Core 2 Duo v i7/Sandy Bridge

I am currently using a BenQ S41 that uses a 1.2ghz Core 2 Duo CPU and it really struggle to handle manipulating large databases (more than 10 million rows) and matlab simulations. Would I expect a big improvement if I buy a new laptop with i7 or Sandy Bridge CPU?

 

For matlab yes, you will see a huge improvement due to the CPU.

For DB operations I am sure the bottleneck is the hard drive. You will see a much larger benefit if you buy a SSD for DB operations.


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Well i'm not sure but i'm guessing that might be memory bound as well as I/O bound rather than CPU intensive. Surely buying a new laptop would help in general because of faster compenents but you probably need RAM (system using HDD for page file) and a faster HDD/SSD. I'm guessing since it's 1.2ghz it's a ULV system so they probably put a low power/5400RPM drive in there too. A 7200RPM drive would help.

Before you go buying though, which system do you have? How much RAM and such?

 

My BenQ S41 laptop have the following spec:
1.2ghz c2d CPU
3GB Ram
120GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
8600m GS Graphics Card (Hardly ever play games on it)

My main use of the laptop is to do matlab simulations, manipulating large database and running other mathematical/statistical softwares. Is it worthwhile to folk out the cash now for a new i7 or SB laptop or should I just upgrade my existing laptop?

 

A 1.2Ghz Core 2 Duo is slow as balls. A SB i7 will be at least 5 times faster on number crunching.

 

Get Sandy Bridge. You pick up about 25-30% improvement from Core 2 clock for clock, but, more importantly, your clock speed will at least double and if you go quad-core, so will the number of cores. There is no way you can upgrade your laptop to get anywhere close to that.

Also, Intel put some extra instructions into Sandy Bridge for dealing with large databases -- they showed some Excel demonstration where the speed from Sandy Bridge increases by a factor of 10 or more over Core 2. The software needs to use these instructions so I'm not sure if you'll see this now, but it's possible.

 

The performance increase going from the 1.2Ghz Core 2 Duo to even the i7-2630 is ludicrous. Twice the cores, more than twice the clock frequency, newer instruction sets, more efficient architecture, and hyperthreading.

It won't. It is easy to show many times the performance increase if they are just testing the new instruction set (exactly what they did). But those instructions actually used in a practical application might show just a double digit percentage improvement.

 

+1 on oh-yes-the-new-SB-will-be-a-really-huge-difference!
I know the the C2D 1.2 pretty well. Even my pet can run faster than the C2D 1.2. But he can't run non-stop for 8 hours like that C2D though.

 

Ditto on that.

If you're running databases, you will also want to ditch that 5400rpm hard drive and get an SSD instead. There is an astronomical difference in performance between a 5400rpm drive vs SSD... on the level of being literally 100x - 150x faster. When it comes to database work, there is no better upgrade for you to buy than to get an SSD.

 

the C2D 1.2GHz is a joke.. Sandy Bridge will own it.. and yes a 7200rpm drive/SSD would help too.. strongly suggest its time to buy new laptop.

Panther214

 

Thanks for all the replies, looks like it is time to get myself a new laptop.

 

If you have the premium to afford a decent SB laptop, go for it. If not, you may get 80% of that improvement by upgrading to:

1- Core 2 Duo CPU with a decent clock speed (i.e. T9300 running at 2.5GHz with 6MB L2 cache -- BenQ S41 belongs to Santa Rosa which supports 800MHz FSB)
2- SSD instead of your 5400RPM HDD.

These would cost you around one third of a Sandy Bridge laptop! Keep in mind...


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oh no we all still want him to get a new laptop He must be a researcher or scientist to work with a 10 million row database and matlab. Sounds like a very high-end new laptop ha ha

 

Yes, I use it for my research but I am still a student, so I have to pay for the laptop myself, can't charge that to the University .

Would I get about 80% of the improvement if I upgrade my CPU to a faster C2D and upgrade my hard drive to SSD as suggested by ramgen? If yes that would sounds like the way to go, cash is always a problem for students.

 

No. I have a T9300 in my current laptop. It's around twice as fast as your 1.2GHz C2D, but it is not 5 times faster as a Sandy Bridge quad-core would be so the improvement in the CPU front is only about two fifth of what you'd get with Sandy Bridge. You should get an SSD either way, but this will only help you with reading from the drive, you'll still be CPU-bound for Matlab.

Furthermore, the bigger problem with the suggestion to upgrade to a T9300 is that the 1.2GHz CPU is almost certainly something from the low voltage family. As far as I can tell, it can be either a 12W SL7100 or a 10W SU9300. If you plug a standard voltage, 35W T9300 into that laptop, it might not work or it might fry the laptop because the TDP is 3 times what it should be.

 

The bigger problem is that those processors generally come soldered to the motherboard so they can't be replaced anyway.

 

Man... it's great you're crunching numbers!! Some other students are just hanging out on youtube and facebook Ok. There are others writing code or stringing chips/circuits for fun too - not all are on youtube.
hmmm ... it's quite strange... I just googled BenQ S41 and they seem to have a 1.8 or 2.0 GHz processor. Anyways, try this list....
PassMark - CPU Benchmarks - List of Benchmarked CPUs
...and find your current processor and check the score. Then check the score of the next laptop/processor that you're interested in. Take the new/fast number and divide by the old/slow number and we can have an estimate (approximate) of how much faster it may be. Then on the side we'll also have to factor in the new (if faster) HDD type, etc to get an estimate of the overall speed/feel of the new processor/laptop. If you see the HDD LED blinking non-stop while running matlab it means the HDD speed/type will have to be an important consideration too. Bye.

 

yes as trottel said that's the issue.. yeah OP , new laptop time..

Panther214