i7-720qm vs p8600?

I got a studio 1555 a few months ago, with p8600, now they are coming with the i7-720qm

Which is better, why, and how much better is it?

Do you think I am at a big disadvantage?

Is the i7-720qm core 2 duo as well, sorry I don't fully understand processors.

And what exactly is the i7 technology?

Any, why does it say 1.6GHz turbo up to 2.8GHz, what does this mean?

And, Yes, I know computer parts get outdated very quickly.

 

the i7 is a newer, faster cpu. it probably consumes more power than a P-series C2D and it's more expensive but is has definitely better performance as well..

 

The P series is better on the battery. Not to mention you will notice no upgrade of speed on the laptop if you game and use the pc as a normal pc. Transcoding, video/sound editing is one of the few areas you will notice a difference.

 

Well the gaming part is only partly true, games such as GTA4 woulld really benefit from having an i7

 

Are you sure about the lower battery on the i7? I heard that it they have better power management, so that idle power consumption would actually be lower (it can turn off the extra cores).

 

Th3van is absolutely correct.

The truth about the i7 CPU's might actually be better for battery life. Total power draw for them is higher, but that is assuming they are being stressed to 100%. For the average user, this is rarely the case. Whenever the CPU is not stressed to 100%, the i7 has speedstep technology which allows the CPU to idle non-used cores and save battery life. Furthermore, it also has turbo boost, which allows the cores to speed up their clockspeed when the CPU isn't stressed to 100% (up to 2.8 GHz for the 720qm).

Everyone who says the i7's are much faster than the Core 2 Duos aren't correct. In normal uses like multitasking and normal applications, the i7's wont be any faster than dual cores. Thats because the quad cores can only be taken advantage of in situations where quad-threading is supported, and the amount of programs that supports quad-threading is very small. Truth be told, there are still alot of programs that haven't even taken advantage of dual cores yet, let alone four of them. The only time you'll see a major speed increase is in high definition video transcoding (reformatting or editing an HD movie file for instance) or CPU intensive tasks. Generally, gaming is not CPU intensive, and most people get bottlenecked by a GPU far before their CPU matters. GTA IV does have a little support for multi-threading, but unless you're using a top of the line graphics setup then it won't impact your performance (because your graphics have already bottlenecked you).

So, for the normal user and average gamer, the i7 is not a major improvement. If you are a high-end user (which I doubt you are if you are asking questions here), then you will see a benefit.

Whether or not its worth it depends on which category you fall in, and how much it costs. The Core 2 Duos are plenty fast right now, and will continue to be fast for at least a few years. By that time, the i7's will be long forgotten.

 

Any newer mobile Core 2 Duo (with the exception of a few Core 2 Extreme CPUs) will be better on battery life than the Core i7 though the P series will be especially better.

Resource demanding games (especially newer ones such as GTA IV) and very intense multi-taskers should definitely notice a difference.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/172436/handson_intel_core_i7_920xm_laptop_field_test.html

As shown here, the Core i7 with a single GTX 280m beat a Core 2 Extreme M15x equipped with dual GTX 280m's (running in SLI) in real world frame rates (not to mention synthetic benchmarks as well).

They have better power management but none the less a greater power consumption, ESPECIALLY when under high loads. This can be witnessed by the 25W TDP on P series Core 2 Duos versus the 45W TDP on the Core i7 720QM. It does out do Core 2 Quads in power consumption by quite a bit though.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/09/18/intel-core-i7-for-laptops-first-review/

People who say the i7's are much faster than Core 2 Duos can certainly be correct. The issue isn't that potential performance isn't there; it is merely that developers do not currently utilize it. However, because typical lag-times between hardware development and optimized software development, it will likely be some time before a Core i7 reaches its maximum potential for general usage (by which time it will be deprecated).

That said, Remember turbo boost will upscale for unused cores (not to mention each core may run up to two threads simultaneously). Whether or not this will be highly noticeable I can't say though. However, the number of applications which will utilize multiple cores in the future will only grow.

 

Guys....guys....someone else brought this up on a thread earlier.

Clock-for-clock, i7's are faster. Forget dual, quad, hyper-threading.

"It won't make a difference because it just has more cores; you'll never use those anyways." = not true; it can make a difference because it's faster per-clock. The argument then becomes when does a higher speed translate into diminishing returns?

~Ibrahim~

 

Am I the only one who thinks this is an apples-to-oranges kind of comparison? It's not as extreme as comparing an Atom to an Opteron, but it's clear that these 2 CPUs are targetted towards different types of users.

 

Faster is a very deceiving term. Yes, the i7's are 'faster', but the key word here is noticeably faster.

For the average user while multi-tasking, that 'clock for clock increase' counts for fractions of a second. Its not a noticeable increase. Put it on the scale of an hour long task, and you can see some recognizable results (on the scale of minutes). However, like I said, the average user won't benefit from this speed increase.

Yeah, the support for quad cores will only grow... but its not going to be here in the next year. By 2011, I expect a good deal of programs to utilize multi-threading, but by next year the i7's will be seeing their replacements already. The result? By the time the i7 can be taken full advantage of, we will be talking about it in past tense, the same way we are talking about dual cores and dual-threading right now.

 

Abit confused here, exactly how many cores are there in i7 ? 4 ? 2?

 

The i7 has four cores (hence quad core, quad threading)

The Core 2 Duos have 2 cores (dual core, dual threading)

 

Don't forget about the turbo mode, up to 2.8ghz on the 720, meaning that if you are using a program that doesn't have support for quadcores it can ramp the speed up on the cores it can use in this case up to 2.8ghz. This makes it attractive over competing dual cores.

Anandtech did a good review of the i5's which support Turbo mode, desktop i7's do but it wasn't implemented as well as the i5's.

 

Core i7 CPUs are quad core CPUs that support Hyper-threading and as a result can execute up to 8 threads synchronously (which is why operating systems may report 8 CPUs/Cores). It can also upscale/downscale clock speed when cores are unused.

 

@OP: Well since you already got your machine, does it do everything you want it to do? If so, then you're fine. The allure of new technology is hard to resist, but you have to remember that sometimes, if you're not careful, you're going to overkill your needs and that could end up bad for your wallet.

IIRC, i7s, while having a good price at Dell, are still more expensive than Core 2 Duo laptops and noticeably so(I think at least 200-300$ more here in Canada). Are they worth that upgrade? Maybe so, maybe not, depends who's looking, but a 200-300$ boost in price might simply not be within some people's budget, regardless if it's worth it or not.