Intel Core i5-560M or i7-720QM?

Which one is better? I'm gonna be using it for gaming. I'm only skeptical about the i7 because not that many games support quad-core that well.

 

I say go with the i5-560M and pair it with the best graphics you can get! You'd see little if any performance increase from the i7 in most gaming current gaming apps.

 

If you are only gaming then go with the Core i5. Just remember certain graphics cards can't be upgraded with an i7 processor (tons of models)

 

What notebook are you looking to get? I suggest filling out the FAQ since there are a lot of factors that are important such as what other applications you're going to use, if you'll be carry your notebook and want switchable graphics for longer battery life, etc.

 

It's gonna be coupled with an NVIDIA GTX 460M. Since price is not of concern in the processors, the i5 is better? And its just for gaming.

 

If money is not a concern, get the i7. You will be future proofing yourself.

 

For 'just' gaming, the i5 560M is superior to the i7-720QM for almost all current games (not a gamer, just read a lot).

'Future proofing' in this scenario would be suffering now for games that might come in the future - not a good recommendation.

 

The 720m is the lowest i7 quad core. If you got the 820 or 840 that would be different.

 

Well if it's for pure gaming then buy a gaming desktop. The heat alone isn't worth it.

 

Just curious if you'll ever offer constructive advice?

 

not sure about this, but will the i7's turbo boost feature outperform the i5?

 

The i5 560m and i7 720m turbo boost about the same (3.2ghz single core)

 

Check out this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...uad-core-cpus-8740w-general-purpose-work.html
Long story short: the dual-core is a bit more responsive for some apps; for apps optimized for multi-CPU, the quad-core is best. It depends entirely on what you want to do with your notebook.

 

not all gaming laptops suffer from heat problems

I know the Asus G73 and G53(i think) use the same design and have really really nice cooling system. Ive used several Alienware M15x laptops and they run warm but never hot or burning usually they stay cool. But yeah just to name a few

EDIT: its usually due to having two fans, one for CPU and one for GPU and both the Asus G73 and Alienware M15x have two fans and two separate heatsinks so it always stay cool

 

My laptop only hits 70C if I'm playing pcsx2 or Dolphin since they're so cpu intensive. My GPU never heats up very much =p maybe 60c.

 

Here's an excellent article discussing the role of the processor in a gaming system and offering some comparison of dual vs. quad-core systems- LINK

 

The advice given in the link allfiredup provides is also applicable to just normal everyday use too. Single core systems feel like they're running on molasses compared to multicores. And, that's just navigating the O/S.

 

You can't compare PC games to emulation... ever. They're incredibly different. PCSX2 will benefit most from high cache and clockspeed.

 

But both would be a definite upgrade to the P8700 OC'ed at 2.88GHz, right?
And would a core i7 740QM be better than the 560M?
And does turbo boost automatically initiate, or is there some program?

 

Turbo-boost is automatic, and if you're worrying about gaming, I'd generally consider the graphics card before you start worrying about the processor. For the most part, either will game quite well, it's the graphics card that will usually end up limiting you in games.

 

It will be an upgrade, but not much of an upgrade compared to your p8700 running at 2.88Ghz. From the benchmark I have seen, the i5-560M performs very similar to the extreme x9100 running at 3.06ghz, in some tests the i5-560 wins out by a small margin, while x9100 outperforms 560M in other tests. Considering you are already running the p8700 at 2.88Ghz, you won't notice a big difference at all by upgrading to the i5-560M. The most optimistic result you probably see is 15% AT BEST, and that ONLY happens when the CPU becomes the bottleneck of performance.

Turbo boost runs automatically, like Judicator said, graphic card matters much more for gaming than CPU.