E6410: cpu and graphics options

hi!

i am about to buy an e6410 (since the e6420 takes forever to be announced), and i have to issues. maybe someone can help me : )

to me most important is general system performance and power consumption. that means i am not interested in particularly high peak CPU power, but general quickness of the overall system. that's why i will definitely take an SSD instead of HDD. but i wonder which CPU is best. in this case price becomes an issue too. i don't want to spend "unneeded" extra for a CPU, which might not really make a big difference performance wise, but will cost more and consume more power.

i mostly do video editing, and general application multitasking with DTP software like indesign, photoshop, etc.

consulting the dell germany website i basically seem to have the choice between the i5-560M, the i5-580m, and i7-640M cpus. the latter adding about 200 euro to the price tag. is it worth it?

also i THINK i already made a decision towards intel graphics instead of the offered nvidia nvs 3100M. are there issues i should consider when going for the intel graphics? plus there seem to be two choices for intel: intel hd graphics and mobile intel integrated graphics media accelerator x4500hd. should i go for the latter? it seems older than "hd graphics" (?). maybe i don't understand the whole concept...

thanks so much!

matthias

 

When the Core i series CPUs were first released, the i7 was found to use more power than the i5. The power gap may have narrowed due to production improvements but, overall, the i7 has a bigger cache which will need a little more power. In additional, production tolerances mean that there are significant power consumption differences between CPUs with the same model number: Intel's power ratings are a maximum. I would tend to opt for the i5. You can compare the CPU performance at notebookcheck. The fastest CPU in a range always has a price premium which is not justified by the performance gain.

There is only one Intel graphics option. They call it the HD graphics. The actual graphics chip is very similar to (same as?) the X4500 but, because it is mounted in the same package as the CPU and memory controller, it runs much faster. However, the Dell configurator may list two options: Intel graphics with PC card slot and Intel graphics with Express Card slot.

John

 

Hi John,

thanks so much for your information. You are confirming what I've thought: the option to get a X4500HD graphics adapter with the i5 seems to be a misprint.

The notebookcheck link was helpful!

Matthias