G60JX CPU upgrade i5 430m to i5 540m worth it?

I've been looking at doing different upgrades to my laptop lately, right now I'm looking at doing a CPU upgrade from the stock i5-430M. I was thinking about going for a i7-620M but I guess for the price I might as well go for a i5-540M because the performance is negligable. But will there be a performance increase going to a 540M? the base speed would jump from 2.27ghz to 2.53ghz and to me just that seems worth it, but then when looking at max turbo it'd jump from 2.53ghz to 3.06ghz.

So to me it seems like it'd be worth while and from benchmarks I've seen it seems worth it, but what does everyone else think? and I don't really want to go to a i7-720QM cause the performance doesn't seem worth it, plus the heat and battery life.

 

I guess the better question is what are you going to be doing on the notebook that would need such speed. On my opinion, sinking $300 for a 10-15% improvement is not worth it. Also, an i7 is probably not going to be compatible with your notebook. For example, HP Envy 14 notebooks ship with 2 different boards, one for i3 and i5 CPUs, and a different board for the i7. This is due to the difference in the graphics capability on the processors themselves.

 

Well people have put in such CPU's as the i7-720QM into the G60JX and it also came with the i7 from ASUS so I know that there isn't any compatibility issues regarding doing an upgrade.

And as far as the price I wouldn't be buying a CPU for over $200 and would be selling the 430M for around $100 or a little less so the cost to me would be around $100 or so. And getting a 10-15% improvement is worth it to me.

Mainly I play games and do my homework on my laptop, such as Black OPs, BFBC2, Borderlands, Fallout NV, Just Cause 2, MOH, Mass Effect 2, Far Cry 2, Mafia 2, Metro 2033, StarCraft 2, and minecraft.

But yeah I wouldn't buy the CPU for over $200, there's one on fleabay that I was looking at for around $160 and a i7-620M that someone has on here for $210, so i donno.

 

In my opinion it is not fair to compare Intel Core i dual-core & quad-core based on the processor frequency. I have two different laptops with different processor; Dell with i7-720QM & Asus with i5-450M. When I played games, i7-720QM's temperature is not too high compared to i5-450M. Both temperatures actually the same - around 7X Celsius, highest can reached 8X Celsius (this include without cooling pad). If you see the heatsink on my Dell, you wouldn't believe it can cool down the i7 but it can. Actually this depend on the thermal paste you use. On the performance wise, I feel the quad-core does performed better than the dual-core - depend on the application you use, of course. If you want better battery life, dual-core is the best choice compared to quad-core. I much prefer UM processor if I want better battery life. If you want to stick with dual-core processor, I recommend i7-620M or i7-640M. I don't think upgrading to i5-540M from i5-430M is worth it though.

Happy New Year!
kizwan

 

Ok then, In that case, I would upgrade to the i5-540M, but not to the i7 because of shorter battery life, possible compatibility problems, and possible heating problems.

 

That's sorta what I was thinking, I know the i7's will fit and work but I'd rather keep the CPU under the 35w they probably planned the cooling system for, plus I just sorta don't need the i7 power, if I need that I'll use my desktop

 

I wouldn't bother upgrading at all - for that sort of money, get a great SSD, more ram ... anything, really, other than a processor upgrade.

And whoever says the dell 1557/8 series has adequate cooling is right. It's GREAT ... until you use the graphics card for anything other than 2D clocks.

 

i7-620M only need maximum TDP 35W similar with i5-540M. i7-620M is a dual-core processor, similar to i5-540M. Don't let the i7 at the beginning of the name confused you.

 

I'm actually well aware of the differences, plus the 1 extra mb of cache not to mention the extra money that involved in purchasing one. But thanks.

 

I did stick in a SSD the other day but took it out because I could do without my storage space, of course the week after I got a thing to turn my DVD drive into a harddrive spot...

But you figure buying one stick of 4GB ram now (and another later) and putting that in to make a total of 6GB would be more worth while?

 

Actually, I would purchase both RAM modules at one time. When I install ram, I try to use modules with the same specifications. I often go as far as trying to pick them from the same batch. Not only would the CPU like this a lot better, but you would actually see a big difference.

 

I was thinking about that, if I got one stick now I'd get the same brand later, but I was thinking about getting 2 sticks, just not sure if I want to drop that much for ram now seeing as I don't speculate I'll see much difference going from 4 to 8 gigs ram.