P7450 for gaming?

just curious to know, since i see many Asus systems with that CPU coupled with a GTX 260M. certainly unbalanced. or is it not? how powerful is the P7450?

 

It depends on the games. While I do agree that the system is unbalanced(mid-range CPU with high end GPU), the CPU can indeed be adequate for non-CPU intensive games. RTS and CPU hungry games like GTA4 will have trouble though.

 

It is an OK CPU nowadays. It will run non-CPU demanding games fairly well. will definately not run GTA IV very well. I managed to overclock mine to 2.6Ghz but after switching to Win7, 2.53Ghz is my max. I think the thermal throttling is messing my overclock when it can't run higher mhz in lower thermal states. If you are planning to buy a new laptop and have enough money then look for the Core i series instead.

 

Or just upgrade and sell the stock CPU to offset the cost of the upgrade.

But on the other hand, when I still had a P7 350, it was competent in pretty much all the games I threw at it.

 

no no, not planning to buy any new lappy (i just got one)...just asking. since i'd rather have a balanced system (not to mention i LOVE RTS and city building games), and was a bit jealous at the cheaper Asus lappies with more powerful GPUs.

 

Why didn't you get the ASUS if you really want the extra GPU power? It's easy to upgrade the CPU to a P9*** series for ~$200. Sell the P7450 for $80. That makes it $120 for the P9*** series. That will be a whole different story then. The P9500(cheapest in the series) can be overclocked to 2.9Ghz. I chose to get an SSD instead because the P7450 is handling my games quite good. Don't have any CPU intensive games though.

 

don't really want the GPU power, cause i need battery life, and 'sides, buying CPUs alone isn't really an option where i live. was just a little jealous that the GTX 260M was more powerful than the HD 4670 , and wondering if my decision to go i5 was worth skipping the P7450 XD

 

I have a P8400 (2.26GHz/3MB L2/1066MHz FSB) processor in my HP, which has very similar performance to the P7450. So far it has handled every game I threw at it well, including Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, and a few others.

While the ASUS notebooks with the GTX 260M and the P7450 do seem unbalanced, they really are not in most games since the GPU is more often the limitation.

The CPU's job is to process frames and send them to the GPU for rendering. Let's say a certain CPU can process 80 frames per second and send them to the GPU - if the GPU is only fast enough to render 60 of those per second, then a CPU upgrade would do basically nothing. Check out this article for a great overview on how games are "rendered":
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=122013

 

^ I agree with Chaz for the most part, but there is a minority of games that rely heavily on the CPU. Examples are World in Conflict, GTA4, Supreme Commander, and others. At some point you will run into such a game and the P7450 will limit the settings of the game to a moderate degree. Still, I wouldn't let that dissuade me from such a computer since Chaz's points still stand.

 

Melthd, which Core i5 did you get? If you get a lower one then it is not that much of a difference compared to the Core 2 Duo's. At the same speed, a Core i5 is 20-30% faster than a Core 2 Duo but it makes me doubt those numbers a little bit because the tests were conducted with Core i5's Turbo Boost enabled which "overclocks" the CPU. I wonder how the Core 2 Duo will compare when overclocked manually to the turbo boost speed of the Core i series. And yes, having a stronger GPU is more important because it is not upgradable most of the time whereas a CPU is usually upgradable.

 

hmm since i don't like GTA, doubt i'll be playing GTA 4. and since there were 2 RTS games listed (world in conflict, supreme commander), guess my decision was OK. but also, i do some audio, video and multimedia stuffs, so would the P7450 limit that?

i got the SXPS 16 with 520M. gonna try and overclock it if possible. read on some other forums that the i5 could be OCed up to 4 GHz (and not to worry, i've OCed a number of computers before)

and btw, is my jealousy with the GTX 260M a normal feeling? LOL...or is it just me?

 

I'm not sure about this but I don't think there is a way to overclock the Core i series on laptops yet except for some turbo buttons that come with the laptop itself. GTX260 has a really huge power advantage over the 4670 so your jealousy should be normal. The Core i5-540 is 2.53Ghz. I saw that benchmarked against a P8700 2.53Ghz. The i5 is 30-50% faster than the P8700. I think the Turbo Boost function of the Core i5 was on because I owned a Core i5 laptop for awhile and there is no option in the Bios to disable it. It is a CPU function I think. The benchmarks were probably with Turbo boost on which automatically sets the Core i5 to 3.066Ghz.
What I want to know is how would a max overclocked P8700 fair against the Core i5 with Turbo Boost on. Hmm...

How much did you get the SXPS16 for? You can get ASUS N61JQ with Intel Core i7 + Ati Radeon 5730 for only $999.99 on Amazon.com

Only problem is that the ASUS has a 1366x768 screen.

 

personally , P7450 is just not good for some CPU intensive games... P9000 or T9000 series is minimum for me... but if ur considering another laptop ,why not asus G73? Core i7 quad , ATI 5870 etc for $1400... it literally maxes all games thrown at it...

 

Well, notebookcheck has the i5-540 running better than a T9900 at 3.06 GHz, the exact amount depending on which benchmark you're looking at. From the numbers, I'd say 15%-20% clock for clock is probably a fair comparison.

 

no such kind of money to get another lappy (G73 is seriously close to my budget range, but JUST out of it) got the SXPS16 for 1200 USD.

yeah i know that the GTX 260M is just awesomely powerful. which is why im trying to justify my choice but yeah, my old desktop CPU (E6300 @ 1.86GHz) lagged when playing Generals with MANY units (over 200) so i think the i5 is justified

 

well get rid of the XPS and problem solved... it is not a gaming machine... i doubt its gonna be asus G51VX...