What kind of difference would you see in gaming with the same card, but different processors

I have heard that most processors are limited in performance by the graphics card, and not the other way around.

I have also heard that graphics cards are much more important for gaming then processors, and even an old processor will work great with a good graphics card.

I have seen 2 laptops with the same graphics cards and most other specs, the only real difference is the processor and size.

One is 14" with Intel core i5 2.5Ghz dual core(turbo boost to 3.1)

the other is 15.6" with intel core i7 2670QM (2.2GHz) Quad-Core with Smart Cache 6MB
this is also 50
I would prefer 14 inches but I can make due with 15.6.

What effect will this have on gaming?

also, why does the i5 say 3.1Ghz when the i7 says 2.2? isnt the i7 better?

 

The i5 has a faster clock speed per core, but only has two cores; the i7 has four, and will also turbo boost to 3.1GHz under load. If you're only running single-threaded games or applications, the i5 will likely outperform the i7; however, the i7 will outperform the i5 for almost anything that's multithreaded. Most new games are multithreaded now, so that they can take advantage of the multiple cores.

Unless you're playing games that are very CPU-bound (some simulation/RTS games fall into that category), I suspect there likely would be little difference in how well those two systems would run games, though I haven't seen any direct comparisons to confirm that suspicion.

 

thanks for the info.

 

What Sorbus said. Even today, few games are written to really take advantage of four threads/cores. That will change over time of course, but likely a fast dual core should serve you well for some time to come.

 

Not just that. Sometimes, and most of the times the game applications are designed to utilize the CPU cores from the OS standpoint. So it's also a matter of operating systems and their kernels of today having to evolve much further to fully utilize this still relatively and not-yet-very-mainstream technology of having multi-cores, whether it be 2, 4 or 8 of them.

 

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Not to be such a noob haha but I've been wondering about say the i7 3610Qm processor that's 2.3 GHz up to 3.3 (or 3.1 can't remember) GHz with turbo. Is this turbo thing already apart of the system when you receive it and it's just a matter of changing settings? Or would that be when you apply OCing?

 

The turbo charging is a standard out-of-the-box feature of the CPU. It means your CPU by defaults support several steps between 2.3 and 3.3 GHz, inclusive of both, and steps up or down as per the processing power demand. This is NOT overclocking.