Core i5-540M: specs and benchmarks

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Aggregate performance score

Core i5-540M provides poor benchmark performance at 1.18% of a leader's which is a 96-core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX.

Summary

Intel started Core i5-540M sales 7 January 2010 at a recommended price of $257. This is an Arrandale architecture notebook processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 2 cores and 4 threads, and is based on 32 nm manufacturing technology, with a maximum frequency of 3070 MHz and a locked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is BGA1288,PGA988 processor with a TDP of 35 Watt. It supports DDR3 memory.

Primary details

Core i5-540M processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in the ranking2369
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Market segmentLaptop
SeriesIntel Core i5
Power efficiency3.07of 100.00 (Core Ultra 7 164U)
Architecture codenameArrandale (2010−2011)
Release date7 January 2010 (14 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$257of 17,906 (tray) (Xeon Platinum 8280L)

Detailed specifications

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores2 (Dual-core)
Threads4
Base clock speed2.53 GHzof 4.7 GHz (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed3.07 GHzof 50 MHz (i486DX-50)
Bus typeDMI 1.0
Bus rate1 × 2.5 GT/s
Multiplier19of 42 (Core i7-7700K)
L1 cache128 KBof 80 KB (EPYC 9965)
L2 cache512 KBof 2 MB (Xeon 6980P)
L3 cache3 MB (shared)of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X)
Chip lithography32 nmof 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Die size81+114 mm2
Maximum core temperature105 °Cof 110 °C (Atom x7-E3950)
Number of transistors382+177 Millionof 135,240 million (EPYC 9684X)
64 bit support+
Windows 11 compatibility-

Compatibility

Information on Core i5-540M compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration1 (Uniprocessor)of 8 (Opteron 842)
SocketBGA1288,PGA988
Power consumption (TDP)35 Wattof 3100 ‑ 4500 (Ryzen 7 7435H)

Technologies and extensions

Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i5-540M. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensionsIntel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2
AES-NI+
FMA+
vPro+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)+
Turbo Boost Technology+
Hyper-Threading Technology+
Idle States+
Thermal Monitoring+
Flex Memory Access+
PAE36 Bit
FDI+
Fast Memory Access+

Security technologies

Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT+
EDB+

Virtualization technologies

Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.

VT-d+
VT-x+
EPT+

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i5-540M's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.

Supported memory typesDDR3
Maximum memory size8 GBof 6 TiB (EPYC 9124)
Max memory channels2of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221)
Maximum memory bandwidth17.051 GB/sof 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9124)

Graphics specifications

General parameters of a GPU integrated into Core i5-540M.

Integrated graphics cardIntel® HD Graphics for Previous Generation Intel® Processors
Clear Video+
Clear Video HD+
Graphics max frequency766 MHz

Graphics interfaces

Available interfaces and connections of Core i5-540M's integrated GPU.

Number of displays supported2

Peripherals

Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.

PCIe version2.0of 5.0 (Core i9-12900K)
PCI Express lanes16of 128 (EPYC 7551P)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i5-540M. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

i5-540M 1.18

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

i5-540M 1808

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

i5-540M 374

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

i5-540M 718

Cinebench 10 32-bit single-core

Cinebench R10 is an ancient ray tracing benchmark for processors by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. Its single core version uses just one CPU thread to render a futuristic looking motorcycle.

i5-540M 3133

Cinebench 10 32-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 10 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R10 using all the processor threads. Possible number of threads is limited by 16 in this version.

i5-540M 7031

3DMark06 CPU

3DMark06 is a discontinued DirectX 9 benchmark suite from Futuremark. Its CPU part contains two scenarios, one dedicated to artificial intelligence pathfinding, another to game physics using PhysX package.

i5-540M 2826

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 11.5 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R11.5 which uses all the processor threads. A maximum of 64 threads is supported in this version.

i5-540M 2

Gaming performance

Closest competitors

Core i5-540M's performance relative to its closest rivals among notebook CPUs.


AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i5-540M is A8-5557M, which is nearly equal in speed and lower by 4 positions in our ranking.

Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i5-540M:

A10 Pro-7350B 105.93
A8-5550M 103.39
A8-5557M 100
Core i5-540M 100
A10-5745M 98.31
A8-6410 98.31
A10-4657M 97.46

Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i5-540M, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i5-540M in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 818 configurations using Core i5-540M in our database.

All comparisons with Core i5-540M

Community ratings

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


3.7 162 votes

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Questions & comments

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