i7 920XM What's the difference?

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Besides the price what's the difference?

 

One is a qualification sample, the other an engineering sample. The ES is an older sample than the QS. That is all. I'm pretty sure the ES 920xm are very stable though.

 

Thanks tijo. I'm going to purchase one within a week or two. They are amazing cpu's for laptops. Can't wait to see BF3 improvement as it is a beast of a game and really uses the cpu cores.

 

It really depends on the game, for me the 920xm made the most difference in CFD simulations and civ 5. I'm also a lucky man to have landed an OEM one for $350 + shipping.

Now that i said that, i suppose i should go hide in a bunker to avoid reprisals...

You should also find out how much you can OC it.

 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you will not see any difference in BF3. But if you do any kind of video editing or audio ripping, you will see a substantial improvement. Most games are GPU dependent, and right now the 5870M is the weak link. One thing I did notice though, is that most games run a bit smoother.

I have mine running 3.2ghz on all 4 cores 24/7 with a minor bump in voltage. I snatched mine up for $212 on ebay, so I'm extremely happy with it. Next to the SSD drive, this was the 2nd best upgrade on my JH.

 

I've noticed that a lot of G73JH owners here at NBR prefer 920XM than 940XM. Is the 920XM better in terms of bang for the buck?

 

I do video editing so it will help there. BF3 is extremely CPU intensive and big gains have been shown in quad's over dual's and when quads are overclocked there noticeable gains. BF3 will uses 90-95% of my Q6600 @3.2GHz. I noticed big gains in FPS vs stock setting 10-15fps. It is maybe the only game out right now that will stress both the cpu and gpu. I also play iRacing and a few other simulations. I agree however that in many cases there will not be any or much of a difference in performance. I am going to look at my cpu usage on the i7 720qm and report back.

 

Unless you are really lucky yes the 920XM is by far the best bang for the buck. The only reson I am doing it is I have another G73JH I am parting out. I have 2 720QM's, an extra 5870m, 2 1600x900 screens (upgrade to 1080p) and many other parts. So I can pretty much do this for next to nothing.

 

So I'm assuming these observations are based on personal experience? Does an upgrade from a 720QM (or 740QM) to a 920XM really make no difference at all in the average frame rate in Battlefield 3? That would be a dealbreaker for me because I'm actually contemplating pulling the trigger on a 920XM specifically for Battlefield 3 since I've heard people say that Battlefield 3 is quite taxing on the CPU.

 

BF3 is very demanding on a cpu in the online play but not so much in campaign. Dual core vs quad core BF3 has twice the frame rate and overclocking also will help your frame rate.

 

I noticed a difference in Skyrim and BF3 when I had my 920XM but you have to realise the difference will only be visible in games that either consume the power available on all 4 cores like BF3 or games with a frostbite engine or are poorly ported and require more oompf from the CPU like Skyrim.

In terms of benchmarking, stress testing, video editing, 3D work, copying the 920XM is a pro CPU compared to the 720QM because you are able to double the performance from 1.6ghz to say 3.2ghz on all 4 cores instead of it clocking itself down like the QM models of old. It also is the last CPU at the moment that allows the full ability to customise what it is doing using Throttlestop.

I pondered for a good while and started up a post that led to many considering the purchase. In the end I went for it and it outperformed what I expected and burnt a hole in hell the thing ran so hot I had it comfortably benchmarking at around 3.6ghz on all 4 cores and not topping out above 90oC.

Too many pro's not enough con's with this purchase as we go into 2012 the 720QM is not enough for gaming, ports are becoming more and more common. Pair it with an SSD and the world stops spinning on its axis.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/565573-920xm-purchase.html

 

3.6GHz on all 4 cores is sweet! I hope to buy one in the near future specifically when its price drops somehow. Is swapping of CPU in this beast not that hard (given that I have already dismantled the whole thing)?

 

No different to repasting it requires a complete disassembly.

You can pick one up now for 2-$300 or 1-£200 depending where you are, dont bother with the OEM versions get a QS they run exactly the same the only difference is price and stepping.

 

Ahaaaaa, now I see it. Yiddo is Dallers hehe

XM's for the win people. No matter how you put it, Everything runs much faster with one of these babies under the hood.
I think everybody that upgraded to one of these will agree with me on that.

They simply Rock !!

period

 

Yeah, they do. The won't do much for max fps in most games, but i find that i have less slowdowns with the xm. I could also laugh in the face of undergrad students trying to run COMSOL simulations on their puny dual cores with 4GB of RAM. Not that i laugh in their face, nothing shows on the outside...

Student comes in: can't run the simulation.

Me: runs the simulation on the G73, dunno what you're talking about , go use the university's computers that have the software installed...

 

I've had both the 720 and now currently the 920. I'm telling you from my own personal experience that it makes little to no difference in BF3 other than slighter smoother game play. This is not due to higher FPS, just more consistent FPS. The weak link, believe it or not, is the 5870M. While the 5870M is almost top of the line for laptops, it's more bottom of the middle of the road GPU's in desktops.

In other words, the GPU is the bottleneck. The i720 is more than adequate for BF3. It's better than the Q6600. It doesn't matter how much faster the CPU can process information, The GPU can't go any faster. To get noticeable improvement, OC the GPU.

I'm not knocking the upgrade at all. I did it knowing it would make little to no gains in gaming performance. But... everything else I do is so much faster. Loading into Windows, loading programs, ripping DVD movies for my iPhone, ripping CD's. It's blazing fast. Expect to pay around $200-$300 for a QS/ES version. These are totally fine. From what I've seen, all will do 3.2GHz on all 4 cores with minimal tweaking.

 

Is it the way I speak Or my love for the dark side!

 

So, as I understand it, you're saying that a CPU upgrade won't make any difference in the average FPS, but will raise the minimum FPS so that it is closer to the average more of the time? I'm guessing that the CPU will only really affect frame rate at lower resolutions and settings when the frame rate is higher. At higher resolutions/settings when FPS is lower, the GPU is the primary bottleneck and determinant of performance.

I've been looking at CPU scaling benchmarks in Battlefield 3, and it seems to me that everything points to Battlefield 3 not stressing the CPU as much as people had anticipated. I mean, first-generation Core i3s are pulling in the same average FPS as Sandy Bridge i7s when paired with the same GPU. The CPUs that seem to really cause a drop in frames are the old dual core AMD Athlon II x2s. In fact, one reviewer disabled the cores incrementally on an i7-2600k and an AMD FX-8150 and found that even when all but 2 cores were disabled, the frames were almost identical to when all cores were enabled. I wonder how many people actually upgraded their CPUs just for Battlefield 3.

 

More so on the lower frames but it can effect the upper as well, as mentioned this relates really to games that are ported as consoles are more CPU intensive.

The CPU in Battlefield 3 may not effect the frame rate as much as you think, it may stabalise the frames more so less drops when big explosions go off because of its ability to handle the physics processing faster etc. Frostbite 2 makes uses of multi core technology but the GPU is still the main processing factor when it comes to FPS.

At the end of the day you are limited to upgrades, apart from an SSD which has no effect to gaming performance only load times the 920XM is your next best upgrade apart from the attempts at implementing a 6970M but several have been met with failure and others still in testing, not to mention the costly outcome should it fail.

Have a look through my thread that I posted on the other page or in my sig it covers so many questions on performance and at the end of the day you have to decide if it will be worthwhile, for most of us it really was and I think it will be for you. The 720QM is fading fast.

 

+1 ^^Plus one^^