How bad is an i5 for gaming, really?

I've got the W110ER in my sig, which I built from a barebones, and essentially it was never meant to have a power-sucking, burning 2630qm in it. Playing BF3, it sees temps of 92-94 degrees frequently, and does not turbo because of temps. Before it becomes worthless, I'm considering selling it and replacing with an Ivy Bridge i5. I'm sure I'd be able to run with turbo boost enabled with acceptable temps, but I'm worried about performance, specifically in BF3. I can't seem to find any benchmarks online that reference multiplayer using dual-core CPUs, let alone mobile parts. I'm likely not going to have any issues - the i5 3320m rates higher than my old Q9550 in some tests - but I just want to be sure before I go and do something stupid.

 

can you do a core ix quad core with a lower tdp?

 

Apparently I can get a 3610qm for $250, which is technically 45W but according to the W110ER owner's thread runs much cooler than my 2630, with full turbo enabled (3.1ghz vs. the lowly 2.0 of my 2630). I don't know when that happened; these were $400+ a few weeks ago.

I'm probably just going to do this and sell the 2630.

 

I would recommend upgrading rather than downgrading, even though that's a total 180 from your intention 30 seconds ago

if you can get a cooler quad core, you may be satisfied. It may even be faster, and you could potentially underclock / undervolt to pull off even more heat.

Alternatively, as a cost saving measure, you could try doing an underclock / undervolt on your current part.

 

I honestly didn't know the price of 3610s slipped that low. It's almost a no-brainer at that point.

 

your 2630qm shouldn't be anywhere near those temps even when playing BF3...

 

I realise you have probably chosen the 3610qm but I have an m14x with an i5 3210m

I play BF3, Shogun2, SC2, WEE, COD BO and they all play great. I am rarely bottlenecked by the i5 even running my 650m at 1100/2300.

Running afterburner OSD during BF3 at 1080p high textures and the rest medium I average 45fps. I get the odd dip to 30fps in 64man servers which is clearly due to the cpu as I see the gpu usage drop from 99% to about 80%

 

i5 if perfectly fine for gaming with a couple exceptions.

1. BF3 favours quad-core systems (still very playable on i5)
2. Witcher 2 graph showed users with quad-cores had over 50% more FPS (saw this in the M14X section last year)

Personally, I wouldn't go out of my way to replace the CPU. I haven't seen any other pieces of information that indicate other games would significantly excel on an i7 versus an i5 besides the two games I listed (one being significant).

 

I have a w150er with a i5 3210m, and the GDDR5 650M at 1100 is always the bottleneck to me. You can use throttlestop to unlock the turbo, and I never go about 78deg CPU and 68 GPU with furmark and prime95 running.
(I do have IC diamond)

 

BF3 sucks on an i5, especially one with the turbo disabled (like in the w110er). Stuttering everywhere. Don't get an i5. Your CPU is fine, and your temps are fine (for the w110er, at least). An IVB quad will still run at 90c+ and the performance gain is marginal.

Just make sure your paste job is good and prop the computer up when you game.

 

his cooling solution is much worse than your double fan g53, it may happen..

 

I wasn't comparing it to my double fans.

I had an i7 2630qm that had poor ventilation (my rc512) compared to my g53 and it NEVER reached anywhere above 87 on BF3.

Hes doing something wrong with his laptop if hes getting anywhere above 90.

 

He's not. It's a 11" laptop with a 45w CPU and a 650m. Obviously you haven't owned or used the laptop before, why are you insisting that he's doing something wrong?

 

*looks at my sig*

youre right, I never owned or used one.

You also realize that the 3610qm is also a 45w cpu, right? Yes its a smaller architecture and yes it will produce less heat, but even then it wouldn't be a drastic decrease from his mid 90's sandybridge.

OP said he built it from barebones, maybe he did a bad job pasting it.

Hes reaching mid 90's on his CPU without even using turbo (as he claims) there is obviously a problem here.

 

Even if the temps are out of the normal range, why does that mean he would be doing something wrong? Are you assuming it would be his fault? I'm a bit confused.

Sure, *maybe* he did a bad job pasting the thing, or maybe he didn't. There are a variety of reasons that the temperature of his laptop may be higher than yours, many of them are not related to anything the OP has done.

Ambient temperature is one obvious variable that comes to mind (among many). That can have a significant effect on temps.

