Ivy i5 vs i7 vs sandy i7 with nividia 650

Which would be my best bet. I know the ivy i7 would be most powerful but how much of a gaming difference is there from the other two. The sandy i7 will save me 80 and still delivers quad core to be better then an ivy i5 plus I hear the jump doesn't effect battery like it was supposed to. The ivy i5 would give me the best battery and be cheapest but would be the least powerful.

This would be in a Asus N56 from xotic or gentech with the nividea 650 with 2gb ram (gddr3 not 5)

Games most likely played are...
Civilization V
Portal 1 and 2
Star wars: the old republic
Port Royal

Nothing too demanding but I would like to play them at the full 1080p the Asus screen has. I don't know if the higher pixals would effect the CPU or gpu so any advice is welcome.

P.S.
If you plan on suggesting other comps bear in mind I want only a 15 incher with a numeric keypad, 1080, and under 1.3 in thick. (For college) looks are also important.

 

Games most likely to be GPU bound. Don't think you'd notice a major difference in the performance of most games with the i7 vs i5.

I'm benchmarking my new laptop I ordered as soon as it arrives. 650M is a capable GPU from what I've read. Can't wait to try it out

 

Been reading in the M18xR2 thread that some IVB i7-quads have partially unlocked multipliers. So it might be worth spending the $80 more to get SB->IVB 15% more performance + gains from unlocked multis.

 

It won't make any difference. But I believe the GPU might be too weak to handle 1080p well.

BTW, thank you Asus for being one of the only (the only ?) company to put crappy graphics memory on an otherwise perfectly fine GPU, that helps . A lot.

 

the aw have unlocked multi because of the xtu that it comes with

 

Answer --> depends on the software or game. BF3 example I5 (4 thread) vs I7 (8thread) = little difference. Games like Arma 2, Civ5, Skyrim use more CPU bandwidth therefore more cores = better performance.

 

So the 1080 would require the i7. So on to ivy vs sandy. What are unlocked multipliers? And why would civ5 require more cpu bandwidth then bf3. Also, how would sandy effect the USB all being 3.0. From what I understand 3.0 is built in ivy but not sandy where it is external?

 

It really depends on if $80 is a lot to you or not. If it's no big deal to spend the extra money to get the Ivy i7, then go ahead. If you'd rather spend it on something else, like a better GPU or more RAM or an SSD (128gb models are fast approaching $80 with recent sales), a Sandy Bridge i7 will be more than adequate. You can even drop down to an i5 and probably be fine for now, but I wouldn't personally recommend it.

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Samsung & Clevo 11.6" too.

Alienware & Clevo 14" are the only ones that have GDDR5 that I know of?

 

Nop. HP dv6, Samsung series 7 (both 15" and 17"), Clevo W150ER, MSI GE60/70 among others have GDDR5. Dell will feature the GT 640M GDDR5 on their new XPS 15. It's perfectly fine in a 15" or a 17" format (and considering their current designs are quite thick compared to the competition) but Asus are a bunch of cheapskates - and have been for quite a while frankly, at least enough for me to lose interest in them.

 

It's not going to help you with the base i7-3610QM. Need the i7-3720QM. Per Difference between 3610 and 3720qm (Meaker)

 

indeed you need at least the 3720qm, it was much like what they did last year as well.

but you need those xtu profiles

If Im wrong I know you will correct me

 

If i buy an ssd it will be a 512gb one thus the chances of it are slim i dont know my exact finances yet, a lot depends on my getting a seond job for this summer. so what would happen to the 4 usb 3.0 with the sandy not having it built in. Would it reduce some to 2.0?

 

If you get a Series-7 chipset with a Ivy/Sandy Bridge CPU then it will have native USB 3.0. If you buy a notebook with a Series-6 chipset + Sandy Bridge cpu, then it will either have no USB 3.0 or have USB 3.0 that's provided by a NEC/Renesas chip, often using a 2.5Gbps x1 pci-e 1.1 lane. The Series-7 chipset's USB 3.0 implementation is simpler, cheaper and faster (5Gbps).

 

Well those are out of my price range or aren't even available in my country (America always have a wider range to choose from, not to mention massively cheaper because of no VAT *sigh*).

650m DDR3 was best I could afford. A little better than my previous 5650 at least. Better than nothing eh?

 

How much performance difference (est. %-wise) should there be between an Ivy i5 and an Ivy i7 for intensive data crunching?

I frequently run through hundreds of thousands of stock trades to compute various averages and CPU intensive calculations on the data