Intel i7 720QM

Hey guys, I just bought an M15x (after finding out that the 7970M works flawlessly in it) and I'm wondering about the performance of the 720QM processor that the laptop is coming with.

I had the two notebooks in my sig, both with the 2670M. Am I going to notice a big difference in performance from the 2nd gen i7's to the 720QM? Is it "worth" upgrading to the 920XM?

 

Doubtful at best.

 

Thanks ZaZ. Just didn't want to "notice" going back to an older gen processor. The "speed" is a pretty substantial difference prior to overclocking or using Speedstep w/ the 720QM. I figure that I should be alright /w the 720QM.

Appreciate it again.

 

I'm getting a new system pretty much solely on being able to get a much better video card. I have a 720qm and I haven't noticed any major issues with it being too slow. My GT 230m, on the other hand, was holding everything back.

 

There will be a performance difference, but it shouldn't affect you in games, and there's a good chance you won't notice the difference in most if any other applications as well. However, the biggest drawback of the first-gen i7 quad-cores is that they didn't have room to fit an iGPU on the chip, so you're looking at no possible way of enabling graphics switching, since there's nothing to switch to. If you're running a 7970M in an M15x, that's probably not a concern of yours, though.

 

only games the 720QM will slow you down is in HL I notice on my 720QM with a GTX260m that my gpu will run from 25%-75% with HL source/CS Source maxed out in graphics because the 720QM has poor single thread speeds and can not keep up with the graphics cards. Any games that are heavy single threads you will run into problems

 

I reckn something like the i7 640m dual core would be far better and its 32nm with igpu but don't know how it work.

 

he said it comes with the 720QM so there is no options. He will not notice an performance issues unless he plays games that are heavy single core.. AKA HL Source/CS Source/any Source Mods. Also any other highend game of that era that is not multi core optimized. If the temps are nice and low I would look into getting setFSB to overclock if you run into any issues but you should be fine with like 90% of games maybe a little less.

 

That i7-720qm will be a bottleneck for the 7970M. Depends on the games.

 

Those games should run well faster than 60 FPS either way, though.

 

Doubtful. The 720qm may not be the latest or greatest, but still a pretty strong chip in the grand scheme of things.

 

Does the 640M work in the M15x? A dual core solution would be better than a quad? I do like the iGPU aspect. Need to do some research.

 

It will work. All 35 and 45 watt i3, i5, and i7 processor work in the M15x.

 

The i7 640m is on par wth the 720qm on virtually everything but it is a 32nm processor so it should run far cooler and takes less power consumption. There are quad core 45nm with no gpu options though like the 920xm or 840qm. I would advise you to just get a new ivy bridge laptop as its no real point having a 7970m with 45nm quad.

 

The 640M is a dual core at 2.8GHz, and the 720QM is a quad at 1.6GHz. They aren't, "virtually equal".

In Passmark:

640M: 2992
720QM: 3350

Care to explain why this is true? I don't mean to be rude, but you really should explain. As others have stated, the 720QM is still a decent processor. It's as fast as an SB i5 2410M.

 

Mr. Mischief, no need to amuse him on that front, I do know enough to know that it's still a serviceable processor.

No real point to having a 7970M w/ a 45nm quad... except, gaming fluidly on a single GPU solution for CHEAP. The m15x was cheap, the GPU (after selling the GPU that's in the m15x) is cheap, and will run any game I want fluidly. I don't see what I'd need an ivy bridge laptop.

But if the other 35W and 45W Processors that were compatible with the m15x were better options, then I'd upgrade. No need to buy a "new ivy bridge laptop" when the other tech at a significant cost difference will suffice.

 

As I said before it is a strong chip but not with older games. If you want me to humor you I will hop into CS Source and play at 1920x1200 with all graphics maxed and you will see my 260m go from 25%-75% utilization and my frame rate go from 30-160 or something. It is also horrible when you add bots(it'll drop below 30 frames until some bots die). The game only uses like 1 thread and when you add bots it gets even worse. Clicking the multithread utilization does almost nothing to help. The game is not optimized well.

 

Until last week, I was using almost the same CPU (740qm, only 0.13 ghz faster which will make absolutely no difference) and I never had any problems that couldn't be attributed to the GPU (and, thus, fixed by lowering settings). GTA IV ran with 30+ fps, ArmA 2 was a slideshow during the final mission, but that game barely runs adequately on my desktop.

That processor was, in fact, overkill for my needs, at the expense of battery life. I'm now running a dual-core Sandy Bridge i3, weaker than your 720qm, and haven't had any issues with slowness yet (so far, BF3 and ME3 are all I've installed and played on it).

I think the best thing to do is just use the 720qm for now. If you notice slowness that can be attributed to the CPU (lowering graphics settings doesn't help) then get the 920xm at that point. If I recall, overclocking to 3ghz is not unheard of if cooling is good enough, and that should be more than sufficient for anything released in the next several years.

 

Here are screen shots showing that the gpu goes from 17%-93% depending on how many bots you have going. It shows that the cpu is the bottle neck. Also i didn't get a picture of this but when you look at water in HL2/CSS and there are bodies floating in it your frame rate drops significantly (doesn't matter if its bots or not). More bodies in water worse it gets. The water physicals in Source is all down by the processor and makes the cpu grind to a halt because it does not utilize all the processor cores. If you play source and look at the sky box your frames go to 170+ and your gpu is using 90%+ when you look at players online moving around your frame rate drops and so does the utilization. I have played PVKII many times and I will notice my frame rate go from 20-170 usually i put AA and AS on 2x-4x instead of 16 because that seems to be enough to keep the frame rates above 30 at all times even when the cpu chocks. I don't play games enough for me to bother with getting setFSB to overclock but if you plan on playing a lot with such a powerful GPU I would overclock for sure.


