How much is overkill? i5 450m w/ 4GB RAM vs AMD Phenom p930 quad core w/ 6GB

It seems I'm still in the process of deciding what I want and what I need. I have two options at the moment, and I can't decide which one to go with. My first option is the AMD Phenom p930 quad core with 6 GB of RAM, which would be roughly $20 more and have a battery life of ~2.5 hours. I could also go with the i5 450m with 4 GB of RAM and have a battery life of 3.5 to 4.5 hours, all while saving $20 bucks (but at the cost of the backlit keyboard )

My real question is, would there even be a noticeable difference between the two in terms of performance? I might be doing some gaming with this laptop along with normal student uses. Hopefully that helps paint a picture of what my usage will be like.

 

I personally would go with the i5, but mainly because I think Intel processors run better and more efficient. All my AMD's have gone down the gutter pretty early.

 

It all comes down to price. The AMD is slightly slower then an i5-520m. The i5-450m is equal or in some cases faster then a 520m due to the higher front side bus.

Notebookcheck: AMD Phenom II X4 N930 Notebook Processor

The link above contains general information and benchmarks.

The AMD will eat up more battery power (2-5%). The AMD has the same TDP as the i5 but their power management is not as good as Intel's. This is coming from a AMD fanboy. They are sadly behind the technology at the moment.

 

I'd go for the i5. Intel is much better at performance per watt, and also runs cooler. And as a student you'll never know when an extra 90 minutes of battery life might come in handy

 

I can get an AMD with a 9 cell battery for the same price as an i5 with a 6 cell. Everything else on both setups are exactly the same. Any suggestions?




And by the way, thanks for all the help. You guys are great!

 

Intel. You'd probably still even get the same battery life with everything taken into account, knowing AMD's crappy mobile processors.

This all coming from a self confessed Intel fanboy.

 

I hate to be rude but a lot of the information in this thread is false.

1. The N930 is equal to the i5-540M in most cases. In some instances it performs as well as the i7-620M.

2. It actually runs cooler than the new Intel processors. Of the three people with a dv6z with N930 that have posted their temperatures on NBR the highest max temp of the N930 was 75C, and that was in a 36C room. Mine maxes out at 64C.

3. Battery life is going to be basically equal with the i5 getting between 15-30 minutes more. If OP gets the 9 cell with the dv6z then he will get about 5:45 hours and the 6 cell with the dv6t gives about 4. I get about 3:45-4 hours with the screen at 60% and surfing with my high capacity (62Wh) 6 cell.

 

No, the N930 is equal to the Core i5 in most heavily threaded cases. For lightly threaded loads (1 or 2 threads) which comprise the overwhelming majority of typical usage the Core i5s will utterly crush it with on the order of 50% better performance and they will be superior even for 3 threads. The N930 has no Turbo Boost so when a task is not optimized for a quad-core CPU, you are stuck with what amounts to a 2GHz K10 processor without L3 cache. Not only does Arrandale beat that soundly clock-for-clock, but all of the Core i5s are also running at a higher clock speed even before you take Turbo Boost into account.

Which one to choose depends on what you intend to use it for. If know that you are mostly going to be using this for heavily threaded tasks (e.g. video editing), get the N930. Otherwise, get the Core i5 as it is at most a little bit worse for tasks with 4 or more threads, but much, much better with lightly threaded ones ( including most games).

Also, one clarification is in order: the title of the thread and the initial post mention a P930, but I don't know of any such processor. There exist an N930 (which most people in this thread assumed it to be) and a P920 (which is a substantially inferior 1.6GHz variant). Which one did you mean? Or better yet, what is the clock speed of the quad-core AMD processor you were asking about?

 

Yeah I just realized that mistake myself. I was referring to the N930. I guess I got confused and combined the two.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but Turbo Boost works by disabling one core and overclocking the other right? If that is true then the 540M is going to destroy the N930 in single threaded applications (1x2.0GHz vs. 1x3.06GHz) but the results in the link you gave show a significant increase over one core when two cores are used. If that is the case then the i5 still is going to win in most games that use only two cores but the difference isn't going to be all that dramatic (2x2.0GHz vs. 2x2.53GHz).

One could also argue that the N930 is more future proof as developers move more and more towards multithreaded engines. In the two newest games from the link that were tested (CoD: MW2 and Bad Company 2) there is a significant difference in FPS from 2 cores to 4 cores, as much as 26 FPS, while the older games (Crysis) show almost no increase in performance after the jump from 1 core to 2. Soon developers of games and programs are going to use engines that take advantage of 4 or more cores and then the roles will be reversed when gaming, the N930 is going to have the edge (4x2.0GHz vs. 2x2.53GHz).

 

No, it only works that way when given a single-threaded workload. Given a multi-threaded workload, it overclocks the requisite number of cores by amounts that usually (but not always) depend on the number of course being overclocked. For your example, the i5-540M can disable one core and push the other from 2.53GHz to 3.06GHz, but when given a multi-threaded workload, it can push both cores to 2.8GHz instead. The i5-450M is strange in that it can overclocks to 2.66GHz regardless of whether it needs 1 core or 2.

Also, keep in mind that clock speed is not everything: clock-for-clock, Arrandale is substantially better than K10 and the difference grows when you remember that the N930 is K10 without L3 cache. So the difference between them remains quite dramatic when considering 2-thread tasks and even in 3-thread tasks the i5 wins by substantial margin (even if simple multiplication of clock speeds is no longer on its side).

