Last upgrade for my Qosmio worth it?

I'm looking at getting either the 840QM or the 920XM and wondering if I'd notice any significant difference between the two for performance gains?

I can get the 840QM for $226 or the 920XM for $289 on Ebay. Which would be the more logical choice here?

I'd like to point out that the bios doesn't allow for overclocking for the X505 line.

 

If you can't overclock, I'd say the 840QM. And of course this one significantly increases performance depending on what kind of tasks you're doing.

 

If you do a lot of CPU intensive work like video encoding/editing, 3D rendering, then a 840qm or 940qm will benefit you greatly.

But if you mainly do gaming or other usual stuff on your rig, i5-460 will suffice as 460M isn't particularly a very powerful GPU, you may notice some improvement in a few games like SC2 with a 840qm or 940qm, but that's about it, for the majority of the games on the market, a faster CPU won't make a difference as your 460M will hit the wall way before the i5.

 

I'd think that if Left 4 Dead 2 didn't lag all to hell with my i5. All the effects that come from explosions are done with the CPU power not the GPU power and I tend to play a few games like that. Overall I just want a processor that looks good if I were to resell it.

 

Then you want the 920xm

 

Yup you definitely want the 920xm then. I'm quite sure there might be a BIOS or something out there for your laptop to be able to OC.

 

For ~$200 to ~$300 spent on these upgrades which will net you around 48% and 70% performance increase, I think you're better off spending that additional money on a new platform to get 1.5 to 2 times (150% to 200%) the performance you're currently contemplating to upgrade to.

I would highly doubt that you will be able to sell the system for a higher amount in the next year to offset the price of these upgrades (either of them).

While a couple of hundred seems 'cheap' to get a generation (or two) faster processor (on the same old platform) - it is actually more expensive than to upgrade to the latest platform when performance is what you care about.

If you can't/won't buy a new system/platform yet - I would still recommend simply saving up for a new system and taking a pass on these 'upgrades'.

With the money made from the sale of your current system plus the ~$300 you are considering spending anyways, you can easily see a 300% increase in your systems performance from a new system.

I really do see cpu upgrades as a waste of money when a much newer/better platform is available ready to be bought.

Good luck.

 

I've read that you can use SETFSB to overclock this bad boy. You need to find the motherboard PLL and you're off to the races

 

^ Haha but you can also use setFSB to overclock the 840qm

 

For the 7xx and 8xx first gen i7, use SetFSB. For the 920/40xm, use throttlestop, overclocking by changing the multipliers generates less heat than by raising the PLL. I tested this on my JH and some guys in the AW forums did some tests too. You might as well try SetFSB before getting a xm, some qms overclock very well.

 

True, but the OP wanted: "Overall I just want a processor that looks good if I were to resell it" so for just a few bucks more, an xtreme processor sounds better than the 840 and performs a little better stock

 

The 920XM it is then. Thank you ladies!