Sandy Bridge CPU i3 2310M vs i5 2410M

I'm about to purchase a new Dell Vostro 3450 laptop, and I'm trying to determine which CPU I should pick.

According to benchmarks, the i5 has considerably better performance, but what about battery life?
Is there any difference in the battery consumption between the two while doing Office-based work (mainly Word/OneNote)?


I'd appreciate any assistance.

 

There will hardly be a difference in battery life. I would go for the i5, unless you want to upgrade it yourself later.

 

What is "hardly a difference"?
15%? 10%? less?

The thing is, I'm going to be using the laptop mostly for university-tasks - which means Microsoft Office, and web-browsing.
The i3 2310M won't be available in my location for a few more weeks, so I'm trying to decide whether I should just invest the extra ~$100 for the i5 2410M upgrade and buy it right away. Since the battery life is much more critical to me than sheer power, I have to realize what's the trade-off.

 

These CPUs all have the same nominal power rating but, in reality, there is some difference in the power consumption even between CPUs with the same model number.

One school of thought is that a faster CPU can complete tasks sooner and then go back to sleep resulting in overall similar power consumption. The 2310M has enough capacity for your likely workload although the 2410M's turbo boost may make operation slightly smoother under certain conditions. If the price differential small then I would opt for the faster CPU.

John

 

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I remember NotebookCheck compared the last-gen Arrandale i3, i5, and i7 processors and found that the i3 CPUs had lower idle and full-load power consumption than the i5, and the i5 similarly less than the i7. The difference, though, is very small and given the usual mixed usage, won't be noticeable. Get the cheapest CPU that meets your needs--for office based work, you will not be able to tell any difference at all between the i3 and the i5. Save yourself some money.

 

if you're literally just using MS word and browsing.

you could get by with an e350

 

i will never buy an i3, the i5 auto-overclocking (what's it's name again?) just ads so much snappiness to the system, i never want to go back to core2duo feel.

but that's just me

 

TurboBoost is what you're looking for.

Even the base Core i3 is significantly faster than some of the fastest Core 2 Duo Montevina CPUs, which were already far faster than necessary for basic office tasks. For the OP, who seems to need a laptop for only Office tasks, a Core i5's TurboBoost feature won't have much value. As Generic User #2 mentioned, a the E-350 APU would even suffice for the OP's needs: I certainly have no issue with Office 2010 and web browsing on my X120e; W7 is plenty snappy with an SSD.

As a slightly offtopic aside: if I were to obtain 3 physically identical laptops, one with a Core 2 Duo, one with a budget-basic Core i3, and one with a Core i7, I doubt anyone could tell the difference if they were given a few minutes with each laptop in succession to go through some basic Office/web browsing/even 1080p video watching usage.

 

Same laptop only time the i7-2710m uses more power than the i3-2310m that came with it is when all cores are engaged. Both idled less than 10 watts, less than 15 normal usage and 18-20 or so with 1080p video. And that may have been 1080/60p from my camera I got that reading off of.

 

I guess I'll go for the i3.

Thanks for the helpful responses

 

Yeah, the i3 is pretty good. There isn't really a middle ground with CPUs. Either you need tons of processing power or almost none at all. I've got a VAIO YB with an E350 and it's pretty fast. Much faster than my Core 2 Duo VAIO TZ.

Besides, I just looked at the Dell on the website. There's no point in putting an i5 in a machine that ugly. You're pretty much guaranteed to not get any dates with that machine. Your only friend will be that "Dude, you're getting a DELL" guy from 1998. So, in other words, a Core i3 will be fine for most tasks because it's got more processing power than the CPU portion of an E350.

 

never heard the tale of laptop = chick magnets, if we go by this the AW forums is full of lady killers!

 

Which C2D was in your Vaio?

 

1.33Ghz U7700. It was really weak, but WEI showed similar CPU scores compared to my AMD E350. My Sony YB is way faster overall.

 

hahahhaha, i think he confused this with a car forum ROFLMAO
dont put that V8 in your neon LOLLL

 

Hi, I am dealing with same problem, well very similar. I am about to buy a Thinkpad edge e420 with AMD Radeon HD6630M 1GB one notebook with anti glare display and intel core i3 2310M 2,1 GHz processor and the other one with same graphic and everything but intel core i5 2410m 2,3 GHz but with GLOSSY display

notebook will be mainly for work: MS office, internet browser and such things but sometimes i would like to play some game like oblivion, mafia 1,2. I want to ask if I can tell the difference between those CPU in games like those I mentioned and therefore to buy notebook with i5 but worse display or there will be no considerable difference and go with i3 CPU and antiglare display which is much better IMO (the display i mean).

Thank you very much.

 

The speed improvement you saw was due to the SSD, if you're comparing pure CPU, U7700 gets 1350/2550 (single/multi) in Cinebench R10 while the E-350 gets 1000/1900, so the U7700 is faster. WEI or passmark are not accurate benchmarks.

 

Like MidnightSun mentioned for basic Office related work and web browsing you will not feel the difference between a sandy bridge I3 and I7 under Windows 7. You can throw in some HD video too and not feel a difference. My I3 2310M and I7 2630QM have the same feel on the desktop environment for general tasks so much so that if you did not know what was under the hood you could not tell which machine has the I7. Now if you are going to be playing games at 1080p and do protein folding or maybe simulate over 5 Cisco routers, then the I7 will start to show its colors. Otherwise its a waste of money.

 

A little update on my last post. I have come into the possession of a laptop (Acer 4750G) with an I5 2410M. For general tasks such as Office and Web browsing I cannot say the difference between the I3 and I5. I would say the I5 has better battery life but then again the Dell 4110 with the I3 is known for poor battery life, so it could be a build issue rather than the shortcomings of the processor. While my I3 only has Intel HD graphics the I5 has a Geforce Gt 540M and obviously gaming is smoother. I have noticed the turbo boost kicking in when the performances is needed mostly in gaming; the I5 can go upto 2.9Ghz on one core or 2.6Ghz on both cores. The turbo boost driver will boost either one or both cores depending on load/thread utilization. With turbo boost demanding tasks will be significantly better on the I5. But overall I am impressed with the battery life of the I5.