Intel is the market leader in manufacturing desktop and notebook processors, but is struggling to keep up with Qualcomm, MediaTek and NVIDIA in the mobile SoC market where ARM-based solutions reign. To combat that, Intel has introduced the Broadwell family of mobile processors aimed at improving performance while reducing power consumption and heat.
The 5500U is a dual-core, 2.4 GHz notebook CPU that offers impressive performance for its size and price. It beats last year's 15 W Core i7-4500U (Haswell) by about 5-15% in single-threaded applications and is comparable to the 28W Core i5-4258U (Haswell).
Thanks to Intel's improvements in AVX throughput, this CPU also excels in threaded workloads such as rendering and encoding. In fact, it's the fastest dual-core laptop CPU we've tested thus far, but unless you plan to use your notebook for serious gaming, there are many more suitable options for the money.
The 5500U is based on the 14 nm Broadwell architecture, featuring 2 processing cores and 4 MB of L3 cache. It has a TDP of 15 W and operates at a maximum temperature of 105°C. It supports DDR3 memory, and has a PCI-Express Gen 2 connection to the graphics card. Intel's HD Graphics 5000 integrated graphics solution is supported. This processor was released by Intel on 5 January 2015 at a recommended retail price of $393. It is compatible with motherboards that support the Socket 1168 specification. Intel does not recommend overclocking this processor.
