Sandy Bridge 2630QM vs 2720QM

HP just got new laptops and the 2720QM is a $200 upgrade. How justified is the upgrade? The difference in base clocks is just 0.2 and the turbo boost is 0.4. So, theoretically, all four cores of the 2630 could be running at 2.6 all the time if the temperature allows it, but the 2720 could be running at 3.0 all the time too. How much of a actual difference is that? What about for CPU intensive games like SC2? Would the differences be noticeable and bottlenecks be frequent? Thanks.

 

In games, even cpu intensive ones, the differences between those clock speeds really wouldn't be noticeable.
However, if you were running CPU intensive programs such as 3dsMax for rendering animations, then you would likely experience a noticeable reduction in the amount of time needed to render out frames (not overly much, but still noticeable).

If gaming is your primary focus, then get the cheaper quad and make sure to pair it with either a decent/powerful mid-range gpu or entry high-end one.

 

It comes with the AMD Radeon HD 6570M, so he should be fine there. It might even have GDDR5.

So, yeah, you'll be fine with the cheaper one. Really, considering how much HP paid for the CPUs, the upgrade should have been more like $50-75. $200 is a rip-off.

 

Exactly. This price is making we wait a little bit and see what Dell offers. Since the dv7 has no USB 3.0 ports its already sort of outdated and I have a lot of stuff to transfer, etc. Now they want to overprice the 2720QM.

 

For $200, not at all. The 2720QM is better than the 2630QM, but it should be a $50 upgrade.

 

notebook manufactures always overprice upgrades. i see them making the 940xm like 800 more bucks when the current processor already costed 300-400 or whatever. so the upgrade should be like 500 not 800+.....its normal that they over price it

 

Let's see:
You get 15% higher performance for the life of the machine for a one time cost of $200.

For a work based system this is a no brainer: just buy it already!

For personal use it is still justified if your budget/wallet/purse can stretch to cover it.

Looked at another way: a 15% performance improvement is what would be an expected upgrade in a year or two (if you bought a new/current system then). For a mere $200 now, you can still be current/competitive in a year or two - while enjoying the performance benefits from day one.

As O/S's, apps/games and user demands always get more intensive/complicated over time, while you might not notice a 'bottleneck' now, in a few short months you most probably will.

In addition to the above: when you consider the time and cost of switching/upgrading to a new system - $200 seems like a bargain. Unless your time is not worth very much at all (the time needed to properly setup and deploy a new system every few months).

If you plan to keep this system for anything longer than a year, the better processor offers the system a better chance of meeting your future needs without needing the cost/research/time to buy a new system to do it.

And while I don't game (at all), I've read that SC2 is very cpu intensive - and that is on desktop based systems (which to me means throw all the HP you can at the notebook level) to be even mildly competitive.

Good luck.

 

the 2720QM is US$ 378 in quantity, the 2630QM is almost the same price ( US$ 346) according to Riddhy916 -- but no laptop manufacturer I've seen has the upgrade going less than $160 in upgrade cost so Im not sure.

 

Given how much of a performance boost over the i5/i7 range those are already, you will be GPU bound WAY before the CPU even starts to get started.

The only reason I'd do that upgrade is if I had the money to throw around (better spent on an SSD) or if you do something that is highly CPU intensive all the time like video transcoding.

But even my i5-540M is more than up to the task of some video transcodes. Save your pennies for a more worthwhile upgrade. Best price/performance comes a notch or two from the top spec.

 

normally the manufacture change has the lowest performance improvement while the arch change has the best value, which SB is.

 

i7 720QM came out 16 months ago and now the the SB is coming out. SB is 56.5% faster than the 740QM so the SB is even faster than 56.5% of the 720QM....thats more than a 56.5% gain in 16 months.....fairly close to moore's law....seriously people. 15% performance gain in a year? Moore's Law is still accurate for another 5years! So that means that we gain 40% speed every year! come on guys......

 

Holy moses, Gentech have the G53SW at preorder. It includes the 2630QM. If you want upgrade to 2720QM it costs $399

 

Link? I don't see it there. But that's the same upgrade price on the G73SW.

 

Yeeah. Either wait or hope for/that prices come down or 2630QM all the way.

