Intel Core i7-4600M

The Intel Core i7-4600M is a high-end dual-core processor for laptops launched in Q2 2013. It is based on the Haswell architecture and is manufactured in 22nm. Due to Hyper-Threading, the two cores can handle up to four threads in parallel leading to better utilization of the CPU. Each core offers a base speed of 2.9 GHz but can dynamically increase clock rates with Turbo Boost up to 3.6 GHz for 1 active core or 3.5 GHz for 2 active cores.

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. Furthermore, new features like AVX2 and FMA should increase the performance in future applications.

Due to these changes, the performance per clock has been improved by almost 10 percent compared to Ivy Bridge. Therefore, the i7-4600M is about 5 - 10 % faster than the former i7-3540M.

The integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600 offers 20 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at 400 MHz up to 1300 MHz with Turbo Boost, making it about 30 % faster than the HD 4000.

The i7-4600M 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.