 

I agree there are alot of variables here, I'm under the assumption that he's playing in an air conditioned room after he sees his 2630qm burning up, so the ambient temperature should be room temperature or below.

Other than a bad repaste job, I cant see why his 2630qm would burn up that high without turbo boost.

Edit* yes I did take into consideration his 11'' chassis, the most I would expect from that enclosure would be 89-90

 

defective cpu, defective fan, other components generating different amounts of heat in the chassis (hdd might run hot, etc), those are a few possible reasons (among many others) where the OP is not responsible for the temperature

 

I guess we just need more information from the OP, I probably jumped too soon on that conclusion but I guess I trusted OP's judgement on the parts (I mean he said he built it barebones) and assumed it was just a bad repaste.

 

also, i just looked at your sig, i don't see the w110er

there's also a relatively elaborate review on this site that suggests that the temperatures may be normal: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...clevo-w110er-first-look-review.html#noiseheat

 

i stand corrected.

 

I've (re)pasted twice using ICD7. Both times, I've put a small line of paste on the CPU die, ending about 1/2" before the edge of the die. When I put the heatsink down on it, the paste spreads itself over the entire CPU die, but doesn't really smear itself over the edge. I believe I am doing this correctly.

I swapped the 2630qm out for an i3-2310m I had lying around to see if that would be adequate; long story short it isn't. I did, however, get max temps of low 70s with that CPU, so I believe my cooling system is working properly, the 2630qm is just too hot of a CPU.

Reading HTWingNut's review, he got max temps of 92 on his 3610qm, I believe that was with turbo enabled, which you can force with throttlestop. My 2630 gets close to overheating with turbo disabled, so if a 3610 will run at 3.1ghz (I think that's full turbo), that's more than a marginal gain over a 2.0ghz Ivy Bridge chip.

 

yeah disregard my posts, never realized it got that hot. was the w110er intended for gaming as its primary purpose?

 

Its a Clevo, so I would assume so.

EDIT: Unless I misunderstood the question. If you're asking if gaming is MY primary use for the system, no not really I guess. I purchased it primarily for the form factor, but at the same time I really don't want to buy another laptop for quite some time. I'm perfectly fine with lowering gfx settings to make the 650m stay relevant as long as possible, especially on an 11 inch screen, but there's not a whole lot I can do if the CPU starts to become the bottleneck.

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Agree with the post above by Syberia.

The i5 will not be bad for gaming.. you won't notice dramatic difference from a i5 dual to a i7 quad, but there will surely be one

 

don't worry bro you are not doing anything wrong, it is just that 2630qm is a little too hot for w110er I guess, maybe you can go with an even better chip compared to 3610, as long as you won't be doing a ton of RTS gaming or professional app using cpu, I don't think you need quad core either, it is a crazy overkill for most of gaming / applications. I would go with a 3rd gen i5 with lower power requirement, good luck!

 

2630QM is not a little too hot. I keep under 85C with intense gaming without my mod.

 

^^ that is a little too hot my xm never goes past 75C during gaming.. (aw cooling though)

 

You're not gaming on what amounts to a netbook. My 14" Lenovo kept the CPU and GPU at low 80s max, with turbo, before I shorted out the motherboard.

HTWingNut, do you think there is something wrong with my cooling, or that the 2630 simply produces more heat than the 3610, as is my guess? From the desktop side of things, I know my Sandy Bridge i5 runs cooler than my Nehalem i5 did, despite both being 95W quad core parts.

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oh no bro I am at your side, htwingnut was probably referring to his old hp laptop, that's why I said it, I was misunderstood

btw htwingnut, you are right, it is not a little too hot compared to beast processors, but I meant it is hot for an 11" notebook, right?

I am just saying 2630qm is a warm enough processor (45W), definitely with good cooling solutions it will be stone cold, but in 11" laptop, I wouldn't be surprised if it produces +90C.. hell, with my gf's 13" zenbook the 17W processor can get warm..

 

He has 3610qm in his 11" laptop, though, same model as mine. If it really runs 10 degrees cooler and faster too, then its a worthwhile upgrade. 85 with turbo on is not worrisome. 95 with turbo off is.

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He did some cooling mods though, I think.

 

BF3 has been tested to have identical FPS from an overclocked i7-2600K all the way down to the i3 dual cores. Those of you saying the game needs a quad core are delusional.