 

Asus laptops are always like that -- either you take what it is already there or you pay the entire price of the processor (plus the reseller's work fee). What's more surprising is that for the Clevo laptops the upgrade costs $160. Either the resellers are colluding in charging a massive premium (which is not very likely) or the 2630QM only costs around $200 (i.e. almost half the price of the 2720QM).

 

It's probably a little easier to update the Clevo's since they're designed to be user upgradeable, and I believe the resellers already do the product assembly regardless of which components you get (as far as CPU, GPU, memory, ODD, and HDD). Where the Asus they get them pre configured with CPU and GPU, and aren't as simple to disassemble.

 

ooops a typo. It was the G73SW i meant

A little expensive when a few other laptops (non Asus) is around $200..

 

Wonder how long it will take for the CPU price to go down though..

 

Long -- Intel does not lower prices of new CPUs, it just speed-bumps them. That is, in 6 months or so, there will probably be a 2740QM selling for the same price as the 2720QM but running at a slightly higher clock speed. The only way the prices get lowered is if AMD pulls a rabbit out of hat and comes up with something competitive.

 

In addition to what has already been mentioned, I have read that the i7-2720qm supports DDR3-1600 So-Dimms for RAM (whereas the max DDR3 frequency rating for the 2630qm is DDR-1333). But the specific laptop you buy may not support the faster RAM for other reasons, so it is not clear you could also upgrade to faster RAM just because you upgrade to the 2720QM from the 2630qm.

For example, XTOPIC says that the Sager NP5170 "doesn't support the 1600 MHz RAM" even if you upgrade the CPU to the 2720.

Other advantages of the 2720:
-While both the processors have base graphics clock frequency of 650 MHz, the core i7-2720qm has better 1.3 GHz turbo core frequency, as compared to 1.1 GHz for core i7-2630qm.
- The core i7-2720qm has support for the Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) while the core i7-2630qm has none.

I am an SC2 gamer also, and none of the above seems relevant for my needs, so I stuck with the 2630qm.

 

Indeed.
Depending on personal usage and budget, one can easily opt for 2630QM and still maintain high performance gains in both games and pro programs.

 

As this face-off, I would consider another point than just the clock speed: 2720QM supports faster Ram, what I suppose could lead to a greater performance gain. (do you agree?)

But beside these two differences, they're quite the same:
Compare Intel® Products,

 

Faster RAM speed is generally unnoticeable in real life.

 

1333MHz and 1600MHz RAM will make very little difference in most anything.

 

Lol... even a difference between 1066 and 1600Mhz RAM's won't be noticeable (at all).
Unless the price between the 2 cpu's is very small, I'd go with the 2630qm.

Kobalt computers in UK offers both 2630qm and 2720qm in one of their laptops, but the latter is by about £97 more expensive than the former.
If you wanna choose the 2820qm on the other hand, the price tag goes even higher of course (by roughly £300) and the performance gains (15% over 2630qm) do not justify that kind of a cost AT ALL.
Heck, even in 3dsMax, a 15% gain would barely be noticeable.
Anything less than 30% (and this is being generous, because I'd rather opt for 40% to 50% - and ONLY for CPU intensive tasks) of performance increase is hardly worth it (especially for THAT kind of a money).
I mean seriously... Intel prices 2630qm and 2720qm with but a minor difference in manufacturing price... but 2820qm and 2920qm are ridiculously overpriced (even by Intel's manuf. price). And laptop manuf. go WAY overboard (how exactly can they get away with this?).

I'd rather pair a 2630qm with high amounts of cheapest ddr3 RAM (such as 8 to 12GB) and a high end gpu.

 

You could always get the 2630, sell it, and upgrade to 2720 yourself while probably saving some money. Though I'm not sure if the difference is worth it, I'm still using a 740qm and it's more than fast enough for just about anything.

This does include the occasional video work.

 

It will save you a lot indeed.

I did the same thing for my current laptop. It came with a Core 2 Duo T9400 CPU and a reseller upgrade to T9900 had a lucrative price. Instead I purchased T9900 from e-bay, replaced it at home and sold the T9400 here.

The overall cost was almost a quarter of what the resellers were offering.


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