Intel Core i5-750S: Since When Does The S Mean Slow?

CPU-Z Screenshots

Core i5-750 at Idle

Core i5-750 at Peak Multi-Threaded Workload

Running heavily threaded applications pushes Turbo Boost to kick in, which boosts the clock speed by one multiplier increment from 2.66 to 2.80 GHz by setting the multiplier from 20x to 21x. The voltage jumps to 1.192V.

Core i5-750 at Peak Single-Threaded Workload

Finally, a single-threaded application such as WinZip will have the Turbo Boost feature switching one or two cores to a 24x multiplier, resulting in an effective 3.2 GHz core clock speed at 1.256V.

Core i5-750S at Idle

The new S-model isn’t any different at idle. A 9x multiplier, 1,200 MHz core clock speed, and 0.872V are very similar to the regular model.

Core i5-750S at Peak Multi-Threaded Workload

Unfortunately, the heavily threaded workload doesn't increase the processor speed beyond 2.40 GHz. This is already 266 MHz less than the base speed on the regular model and clearly impacts performance, as you'll see in the benchmark section. The 1.104V is a bit lower than what the system applied to the Core i5-750 at 2.8 GHz.

Core i5-750S at Peak Single-Threaded Workload

A continuous WinZip workload, which only involves a single processing core, has Turbo Boost switch to 3.2 GHz. Again the voltage is at 1.256V, very much like on the regular Core i5-750 CPU.