A little confused about i5 and i7 CPUs

The i5 520 runs at 2.4GHz and the i7 720 runs at 1.6GHz. If a game were developed to only take advantage of a dual core processor, would it run better on the 520 than it would the 720? (assuming the rest of the system specs were the same)

 

The 520 has a two core turbo of 2.8 and the 720 has a two core turbo of 2.4, so yes, it would be a little faster on the i5.

 

Thanks for the input. So according to Intel's spec sheets ( i5 and i7), the 520 can turbo boost to 2.93GHz and the 720 can go to 2.8GHz. So as far as the 2.93 and 2.8 are concerned, will they produce a significant difference in games if the CPU is ever the limiting factor? I also see that the i5 is manufactured via a 32nm process versus the 45nm process of the i7. Does that mean the i5 consumes less power and generates less heat as well?

 

No, you won't notice a difference in games. Yes, they are built on a 32nm process and use less power. The power advantage comes more from only being a dual core and not a quad though.

If you're only worried about games and basic use, an i5 will be more than enough for you.

 

Agreed, i7 is somewhat overkill unless your using highly multi-threaded apps on a regular basis. I turned off hyper-threading and noticed no performance hit, on Vista 64 though. Looking back I personally may have gone with a high clocked i5 instead, but the $$ gap has closed quite bit between i5 and i7 as of late.

 

Future proofing your machine never hurts....

I've not seen too many times where my machine just sits there not utilizing all 4 cores (8 with HT). Either way, i5's and i7's are very good CPU's and you should be happy with any of them.

 

Thanks again for help! I plan to do some light video editing for youtube so I guess the i7 would come in handy for that.

 

Using them effectively though? If you don't have two cores pinned at 100%, then that work that the others cores are doing could easily be done on the first two as well.

Quads are most useful for video work, encoding, audio production, folding, and rendering. If you do these things regularly, then grab the quad.

 

Light editing for Youtube, the i5 is still fine. It's not AS fast as an i7 in pro-level tools, but it's still very fast. As in, I can transcode a 480p DVD to high-quality H.264 in faster than real-time with my i5-540m.

Choose on battery life vs. performance. Which is more important to you in a laptop? Because the i7 versions of the Envy I have run for about 2 hours on battery, but mine runs for about 3 on the same settings. Are you willing to sacrifice 33% battery for marginal performance increases in only a few specific instances?

If you do a lot of video work, especially HD, or if you do a lot of photo processing or other things that are heavily threaded and CPU limited, you should go with the i7. Otherwise, I would recommend the i5 and spending your money on an SSD or something that will give you a more palpable performance increase.

 

a lot of enhanced user experience depends on where you are coming from.

if you were like me, who updated from celeron M to an eye seven, you are going to love the ride!

Regards,
i7 fanboy!

 

The i5 is going to be faster in dual threaded games, maybe (depending on the OS usage.

But a lot of games show an advantage now to tri cores so having that extra core or two will help in the future.

 

i7 always ... but really futureproofing of i7 helps.. anyways , dual threaded games won't be much more slower.. u need a better GPU for games anyways.

 

If I had the money, I would be hard pressed not to go with the i7, assuming it's an actual quad core mobile i7 that is. The i5s are plenty powerful though and at a good price point.

 

If you look at the recommended requirements for some of the top titles released lately you will see Quad Core. I was quite surprised to see this requirement becoming more popular lately, it sure took long enough.

 

hehe i was more confused about the 620m, it's an i7 yet dual core with less cache and crazy clockspeeds... sounds like it should have been the top end of the i5 series.

i mean it seems like i5's are the gamers cpu whereas i7 are the heavy multi-tasking while keeping performance kind of cpu. if i didn't do so much video conversion/muxing i would have gone for the 620m instead of the 920xm and what's crazy is, they both perform around the same in games.

 

ive been loving my i7 720qm until i saw the new sandybrige ghz boost to the new 2720qm :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-upgrades/508786-sandy-bridge-cpu-lineup.html

2.2 on 8 cores is faster than the 940xm

i do video editing on powerdirector , muvee, and premiere pro and this would have been great.
gaming-wise though it would make no difference.

 

its 4 cores with 8 threads... hyperthreading.
do not forget with the xm's you can have max turbo while using all cores/threads... yes that means 940xm @ 3.3ghz while using all cores is still faster.
nice boost in core speed for each model and VERY NICE power ratings!.

 

can you post a link showing the 940xm @ 3.3 with all cores, or even 4 cores?
iirc, the 940 can be o/c'ed from its base 2.13 but not by that much on 8 or even 4 cores.

 

3.3ghz is not overclocking it, 3.3ghz is standard turbo. using throttlestop (by unclewebb) from these forums you can manually set the multi and set the turbo multi for how many cores are active.

throttlestop on xtreme cpu's will allow you to set your multi to +1 from the max, this tells the cpu to run at max turbo regardless of how many cores are active. i'm probably saying it wrong but you get the idea. it will only throttle back if you are reaching the power limiter set by the tdp.... but you can increase that too for extreme cpu's, if you dare

here's my 920xm example, stock clocks... i was encoding video using handbrake at the time.

 

I say go for a i7 quad if you have the choice, it's more future proof and provided with sandy bridge early next year dual cores will be made almost pointless even on the mobile segment (except if you're looking for maximal battery life) I can foresee more and more software optimization for 4 cores.

 

I just went for an i5, because of a variety of factors all related to gaming. Well, and price too, but I'd recommend sticking with the i5 for now. I don't understand arguments for 'future proofing', as in 3 or 4 years you can probably just buy a new processor with the money you'll save going with the more median choice now. computers are never future proofed.

 

Exactly, with either BIOS enhancements (AW) or Throttlestop or both, i7 extreme chips are just destroyers of worlds now. 3.2/3.33 running on all 4 cores is amazing. They beat down all the quad cores by a big margin and smack down the 620/640 in dual core tasks. Thanks to UncleWebb, the Extreme chips definitely earn their title.

 

I say i5...it runs cooler...better for games...etc. It's just a better deal overall. I went from a 920xm to a 520m and it's nice that the 520m idles in the 30s...much cooler than the 50s the 920xm would run. This also translates into the 5870m running cooler in my laptop as well. Just depends what you do I guess. They've been saying to future proof with a quad since the Q6600...but then they just come out with better quads that force you to upgrade any way...

There is no future proofing. I wouldn't doubt that my system provides enough power to game comfortably for at least 4 years with the dual core. And unless you work for a studio, you don't need a quad for video editing I'm guessing.

 

You won't be able to without getting a new motherboard for your laptop which would be a real pain in the or rather near impossible. Sandy bridge will introduce a new socket in 5 months that in the best case will last for ~2y if its die shrink maintains compatibility and then whatever new architecture will be released will probably require a change of the socket, again.

It's also inaccurate to say there is no such thing as future proof in computers. There are better times to buy. Best example for instance is when core architecture & compatible socket 775 were released, you could stick a 8800GT in it a while after, run everything smooth for quite some time, upgrade to a better CPU at a minimal cost and then rock on again for a while, so yeah, patience was highly rewarded. If you went like "to hell with core & dual CPU, I'm getting a netburst P4 right now instead" then you were screwed. Although I'm not saying this is a similar case at all, I'm just being a pedantic .

 

but "everyone" knew that the p4 was really long in the tooth. that is definitely an anomaly.

usually, computer tech moves at a very steady (fast) rate.