Radeon HD 6570M 1GB vs GeForce GT 555M 1GB

first off, i'm aware of the benchmarks for these two cards:
AMD Radeon HD 6570M - Notebookcheck.net Tech
NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

i'm looking for an (upper)mid-range gaming laptop and i'm pretty much settled between Lenovo's Y560P and Y570 (they have a great deal going on now at RFD).

the Y560p has the Radeon but also has 2GB more RAM, i5 instead of i3 but it seems the 555M has more performance vs the 6570M.

can anyone give some insight? i'd rather go with the Y560P for the extra stuff but if the difference in gfx speeds is too great, i may choose the Y570. i'm pretty much just looking to play my games on Steam...nothing hardcore or way high end but something good enough to play current/recently released games on _at least_ med details.

thanks so much

 

I don't think that i3 processor will enable you to get the full potential out of the GT555M anyway so I would go for the one with the radeon "regardless of the substantial difference between the GT555M & the radeon"

Review Intel Sandy Bridge Processors Gaming Performance - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

this will show you that the i3 can provide decent enough frame rates with up to the GT540M which is still substantially slower than the GT555M

But also you shouldn't forget that you can always upgrade the CPU later while the same doesn't apply for the GPU ... so if you are into upgrading you can take that advantage and get the one with the GT555M ... frankly it is a tough decision

EDIT: Also don't forget the fact that the one with the GT555M has a faster HDD & a Double Layer DVD Drive

 

EDIT: NVM thought they used GDDR5.

I'd think the 555m would be a bit faster.

 

thanks, guys. it is a tough choice but i think i'm leaning towards the 570 now with the Nvidia gfx chip. how difficult would upgrading the CPU be? i think i'd only need an i5 should i upgrade

 

Upgrading the CPU is quite easy ... but try to check other configurations of this laptop with other CPUs to know which ones are compatible

 

Who says i3 cpus are too weak?? A i3 380M is @ stock as strong as a i5 460M and TurboBoost is a no-sence technology for me. It may damage the laptop and its just making the fan spin louder. If i want to OC i use setFSB will a modded PLL. Who thinks Sandy Bridge or Arrandale i3 CPU´s are too weak for gaming or surfing was really winded of by intels advertisement.
They have the same cache size; the same QPI link; The same Core/FSB ratio and the same technology/architecture.
Come on i5 sounds just better than i3 but to use the full power of a gpu you´ll need a i7 quad mobile cpu. More cores; that makes sence to me.
MORE CORES = MORE POWER IF THEY WERE USED

Same architecture etc. was meant to the Arrandale CPU´s wich were divided in i classes.

 

And i would go nVidia.

 

you do know that most of what you said is either wrong or terribly misinformed.

Turbo boost is a blessing when it comes to gaming, specially due to the added mhz to the processor, since most programs are now single threaded or poor multithreaded. With turbo boost 2.0 the effectiveness due to the ARCHITECTURE CHANGE, its more aggressive at that.

Cache size for gaming purposes matter little.

Here is what is QPI:

that was from the wiki, which strangely enough is quite good when it comes to hardware as you can see

What would actually matter is if the gpu would stress enough the link, which it wont.

And what would actually matter is if the gpus were powerful enough to be bottlenecked by the cpu, which they arent

and yes it makes more sense to buy a quad, however there is one thing called TDP, and another thing called socket, not all sockets are now compatible with quads

 

Turbo took Intel from comfortably winning against AMD to completely crushing them.

 

thanks for the input, guys. i'm going ahead with the Y570 (for the nvidia gpu), but yes, i do still wish it had an i5 for the turbo boost as always having it at 2.1ghz is a bit of a downer.

i was trying to find some i5 mobile CPUs for sale online (i'm in Toronto, ontario) but had no luck. does anyone know any online retailers or solid eBay sellers for this kinda thing??

thanks again!

 

Ok. Youre right. But i never saw a intel laptop wich was possible to run the whole time while gaming in TurboBoost mode ( ignoring gaming notebooks). Turbo Boost was designed for giving a performance boost for a small time until the cooling limit is reached. Most laptops wont be able to run Turbo Boost the whole time. Perhaps for 5 Minutes. It always has been better to use the oroginal not OCed clocks because then it will run @ 100% whole time.
Its a nice gimmick but intel is just saying a i5 is always better than an i3. But thats wrong. Only because the multiplicator on the i5 chips can be risen from 10-20 but an i3 can go only from 10-15 ( example) and they are based on the same chip, the i5 has not to be better. Because the i5 chip wont run those 5more steps the whole time.
What is really true is that i7 qm mobile chips are stronger because they have more cores. Did you never pay attention on the laptops sold in the shops? The same HP notebook is sold in one shop with an i3 cpu and in the other with an i5 cpu. Maybe the i3 is an i3 380M and the i5 a 460M. But the marketing will say that the i5 is better. But the cooling solution was already bad on the i3. The i5 wont be possible to use it full Turbo Boost potential. Notebooks arent that cooling optimesed as you think: Some companies just calculate and say: ``ok it will be able to run a i5 and we know it wont be really possible to use TurboBoost on it but we sell it to get more money because its an i5.´´

 

Back to your question. I dont really know many shops wich were selling socket 989/988 cpus. I know the shop ALTERNATE ( Germany) wich is very serios and i bought already many things there. The other method is to ask a local shop. Ebay is not really serios especially when buying things like CPU´s.

 

actually they do maintain higher than the base speed for quite a while with the sandybridge turbo boost, to be precise most of the time its that way.

a dv6t qe can maintain the clock at 2.5ghz constantly even when stressed, however this is based on the cooling that the laptop has. For example the acer 3830tg while gaming even with the i3, can maintain the 1.2ghz, since the cooling and the bios throttle it back to even lower than the base speed of the cpu.

So if its not throttling its running at higher than the base clock speeds when you are stressing the pc, and that is even valid on macs, that are regarded as having poor cooling

The thing about sandy bridge turbo boost is that it maintains higher clocks than it was possible with last year lynnfield and arrandale

 

Also don't forget that most i3s tendency to throttle is higher than the i5 & i7 counterparts due to the very low Tjunction of 90c