Intel Core i5-2540M Mobiler SR044 2.60GHz 2 Kern 3MB L3 PGA988B

The Intel Core i5-2540M is a fast high-end dual-core processor for notebooks that was introduced at the beginning of 2011. It offers two cores and can process 4 threads simultaneously thanks to hyperthreading. The base clock of 2.6 GHz can be dynamically increased to 3.1 GHz (load of 2 cores) and 3.3 (1 core) by Turbo Boost with sufficient cooling. Compared to the faster i7-2620M, the 2540M not only offers a lower clock speed, but also less Last Level Cache (3 versus 4MB).

Sandy Bridge is a further development of the Arrandale architecture. Besides optimisations, the new 256-bit AVX instructions in the CPU part and the improved Turbo 2.0 are particularly worth mentioning. Furthermore, AES functions and an improved dual channel DDR3 memory controller for max. 8 GB DDR3-1333MHz are now integrated directly in the processor.

The integrated DirectX 10-capable Intel HD Graphics 3000 graphics card is located directly in the CPU and shares the level 3 / last level cache with it. Although this reduces the processor performance somewhat when graphics are activated, the graphics performance is significantly better than with the old Intel HD Graphics and on a par with an Nvidia Geforce 310M entry-level graphics card.  Thanks to Turbo Boost, it is clocked from 650MHz to 1300MHz.

Thanks to the improved architecture and the revised Turbo Boost, the performance is slightly above a similarly clocked Arrandale CPU. This should put the i5-2540M at about the same level as the old Core i7-620M. Therefore, the performance is also sufficient for demanding activities such as HD video editing or 3D games. Due to the high clock speed of 2.6 GHz (3.1 - 3.3 GHz via Turbo), the 2540M also has advantages over the slower clocked quad-core processors for software that only utilises 1-2 threads.

The Sandy Bridge dual-core processors also include the graphics card and the memory controller in the specified TDP of 35 watts. However, the Turbo Boost 2.0 makes full use of the TDP under load. With 35W TDP, the processor is best suited for 14" notebooks and larger.