Intel Core i3

In the line of the core i3 processors, core i3-380M from Intel has the highest clock frequency. The core i3-380M has a nominal clock frequency of 2.53 GHz, improving upon the frequency of the core i3-370M’s 2.40 GHz by 133 MHz or about 5.5%. We should therefore expect performance of the CPU intensive task by an order of 5%.

Other than the frequency bump, the core i3-380M has features common the core i3 series of processors from Intel. It has integrated memory controller, which improves the processor to memory communication speed ( and it definitely a plus point, if you compare to the earlier core 2 processor architecture). The core i3-380M has 3 MB of Smart Cache which improves the performance if there is small memory ( less than 3 MB) that is needed to be referenced more often.

The table below lists out other processors of the core i3 family and their clock frequencies.

Model	Frequency	TDP
i3-330M	2.13GHz	35 Watts
i3-350M	2.26GHz	35 Watts
i3-370M	2.40GHz	35 Watts
i3-380M	2.53GHz	35 Watts

You may like to note that the core i3 processors do not have the turbo boost functionality. The turbo boost functionality is implemented in the core i5 and core i7 processors and it improves the real life performance by bumping the clock frequency for small duration when needed.

Integrated graphics is the other notable feature in the Intel core i3-380M. The graphics performance is decent for all daily and practical works, but is short of the ability to play high end gaming at higher resolution. The core i3 processors have two dies – The processor section is on one die manufactured with 32 nm technology while the integrated graphics and the memory controller is on the second die built with 45 nm technology. The two dies are integrated into a 988-pin micro-FCPGA10 package.

The core i3-380M has a rehauled architecture, so you should expect a performance jump with respect to the earlier intel core 2 processor. The internal architecture, integrated memory controller and the integrated graphics are some of the factors leading to the performance improvement. The core i3 processors slightly exceeds in performance with respect to the similarly clocked dual clock AMD’s turion ii processors, though, the turion ii processors may have price advantage. However, the performance of the core i3 processors are inferior to the similarly clocked core i5 processors mainly due to the lack of the turbo boost functionality.

In real life scenario it translates to the fact that the core i3-380M will have decent performance for the home and office functions. It will be modestly fast for spreadsheets, word, surfing, movie watching. Developers who need to write small scripts and code that compile quick should get results in real time. However, if you do a lot of video processing, or you are a developer who need to compile a lot of code, or you open and close many programs one after the another, you may benefit by the turbo boost function of the core i5 processors or the phenom ii processors from AMD.

We have started to see the some newer notebooks which have started to appear with Intel core i3-380M processor. HP has been forefront in the use of the core i3-380 with the processor being available for its HP Pavilion dv7t, Probook 4720s series and 4520s series laptops. Some of the Sony viao notebooks, for example Vaio Vpceb3dfx/Bj , Vaio Vpceb3efx/Bj and Vaio Vpceb3fgx/Bj come with core i3-380M. Fujitsu has core i3-380M in its Lifebook T580.