Tests

For your convenience the results are represented in percent, 100% being the result of AMD Athlon II X4 620. Absolute results are provided in this Excel spreadsheet.

Final thoughts

We believe that commenting on every diagram is unnecessary in this case, because, well, there are no qualitative differences. One can't go against nature, so if Core i5-2390T has 13% lower initial clock rate than Core i3-2100, it will perform 13% slower as well. Turbo Boost doesn't help for one simple reason: considering that Core i5-2390T has to keep within the much stricter TDP of 35 W, it really can't afford to increase its clock rate under any substantial load. In those rare moments when it can speed up over 3 GHz, such high performance is just not needed. And since it cannot catch up with even the lower-end Core i3, it's obviously far behind any true desktop Core i5. On the other hand, Core i5-2390T consumes much less power, on a par with mobile CPUs, some of which are qualitatively similar to it (the aforementioned Core i5-2540M and Core i7-2620M).

So the answer to the question we've put in the review subtitle is this: Core i5-2390T is a good processor with an inappropriate name.

It's good at least because it's the fastest in its TDP class. And it's also cheaper than similar solutions from the mobile family (e.g. Core i5-2540M has the recommended price of $266), so it can be used in compact PCs instead of those, when low power consumption is required.

The model name is inappropriate, because it's similar to those of regular desktop processors, which are actually very different. This may be especially frustrating for buyers of laptops, because these days mobile and desktop CPUs are not only based on the same architecture but also have similar model names — while offering very different performance. Inexperienced users may be quite disappointed after buying a laptop based on something as good as Core i7, when they find out it's actually slower than a cheap desktop Core i3, for example. Optimists may say that such performance is still more than enough for most daily tasks. Pessimists will surely consider all this another marketing trick to con users out of their money. Realists (which we like most) will have test results, which we hope will allow them to make a conscious choice.

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