Do I really need a processor with TurboBoost?

I'm looking for a new laptop and I'm down to two options. One with an i3-4000M and another with i3-4200M, both with a GT745M. I want to do some moderate gaming (medium-high settings in modern games like BF4, Crysis 3 mostly single player) without multitasking Other than that no heavy PC usage whatsoever. Will the i3 without turbo boost be good enough?

 

Games you mentioned make good use of multicore and are very taxing for both CPU and GPU. Medium/high settings may be a little too high for an i3 with GT745M.

 

Agreed with Marecki_clf. Either of those i3s, paired with the 745M, wouldn't fair too well with anything above medium settings, especially in demanding games such as those.

 

HSanjay19, turbo boost is a factor but not the whole issue as the other posters have dutifully noted. The real issue is that the i3 is a dual-core processor and just doesn't have the power even if it had Turbo Boost (which would make it an i5).

Ideally look for a notebook that has an Intel Core i7 (quad-core) processor, 8GB of RAM and a graphics card a bit faster than the GT 745M (which is just a low/mid-range card); something like an Nvidia GTX 860M. I gather a notebook with those components is likely above your budget, but it might be worth saving up for a bit if that's possible.

MSI makes a couple of reasonably priced gaming notebooks. The GS60 is one: http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/742589-msi-gs60-ghost-ghost-pro-thread.html

 

There is no i3-4200m. I assume you mean the i5-4200m? For gaming, get the i5-4200m over the i3-4000m. The i5-4200m is 25% faster than the i3-4000m.

Outside of gaming though, you aren't going to notice any difference for your usage.

 

For general usage, depends, do you have an SSD? if you do then your system will feel a bit snappier with the turboboost enabled i5
However, because you are intending to game, the i5 with turboboost is strongly recommended since the i3 will bottleneck your GPU.

 

i5-4200m and GT 745m will need low/med settings with games like BF4 and Crysis 3. The biggest bottleneck with BF4 will be the dual core CPU. BF4 loves quad cores CPU's and performs best with one.

 

To answer the topic literally, turboboost is not something you can avoid now. Pretty much all current gen processors support the idea that it can increase performances temporarily as long as power and temperature conditions are met. Turboboost is more if a perk, and not something you should rely on in anyway.

And yea if you are looking between the i3 and i5, i5 easily. There will be no game that can't do better with more cpu. Especially when you consider any dual core mobile cpu is likely to bottleneck an average gpu like the midrange of the 7xxm series.

 

Thanks, but how much of a performance increase should I expect from an i5 (it boosts upto 3.1 GHz I think) compared to an i3? And are there any modern games that are more GPU-dependent and won't make much use of the turbo boost?

 

The i5-4200m is 25% faster than the i3-4000m.

 

Everything will make use of Turbo Boost. The "base" clock of a CPU is rarely ever seen, it's usually well over that speed during any type of stressed application. Only if your system has bad thermal management or a poor thermal paste application will it run at the "base" clock speed (or lower). In many instances you can disable "Turbo Boost" in the BIOS, or easier yet, just go into advanced Windows power options and set your CPU to 99% and it won't budge above the base rated speed, essentially turning off turbo boost.

Even a dedicated GPU relies on the CPU fairly heavily, and it's good to have boost for the times when it really needs it. Unless you plan on playing older games (like 2010 and earlier), I'd highly recommend at least an i5 "M" rated CPU (i.e. i5-4330M), not a U or Y (i.e. i5-4200U), and at least a GT 740M GPU. These are MINIMUM for gaming at 720p with modern games. Anything less you'll just have buyer's remorse, and in a year even with those specs will likely have buyer's remorse. Go with an i7 quad as already mentioned, and at least a 760m or better yet 860m, and that should be sufficient for gaming for at least the next couple of years.

 

thanks for the detailed answer...one more thing: what sort of difference would there be in performance of a 745m and a 750m? I know the 750m is clocked higher but is it a big difference?

 

Yes, its funny cause the 735-75(5? 0?) range is all the same chip with the same number of pipelines, however both the clock speed differ as well as the RAM configuration so there are noticeable jumps in performance.

 

It is funny how things change as technology advances. In 2010 I bought a laptop with GT335M and it could play crysis with medium settings. Now it looks like a graphics card that can play crysis 3 well enough has a much bigger cost/performance ratio. This is just my subjective point of view, of course.

 

The thing is Crysis was released in 2007, so a mid range GPU from 2010 playing a high end game from 2007 was not entirely unexpected. Crysis 3 is far more recent compared to this generation of hardware, so obviously, you'll need beefier and more expensive hardware.

 

What you're really asking is if you need a current platform level cpu or an 'ancient' version of one. Considering that all of Intel's cpus are designed with Turbo (2) performance in mind, getting an i3 is effectively getting an outdated processor from the word 'go'.

Not only do I recommend a 'true' i5 and above (true=at least quad thread), but many times the systems with the better cpu are the same price or even less expensive too.

When we also consider that at idle the i3's, i5's and i7's sip power at the same low level and the i5's and i7's are able to give us real performance when needed (more than double what the same gen i3 is capable of, easily) it makes no sense to choose an i3 unless the maximum battery life is needed from the notebook (at the cost of performance and productivity which can also make the battery life worse for a given workload too).

Even if your current workflow doesn't require the power that a DC or QC setup with four thread can offer now - that doesn't mean that your needs won't change during the lifecycle of the notebook (or that Windows Updates, program updates or new programs that suddenly interest you won't come along).

Buy as much HP as you can afford - that includes O/S, RAM and the storage subsystem options. Saving a few dollars today won't make sense if you need to upgrade to a better system years before you might have had to with a better (more balanced) platform to begin with.


For me; simply navigating the O/S, browsing with a few tabs open, reading pdf's and/or using the accounting program is reason enough to have an i7 - yeah, I'm used to instant - but an i5 is the minimum I would spend my money on (if I was thinking of keeping a system for longer than ~18 months, anyways).


Good luck.

 

I kind of miss the days when a Pentium 4 was the best thing in the world I'l go for the i5..thanks for the replies guys. I can't afford an i7 or a better (maybe GTX series) card so I guess i5 with GT745/750m is the way to go.

 

Pentium 4 was never "the best thing in the world." I owned two of them. It got thoroughly destroyed by Athlon XP and Athlon 64 back in the day.

 

Yeah how the tables have turned, back in the day it was Intel that was playing the numbers game, now AMD has that ridiculous 220W TDP FX-9590 chip, but oh hey look it can do 5 GHz guys