrated HD Graphics (Haswell) offers 10 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at 200 - 1000 MHz with Turbo Boost, making it somewhat faster than the former HD Graphics (Ivy Bridge). However, the HD Graphics (Haswell) is significantly slower than the HD Graphics 4400 and HD Graphics 5000 found on a number of other Haswell ULV models and won't handle most games as of 2014/2015.

The Pentium 3558U is rated at a TDP of 15 W including the graphics card, memory controller, VRMs and the integrated chipset. Therefore, the CPU is suited for small ultrabooks 11-inches or greater.