A GeForce 9400M (ION) should still be a faster (especially as Nvidia and ATI cards have a better driver support than Intel up to now). The integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD (GMA HD) graphics card is known to be clocked up to 500-766 MHz and should be clearly faster than the old GMA 4500MHD. The 32nm cpu cores of the Westmere generation can also process some new instructions to accelerate AES encryptions. Only the quad core i7 CPUs can be noticeably faster at tasks that require four or more threads (e.g. Therefore, the Core i5-540M is a high end dual core cpu which should handle all daily work and gaming tasks. The performance of the Core i5-540M is on average faster than a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo T9800 and in some benchmarks even faster than the fastest Core 2 Duo T9900 (e.g. Both are on a separate die that is still manufactured in 45nm whereas the CPU die is already manufactured in the new 32nm process. Compared to the faster Core i7-620M, the 540M only has 3 MB Level 3 Cache and a lower clock speed.Ī feature of the new Core i5-540M is the integrated graphics card called GMA HD and memory controller. Hyperthreading enables the Dual Core CPU to handle 4 threads at once (for a better usage of the pipeline). Each core is based on the Nehalem (Westmere) micro-architecture. The Intel Core i5-540M is a mid-range dual core CPU for laptops and clocks (due to the Turbo Mode) from 2.53 to 3.06 GHz. Intel Core i5-540M ► remove from comparison

I5 1.6 vs core 2 duo 2.4