How much faster will sandybridge be over an i740 in a CPU intensive game?

I740qm. I only ever do one thing at a time. I made the mistake if thinking my m17x quad must be a good processor but it fails vs my now sold mbp17s core2duo at 3.06ghz. With the introduction of sandy bridge will the base CPU like a 2620 be much faster than my 1.7ghz i740qm? Assume both CPUs have a ssd and 2 5970 or 6970 gpus in crossfire. Playing world of Warcraft.
Thoughts?

 

I'm surprised you feel its that much slower than a 3.06ghz core 2.

You could always grab a faster i7 off ebay.

 

Performance is all relative. What resolution? Quality? AA/AS cranked up? 98% of games are GPU bound these days.

 

More like 80%. Some "GPU-Intensive" games do gain a significant boost with a better CPU more than you think.

 

Compared to the i7-2720QM, I'd say 0-50%, depending on the application of course. For CPU-intensive games, probably around 25-30% in most cases.

 

I know that but he has an i7-720QM, not really a significant bottleneck compared to an i5 or i3...

Case in point, I had an E8400 @ 3.6 GHz with a 3870, upgraded to a GTX 260, saw absolutely no performance increase at 1680x1050. Upgraded to a Q9550 @ 3.4 GHz, saw a 200% frame rate increase.

 

I very much doubt that a Core i7-740QM is having issues with World of Warcraft -- it is much more likely that you have some kind of driver problem. That said, the 2630QM will be 16% faster than your 740QM just based on clock speed and probably another 15% based on architecture so faster by about a third overall.

Not anymore. Practically all high end games are now made for consoles and the latter have positively ancient GPUs so the standard hasn't really moved forward much in years. For many games, the poor reviewers of high-end desktop cards have to use 2560x1600 screens just to get frame rates down to the point where the difference is meaningful. With a laptop screen (particularly the cheapo 1366x768 garbage or even 1600x900), even a mid-range modern card can handle most games at reasonable settings.

 

It's an i7 740qm at 1.7 ghz turbo to 2.93. Doesn't feel slow at all and yes an eBay upgrade is a simple solution and I may go down that route. My dilemma I'd I Just bought an r2 and alienware is releasing an r3 in 4 days time with the sandybridge CPU. I'm not too concerned with the onboard gpu but since my CPU is slow I'm curious if the sandybridge is expected to be faster for single or dual core applications etc? Or is it just another quad hexa or billion unnecessary quad core continuation? If it will be much faster I can get a refund easy for mine and I'll get the newer version etc

 

30% is pretty huge in my book. If it's that big of a gain I wonder what the optional CPU will clock at.

When I bought my r2, the optional CPU (940) was a whopping $1000. Absolutely stupid in my opinion so I settled on the 740. I kind of regret the choice now that i see what my performance is like. I just expected more that's all. It still loses to my 5 year old desktop (e6750 c2d 2.66, 4gb ram, gtx470) system in 3dmark06 and gets lower fps in cssource and wow. all drivers are up to date as per the forum here.

 

Well, If I do Dirt2... Ultra settings is hitting just about 27-30fps, which is just about the tollerable thing I could work with.

Doing Medium is pretty smooth though. YouTube - Sandy Bridge i7-2630qm + HD6570 + Dirt2

 

I'm not sure what the Turbo Boost for a single core is, but I suspect it is about the same clock speed as your 740QM (i.e. you only get the architectural advantage).

You did the right thing -- the 940 makes no sense (it will be inferior to much cheaper Sandy Bridge CPUs).

Incidentally, AnandTech has just posted its review of the desktop Sandy Bridge. You can get a pretty good idea of what the laptop performance is like by scaling the clock speeds (desktop Lynnfield is pretty similar to laptop Arrandale).

EDIT: The laptop review is also up so you can look at a more direct comparison.

 

Still, you have to keep in mind that that's only in games that benefit from the extra clock speed. Ones that don't need the extra speed will see a 0-5% performance increase. If you want SB, you want it for the lower heat and power consumption, and maybe to be more "future-proof."

 

That depends on which SB CPU you're talking about. The weakest one, the 2630QM, has about the same max turbo (2.9GHz), but the next highest (2720QM) goes up to 3.2GHz. That's about 10% higher than the 740QM's 2.93GHz, and definitely enough to make a difference where it's needed.

 

Well, that's half your problem right there. CS-Source and WoW really function best on dual cores, and don't take good advantage of quad cores, so your i7-740QM is probably turbo-boosting to about 2.5 GHz, which is pretty much just about comparable to your desktop. More importantly, your desktop GTX470 absolutely crushes any mobile graphics card, so that's a huge advantage to your desktop right there. However, as you can see, even if they had equivalent graphics cards, the i7-740QM is pretty much "just" comparable to your old E6750 in 2 threaded operations. Where the i7 gains an advantage is in applications that can take advantage of more than 2 cores. It sounds like you really should have gotten a faster i5 dual-core, or even an i7-620M dual-core if you wanted to spend a bit more.

 

I agree with you. Fail to Dell for only having 1 option for cpu and for having a slow base cpu.

 

the i7-740qm isn't slow.. it depends from game to game but if you know the games need a dual , just set core affinity to 2 cores... its still 2GHz+ on load with 2 cores if turbo boost works..

Panther214