E6320 Questions

I'm getting close to purchasing one of these and have a few questions:

1. The setup I'm considering has the i5 2520 as baseline. Upgrades to to the i5 2540 is $50 and to the i7 2620 is $150. Are any of the upgrades worth the extra money wrt performance? How much would battery life suffer with the higher performing cpu's?

2. I'm planning on getting the Intel wireless 6300 card - is this 3 antennae? Also, even with this option, the
Dell Wireless™ DW5630 Multi-mode HSPA-EVDO Mini Card (Gobi™ 3000) is also provided - I thought that you couldn't get the high end wireless card if this card was also selected. Is this correct?

Thanks,
Harvey

 

1. See notebookcheck to compare the performance of the different CPUs. On paper the different CPUs all have the same power rating while in reality there is variation between individual CPUs in terms of both idle and under load power consumption.

2. I can't think of a logical reason for the WAN card options being dictated by your WWAN card (there should be enough room for all the antennae). However, sometimes these decisions are not logical.

John

 

John, thanks for the link. It looks like the i7 may be about 10% faster (and have hyperthreading which may or may not be useful) than the I5's - just not clear if it's worth the $150 price premium. It also looks like the battery life and heat dissapation should be the same for both.

Thanks for the input.
Harvey