This was the pre-Turbo argument for quad-core processors over dual-core ones. It is true to an extent, but what limits it in this particular case is that the N930's advantage in heavily threaded tasks is small whereas ins disadvantage in lightly threaded ones is glaringly massive. In fact, because of hyperthreading, there are quite a few heavily threaded benchmarks in which the Core i5-520M has a slight lead despite only having 2 cores and of course it has a massive and unequivocal lead in anything lightly threaded. This is why I would only recommend the N930 if the original poster knows that the machine will be used predominantly for heavily threaded tasks -- otherwise a slight edge in a possible future just doesn't outweigh pitiful lightly threaded performance in the present.

 

All valid points and I am not going argue against them, as they are true. I think that thermal efficiency and price have to be taken into account as well. The 540M is $130 more than the N930 and runs 10-15C hotter under load in the dv6.

Edit: Can't believe I just argued for AMD because they run cooler. I never thought I would say that.

 

All good points, and all good things to consider. After looking over the information posted, I think I have decided to go with the i5 540m. In this particular siituation it was an easy call because I have discovered a promotion that allows me to upgrade from the AMD to the i5 for $22, with an additional 9 cell battery thrown in. With the price difference basically eliminated, I can't justify sticking with the N930 just for the higher thermal efficiency. However, if the price gap was still at $130, the decision would be much, much harder.

 

good choice... IMO , AMD underperfoms too much in games compared to intel... anyways , if u can get intel slightly more expensive, i would have got it since its much more easy to upgrade...

 

If price was that close I would have gone with the 540M as well.

 

Hey abaddon I just wondering I was thinking about getting the same computer that u have(dv6zse), but I'm just not so sure about it.. how is it so far anyway?

 

As you can see in the review in my signature, I love pretty much everything about it. The build quality is great, it is very thin and light for a 15.6'', the power packed into it outweighs how much it cost, battery life is pretty good, and it runs very cool. The only "problem" with it is lack of a higher resolution screen but even the standard 1366x768 looks good, I just wish there was more space.

 

My question is do both have the same video GPU and which one(s)?

 

Doesn't the graphics card help?

 

With what?

 

If you mean help with the lousy display, then no, it does not. The only thing that helps with that is using an external monitor. In fact, relatively powerful graphics cards like the 5650 are wasted on 1366x768 displays -- they're capable of higher resolutions, but this capability goes unused. The best one can do in games is turn up all of the bells and whistles to make use of the spare power, but with such a low resolution, this is not as good as simply increasing it.

 

With the resolution of the screen, if you can please show some pics with better quality than the one you showed in your review, so I can see wat you u were talking about, thanks.

 

The quality of screen is good but, like I already said, I would just like more screen real estate. The graphics card doesn't increase the screen resolution and sorry about the pictures but that is really the best I can do, my digital camera sucks.

 

if i may know in what aspect does the AMD underperforms, is it FPS? or only for certain games?

because in my book, most games ( especially FPS type ) is very dependant on the graphics way more than the Processor, unless its an intense RTS, but that too, usually not by that much

and i remember from a review here on NBR of a AMD N930 laptop ( i think it's the Acer Aspire 5xxx series, it score almost identical to the core i5 450 in terms of FPS, meaning, for gaming, there isnt much that the i5 is winning in terms of fps ( with the same GPU 5650 )

correct me if im wrong

 

i really don't know however with turbo boost and hyperthreading intel seems be better than AMD.. usually heat wise and battery life is also better in intel laptops... if u want AMD , go ahead... just make sure that model doesn't overheat.. AMD has long history of overheating laptops but seriously , if ur paying that much to get an AMD laptop , might as well pay slightly more for a much better intel one with better GPU.

 

Hate to say it but in general there is little competition in the notebook sector. Intel processors are almost always a better deal (less heat, more battery life, etc). Unless you're on a tight budget that is...then AMD has rock bottom pricing but also rock bottom performance.

It's been like this in the notebook market for years.

 

Not in this case, though. Like I said in my original post in this topic; the N930 runs 10-15C cooler than the i5s in the dv6 and battery life and performance are basically equal.

 

Hi Just to bump this topic one more time.
I am going to be using my laptop for Development / Programming, Photoshop and adobe Illustrator and other graphics programs, and some moderate gaming. Probably RTS games like star craft 2 etc, not First person shooters. Which would you recommend? the i5-450M or the N930?
The I realized that you said that the AMD would be better for multi hreaded applications, but I have no idea if those applications I mentioned are multi threaded or not
FYI this is on the same DV6 Select Edition.

 

depend if yu are programing for heavyly multithreaded aplication

psd and most graphic app ares multi threaded and would amke use of the 4 cores but for sc2 a faster dual core would be better sc2 is in no way making use of my 4 cores the only game that ever made use of my uqad was supreme commander and now the 2 is not making use of it

 

Thanks, it just web development I am doing, so no I am not programming for heavily multi threaded applications. Do you think the faster clock speed of the i5 together with the hyper threading will assist in the graphic apps? Or the true Quad core Phenom will win hands down?

I may be wrong, but is it safe to assume most benchmarks these days are still on applications that are not heavily threaded?

 

It depends on the benchmark that you are looking at. Something like SuperPI, for example, is single threaded but Cinebench is multi-threaded and takes advantage of all the cores.

 

thanks abaddon.

 

indeed, thank you abbadon

 

A word of advice, if you want to game, don't get the N930. It doesn't have good multithreading and even in 4-core-threaded games, all the load is dumped onto the first core (running at a measly 2.0 GHz) and actually cuts down the framerate quite a lot (e.g. with ATI 5650 an intense ingame scene that should run at 70 fps with a non-bottlenecking CPU, would run at 20~30 fps with the N930, in my experience).

I'd like to return my laptop simply because I bought it for the sake of gaming, but the woes of restocking fee...sigh.