That said, purposely choosing a dual core this close to the next Xbox/Playstation would be a huge mistake.

 

Where? All of the BF3 tests I've seen are single player, which isn't nearly as CPU intensive as multiplayer.

I had an i5-2450m. It caused the framerate to dip into the 10s and 20s on 64man maps. Dunno how it gets more clear cut than that.

 

I read somewhere that sandybridge (dont know if it pertains to only i7's) throttles between 780mhz and 2ghz and that causes the dip in fps. I know that happens to me on occasion on TF2 and other games. I think Throttlestop prevents that from happening.

Also this is a guys i3 2100 (600mhz less than your i5) and its running pretty smoothly for a dual core.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNiYnbwA2Ng&feature=related

 

I do, but even without it, with a repaste and prop it up, it runs less than 85C.

^^^ This!

I'd like to compare the same MP map with 64 players with an Ivy i7 quad and i5 dual. From my DV6z even I can tell you that the CPU has significant effect on performance at least with slower CPU's and dual cores.

 

Bought a 3610qm for $230. I'll also pick up a couple of RAM heatsinks to mirror HTWingNut's cooling mod. Minus the USB fan shoehorned into the bottom panel, of course.

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Not gonna lie, the shoehorned cooling mod is though lol.

 

Not sure if I'm allowed to do this in this thread, but if anyone is interested in buying a 2630qm, PM me. Won't be able to ship it until the 3610 arrives, though.

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I just ordered one of these with an i3-2370M (2.40GHz). I selected that to stay within a reasonable budget since Ive just purchased a 680m for my P170HM, but I also want the best possible battery time and temps on this one. For my uses, a quad would defeat the objectives.

Concerning many people talking about BF3 performing better with a Quad, I wonder if they have this in their minds due to this being the case when it was first released. After the Devs optimized and fixed the problem, people who owned Dual Core could play with similar performance.

I wonder if this 'BF3 needs a Quad' is just a myth unless they are referring to multiplayer only.

 

I linked a youtube url that has a dude playing it with his i3 (albeit it being a desktop version though). As long as you have a strong graphics card, BF3 is well optimized to run on a dual core Int"i" series cpu.

 

Just an update for anyone who cares. I received the 3610qm today (and UPS seemingly did their best to destroy the package before it reached me, but ultimately failed) and just played a few rounds of BF3. The highest temperature I saw on the CPU (without turbo, so far) was 81 and the GPU did not pass 75 degrees. Despite sharing the same 45W TDP, the 3610qm was almost a whole 15 degrees cooler under heavy CPU/GPU load, also maintaining a constant 60 fps throughout the test in almost all circumstances, and keep in mind this is still with turbo disabled. By comparison, the 2630qm dropped down to low 40s at times.

Next I will use Throttlestop to force turbo boost, and I have a feeling I will still maintain temps under 90 degrees, which is the maximum I'd consider safe. I'll also be installing copper RAM heatsinks for better cooling, as soon as they arrive from eBay.

Needless to say, I'm quite happy with the upgrade, and glad I did not settle for a dual-core.

 

That's interesting. Didn't expect the temperature difference to be that big.

 

Did you perhaps use better thermal compound?

 

ICD7 applied pretty much the same way both times. A thin line applied to the length of the CPU and GPU down the middle of the die and pressed into place with the heatsink assembly. It even came from the same tube both times.

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I am lucky enough to have an i5 & i7 m14x r2 in my possesion. I will test some BF3 32 & 64 man servers later to compare. From my initial findings, the i7 makes a racket in comparison with the i5 even with tb disabled

Edit - just tested a few games:

BF3 48man server - massive advantage to the quad here. I set it to 900p medium/high settings and rarely droped below 60fps. The i5 is very sporadic in the same situation with lots of dips into the low 30s, it makes the game feel quite jerky

Shogun 2 - 720p benchmark was about 5% in favour of the quad.

Arma2 - was surprised here in that the quad was similar in frames to the i5 but I think this is because the game is so gpu bound and poorly coded

 

The i7-3610QM barely exceeds the 35W TDP envelope which is the only reason it's binned as a 45W. It is a cool running and high performing chip. If you don't need the slight OC (I think 400MHz which is limited by TDP anyhow) or the extra on die features, it's an awesome bang for the buck. Glad you made the choice and shared your results.