Preliminary Tests Of Intel Sandy Bridge & Ivy Bridge vs. Broadwell

With the basic Xonotic test run at 1280 x 1024 (in order to accommodate the various screen sizes of the three laptops; higher resolution benchmarks are later), the average frame-rate of the X1 Carbon with i7-5600U sporting HD Graphics 5500 was 68 FPS. The ASUS Zenbook UX32VDA with HD Graphics 4000 was at 60 FPS with the same settings while the HP EliteBook with HD Graphics 3000 was at 46 FPS.

The X1 Carbon while running this open-source gaming test had an average power draw of 19.8 Watts with a peak of 20.9 Watts. The Zenbook meanwhile had an average power draw of 31.7 Watts with a peak of 34.6 Watts while the Sandy Bridge Elitebook had an average of 41.8 Watts with a peak of 44.5 Watts. Keep in mind these display panels are slightly different between these laptops as it was limited to hardware within my possession, but once the Broadwell desktop CPUs roll out I'll be able to get more accurate comparisons limited to just the CPU. Even with the laptop differences, the Broadwell laptop is clearly quite efficient with its 14nm processor.

When determining the performance-per-Watt for these three laptops, the Broadwell X1 Carbon comes out more than three times better than Sandy Bridge and almost twice as good as the Zenbook UX32VDA.