Intel Core i5-480M Review

The Core i5-480M is one of Intel's mid-range Laptop processors. It was released in 2011 with 2 cores and 4 threads. With base clock at 2.93GHz, max speed at 2.93GHz, and a 35W power rating. The Core i5-480M is based on the Arrandale 32nm family and is part of the Core i5 series.

Now, we're asking ourselves whether or not the Intel Core i5-480M finally dethrones the Phenom II X2 N640 as the de facto ruler of the mainstream processors. Ultimately, it depends: the Core i5-480M doesn't reach the same single-core performance as AMD, but we're starting to see more games adopt multi-threaded CPUs, so that doesn't matter as much.

We covered the deep dive details of the Arrandale chip design in our Intel Core i5-520M and Core i5-460M review, so head there for more information on the Core i5-480M's architecture, which is identical to the Core i5-460M.

As the higher-priced version of the Core i5-460M, the Core i5-480M has higher base and Boost frequencies of 2.93 and 2.93 GHz, respectively. That's an increase in base frequency and a bump to boost clocks, but the real advantage should lay in the higher Package Power Tracking (PPT) envelope, which is a measurement of the maximum amount of power delivered to the socket. The Core i5-460M's PPT tops out at 35W, while the motherboard can pump up to 142W to the Core i5-480M at peak performance. That opens up much more aggressive boost behavior, on both single and multiple cores, that could widen the performance gap beyond what we see on the spec sheet.

But, like most humans, if you do things other than gaming, the Core i5-480M offers a better mixture of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. The Core i5-480M offers twice the threads of the price-comparable Phenom II X2 N640, and it wields them to great effect in threaded workloads. As such, rendering and encoding remain a strong suit of the Core i5 chips, and Intel's improvements to AVX throughput have yielded impressive results.

Out of the box, the Core i5-480M is a better all-arounder than the Phenom II X2 N640 and offers incrementally higher performance than its downstream counterpart. The bundled cooler reduces platform costs, and a wide array of motherboards offers plenty of choices for builders.

If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the AMD chip if you don't tune up the Phenom II X2 processor. The base performance we showed for the Core i5-480M can be achieved with $90 memory, while the Phenom II X2 N640 will require $110 - $120 memory in order to enable the frame rates shown here. It’s not a big cost difference and right now with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 you’ll more than likely become GPU limited.

One of the nice things about the Intel Core i5-480M processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the Intel Core i5-480M up for $81 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The Intel Core i5-480M retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 35W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

If extended overclocking and boost frequencies are trivial matters to you, Intel also offers the Core i5-460M at $80. It’s still outfitted with 2-cores and 4-threads, but clocks in at a slower 2.8GHz and maxes out at only 2.8GHz.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Core i5 CPUs, Intel's attack on AMD now extends down into the mid-range with its Core i5-480M processors, which the company is making available as of on January 2011.