Intel Core i7-5557U vs Apple M3 Pro 12-Core

Intel Core i7-5557U

The Intel Core i7-5557U is a fast dual-core processor based on the Broadwell architecture, which has been launched in January 2015. With a TDP of 28 W, the CPU is suited for medium-sized ultrabooks and notebooks, whereas smaller devices will use more power efficient ULV models such as the Core i7-5600U (15 W TDP). In addition to two CPU cores with Hyper-Threading clocked at 3.1 - 3.4 GHz (2 Cores: 3.4 GHz as well), the chip also integrates an Iris Graphics 6100 GPU and a dual-channel LPDDR3-1866/DDR3L-1600 memory controller. The Core i7 is manufactured in a 14 nm process with FinFET transistors.

Architecture

Broadwell represents the "Tick" in Intel's Tick-Tock model, which means a shrink of its predecessor Haswell. The new 14 nm manufacturing process with three-dimensional FinFET transistors allows not only improvements in energy efficiency, but also a significantly smaller die size fit for more compact packages and devices.

Further advantages result from the revised microarchitecture of Broadwell. Due to its improved branch prediction, bigger buffer sizes (1500 instead of 1000 entries in the L2 TLB) and other tweaks, the performance per clock has been increased by more than 5 percent over its predecessor. There are also some new instruction set extensions designed for cryptographic applications.

Performance

Thanks to its improved architecture, the Core i7-5557U should end up slightly faster than the Haswell-based Core i7-4610M (37 W). Thus, the CPU has sufficient power even for demanding applications and multitasking.

Graphics

The integrated Iris Graphics 6100 offers 48 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at 300 - 1100 MHz. Similar to the CPU core, the GPU architecture (Intel Gen 8) has been thoroughly revised for improved performance-per-clock. In addition, the GPU benefits from faster memory speeds up to LPDDR3-1866 (Haswell: DDR3-1600). We expect the Iris Graphics 6100 to be significantly faster than the former Iris Graphics 5100. Nevertheless, demanding games as of 2015 should be playable only in low or medium settings.

Broadwell is the first Intel chip to fully support DirectX 11.2 as well as OpenCL 1.3/2.0 and OpenGL 4.3. Video will output natively via DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 1.4a. However, the new HDMI 2.0 standard is not officially supported.

Power Consumption

The i7-5557U is rated at a TDP of 28 W including the graphics card, memory controller, VRMs and the integrated chipset. Therefore, the CPU is suited for medium-sized ultrabooks 13-inches or greater.

Apple M3 Pro 12-Core

The Apple M3 Pro (12 Core) is a system on a chip (SoC) from Apple for notebooks that was launched in late 2023. It integrates a new 12-core CPU with 6 performance cores with up to 4.06 GHz and 6 efficiency cores with 2.8 GHz. There is also a slimmed-down 11-core variant with a 14-core GPU.

Compared to the M2 Pro the M3 Pro has been slimmed down somewhat and swaps two performance cores for efficiency cores. This is due to the changed core configuration, as 6 cores are now used per cluster (the M2 Pro and M3 still have 4 cores per cluster). Furthermore, the memory bus has been reduced from 256 bits to 192 bits (150 GB/s vs. 200 GB/s). However, thanks to the new architecture and higher clock rates, the new M3 Pro is still slightly faster.

The M3 Pro also integrates a new graphics card with dynamic caching, mesh shading and ray tracing acceleration via hardware. In the top model, all 18 cores of the chip are used and support up to 3 displays simultaneously (internal and 2 external).

GPU and CPU can jointly access the shared memory on the package (unified memory). This is available in 18 or 36 GB variants and offers 150 GB/s maximum bandwidth (192 bit bus).

The integrated 16-core Neural Engine has also been revised and now offers 18 TOPS peak performance (compared to 15.8 TOPS in the M2 but 35 TOPS in the new A17 Pro). The video engine now also supports AV1 decoding in hardware. H.264, HEVC and ProRes (RAW) can still be decoded and encoded.

Unfortunately, the integrated WLAN only continues to support WiFi 6E (no WiFi 7), unlike the small M3 SoC thunderbolt 4 is also supported (max 40 Gbit/s).

The chip is manufactured in the current 3nm process (N3B) at TSMC and contains 37 billion transistors (-7.5% vs. Apple M2 Pro).