AES Advantage Question: i7-2630QM vs i7-2720QM

So, I'm configuring myself a laptop and am trying to determine how significant of a difference there is between the quad-core i7-2630QM and the i7-2720QM. Notebookcheck shows some difference in quality. I'm not sure how those differences relate to real-life usage though. Additionally, the 2720QM uses AES (whereas the 2630 doesn't), but I'm not sure how big of an advantage this is. Can anyone share some wisdom here? I'll be utilizing this computer for more than just gaming, btw. Lots of virtual machines and security programs will be running simoultaneously (this is more of a RAM concern I'd imagine, however).

 

the advantage of AESNI is at this moment mostly confined to full disk encryption like truecrypt or bitlocker. If you don't use those, it is not much of a concern.

 

I was just noticing that in my reading. For those following along see Intel's link.

Any comment on performance differences?

 

you're saying aesni has no effect on winzip, winrar, 7zip, etc.?

 

no matter what you call any specific instruction set, if software isn't coded to use those instructions, then the presence or absence of those instructions makes no difference.

 

If you encrypt all your archives it can. Otherwise no.

 

The performance difference is quite large but needs to be putting into context. full disk encryption means you are using them in a constant frequency(all read/write) and those it matters.

For networking stuff, not much so due to the nature(now if you are running a server and everything is SSL, it would be quite noticeable too in terms of how many hit/seconds).

For the other things like zip archive, you need the program itself to make use of the intruction(as mentioned by another poster) and also whether it matters(how often you create zip archives).

For me, if I use bitlocker i would pay for AESNI, otherwise I would not.

 

I took a look at AES performance improvements on TomsHardware's link, here (not necessarily the best resource, but good enough for this I'd imagine). Thanks a ton! Now I find myself debating between usage of BitLocker and TrueCrypt. Have you (or anyone else) any knowledge on what government agencies (e.g. NSA, FBI, DOD, CIA) are utilizing? I'd be curious to know.

 

I can't speak for those two CPUs, but I do full-disk encryption on both my mSATA SSD and my HDD, and am grateful to have AES-NI. It won't speed up transfer rates, but it definitely cuts down on CPU usage, of course freeing it up for other things.