Please dont comment unless you have proof of what your saying. Anyone with a 720QM and a decent GPU will notice this bottleneck

My Demonstration images.
ImageShack Album - 5 images


Lastly, as I have said earlier it is good enough for most games but some games it will be an issue...like source. Most modern games will run great because physicals have been shifted to GPU or are properly multithreaded. If you can overclock the CPU with setFSB and not have issues with temps you will be golden.

 

I only play Skyrim and NBA 2k12 anyway at the moment. Max Payne 3 when it drops, no older games. I do have GTA IV , but on my past 2 PC's, I didn't even install it. I should be good.

 

I believe there are some games around where the CPU plays a pretty important part and the 7970M is akin to a GTX 570 in performance, or higher if you plan on OCing it. Desktop C2Q Penryn CPUs that clock much higher than the i7-720qm and perform better overall will sometimes be a bottleneck for a GPU in the range of the GTX 570 / Radeon 6970.

So I do believe the i7-720qm will occasionally be the weak link. Not because it's bad on an absolute scale but because it's clocked pretty low and paired with a very powerful GPU. People always say that CPUs don't really matter for gaming but that's not always true. Remember Sandy Bridge quads was a good +50-60% in perf from Clarskfields & you're talking about the greatest, latest mobile GPU which is a monster by previous standards.

The extreme example is if you run an emulator like dolphin or pcsx2, you can have a CrossfireX of 7970M, it won't matter since the CPU will limit the performance you get, not the GPU.

 

The only games I could see it showing its age are heavy RTS type games.

 

the 7970 is the fastest GPU out and is faster then they 675 and way faster then the 570.

Also SB was not 50-60% faster they were less...i am too lazy to look up the exact number but just go to notebookcheck.net and see for yourself.

Also you contradict your self by saying the 7970 is akin to 570 and then say its the latest greatest monster.

Did you not look at my screen shots showing the bottleneck?

 

He was referring to the GTX 570 desktop card, which the 7970 will still outperform. Or at least I believe he was.

 

why? He was referring to the 720QM and a desktop card in the same sentence? They dont even work together makes no sense.

 

ive used the 720qm for 1 1/2 years before my present system and it performed very well for almost all tasks and games aside from video editing ( i needed a faster quad).

ive tried it on 2k11 and the op should have no probelms/bottlenecks on 2k12 since that game is multithreaded. did not test it with skyrim but you should be fine.

however i can see the logic in the cpu holding you back on heavy single or dual threaded tasks as it is only 1.6ghz. if you use any cpu intensive single threaded legacy programs this could be an issue. could be an issue with older source games as hopelessly mentioned, but when i used it with l4d 1 and 2, i had no issues whatsoever.

 

Calm down a little, they aren't that far apart, around 15%.

3DMark11:

7970M: P6125
570: 5306

SB isn't 50%-60% faster? Maybe you should have looked that up.

Passmark:

2410M(2.3GHz): 3365
430M(2.26GHz): 2401

720QM: 3350
2630QM: 6346

Lets see, for dual cores, that's right at 40% faster. For quads, SB is around 90% faster. 50% wasn't a bad estimate.

In applications with 4 threads, I'm pretty sure the Q9000 was faster than a 720QM. Think about it. We have an i7 quad that runs at 1.6GHz to 1.73GHz, when running 4 threads. Then we have a C2Q Q9000 that runs at 2.00GHz, when running 4 threads.

 

I retracted my penryn statement because i reread it and noticed he was referring to the desktop not mobile version.

Also i assume he was referring to the 570m and it was a typo because we are talking about laptops not desktops the 7970 is more then 2x faster then the 570m (see my attached file above)

Again i dont know why he would compare desktops to laptops....

EDIT: Also I was remembering a test Notebookcheck did ages ago they were 32-56% faster...so i was right and wrong

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Sandy-Bridge-Quad-Core-processors.43714.0.html

 

I was, only to point out that it does seem kind of weird to pair a mobile GPU that performs like a former gen high-end desktop GPU with the i7-720qm... it's simply not that great a CPU to team with a 7970M for the same reason you wouldn't want your desktop rig to run an old C2Q with your GTX 570 (well, maybe you would but your CPU would be a bottleneck).

 

How exactly are you running a 7970 in an M15x? I'm slightly confused..

 

i think he got this as an outlet sale hence why the weird spec

 

I dont know why youre linking a gpu comparison when Im referring to the CPU....

Even then the i720qm isnt too shabby. It encoded videos pretty well and handled RTS games alright. Although the difference between the i720QM and what I have now is like night and day the 720qm was a good chip for its day and still pretty darn good if you ask me. But I will say its single thread performance isnt all that great I still think that those quads werent designed for heavy single thread like sadny and on were.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/658295-7970m-m15x-why-yes.html

Table confirmed it worked, I found one for CHEAP, bought the card, and will have a nice gaming laptop for cheap overall.

 

i have posted several iamges. i think that post i was referring to how Source does not work well if the 720qm i posted a link to iamgeshack where i took screen shots of my settings and how the cpu is a bottle neck. look back at my post