Which is faster Intel® Core? i5-560M (2.66GHz) vs. Intel® Core? i7-740QM (1.73GHz)?

I dont get it so far. Its a fact that core i5-560M speeds up to (3.2GHz clocks with a turbo boost), whereas i7 -740QM speeds up to (2.93GHz clocks with a turbo boost.) Which one of these processors is faster than the other?

Right now im running a Core 2 Due CPU P8400 @ 2.26GHz

IMHO, if i compare my core 2 due 2.26 GHz to i7-740QM 1.73GHz..I will notice and understand that core 2 due 2.26 GHz clocks surpasses the 1.73GHz out of the i7. Am i wrong?

I dread to have a plenty of lags and system's freezing if I customize my next Dell XPS 15 with Intel® Core™ i7-740QM (1.73GHz)!!!

Its a fact that a 1 single GHz of CPU is currently flimsy and slow in the market, so im a bit confused and picky at this point.

Can someone assures me if i7-740QM(1.73GHz) deserves to run a risk with it..

Thank you in advance
Merry Christmas to all of you

 

In some single core tasks the i5 maybe a bit faster(from what I have read), but in many cases the i7 should be faster for a few key reason: 1) being it is a quad core cpu vs the i5 being a dual core cpu, and 2) if I am not mistaken the i7 also has more cache and higher bus speed, which also helps with speed improvements over the i5. I am sure someone else can elaborate more on this.

 

It really depends on how many cores you will need to use at a given time and the percentage utilization of each one.

 

Unless you run a lot of multithreaded applications (e.g. your job is a graphics / 3D designer), your best bet is the Dualcore i5.

The i7 is still miles ahead of your P8400 though, because if you run a 2-threaded application, your P8400 will be running at 2.26GHz x2 (in C2Duo architecture), while the i7 will be running at 2.93GHz x2 (in nephaelem architecture). It should be faster clock-to-clock in addition because of the newer architecture so overall it'd be a big percentage faster.

Then again if you put the i5 in the same test it'd run faster still.

The only time the i5 will lose is if something that takes advantage of as many threads as possible is put into play (definitely not games), then the maximum all-core clock of the i7 will surpass the i5.

 

The i7-740QM will run at 2.53GHz when running a 2 threaded application. Even if the application can make use of Hyperthreading, Windows7 will distribute it among 2 cores (1 thread each core) for majority of applications out there.

This is a very stupid thing: Windows7 thread management was effective with Core2 architecture. With Nehalem and TurboBoost however, it sucks big time.

 

It all depends on what you are doing.

And the gigahertz war is over, it's about more cores/threads.

 

I'm not too familiarized with the Nehalem line. Could you elaborate more as to what you mean by the thread management screwing up with Turboboost in picture?

 

In most cases that i7 is still going to outperform the i5.

 

Thank you all for your great inputs. I guess imma grab the i5 due to its high clock. peace out

 

Faster at what application? If an application places a heavy load on 1, 2 or 3 threads, the i5-560M will be faster. If it places a heavy load on 4 or more threads, the i7-740QM will be faster.

Other way around. Most applications are still single-threaded and even most of those that are multi-threaded do not use more than 3 threads. The i5 will almost always win unless the usage pattern is something professional (like video encoding) in which case I would highly recommend waiting another 2 weeks and ordering a Sandy Bridge machine which will crush Clarksfield simply because of the higher clock speeds.

 

The i5 will be the better choice. Most applications benefit more from high frequencies over threading, and few are optimized for multithreading and rely on single threading.
Very few applications are massively threaded, mostly applications that require math problem solving like CAD design, video/photo, scientist software (statistics, folding, etc). etc etc

Even in gaming the i5 will perform better.

 

it depends upon your uses.. Benchmarks and new games wise , the i7 is better... in older games more optimised for duals , the i5 is better.. for CAD etc , i7 is better.. I got a i7 since i needed a quad since i do matlab/programming/CAD.

Panther214

 

i5 is quad core

Edit: DISREGARD MY stupidity.

 

The i5 560m is a dual core. It uses multi threading to give you two* virtual cores.

 

Awhhhhhhattt...
This is fricking sucks. Sorry for my misconception.

 

You might be thinking of the quad core i5 desktop cpu.

 

I would suggest the quad core frankly. In games that take advantage of 2 cores the mhz difference isn't huge enough that you'd be seeing big problems. Games that use 4cores (more games will in the future) will be much faster.

Really the i7 seems like a better bet.

 

Except the comparison is not the same as in desktops where both dual/quad cores offer the same frequencies. Here we have a significant 800+ mhz or higher difference between quads and dual cores.

i7 740QM
Intel Core i7 740QM Notebook Processor - Notebookcheck.net Tech

i5 560QM
Intel Core i5 560M Notebook Processor - Notebookcheck.net Tech


Here's some game benchmarks..

There were discreptancies in the i7 720QM in terms of GDDR3/GDDR5 ram used on the GPU's I will look for another scenario.

i5-540m/ HD 5850 Mobility
Review MSI GX640-i5447LW7P Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Quad core game? Okay:

 

whats the i7 clockspeed on two cores?

i think the i5 will tend to win, but not very emphatically

 

Clockspeed on the i7 quad should be 2.4~ ghz on 2 cores.
edit: it's 2.398ghz

 

Wow that's some big framerate cutoffs by the quads.

 

5850 in Acer laptop was using GDDR3 VRAM; 5850 in MSI laptop was using GDDR5 VRAM - hence the framerate cutoffs.

 

Wow holy smokes you're right.

Ill try to find an equivalent match up, tomorrow.

 

2 Native cores at 2.53ghz would crush a 3ghz single core plus hyperthreading.

You can pretty much consider hyperthreading like a core running at 30% of the speed of a real core.

So with a 2.0ghz quad windows correctly reads that it has effectivly:

4x CPU running at 2Ghz
4x CPU running at 600Mhz

Hence it will fill real cores first.

 

Also keep in mind for a laptop if battery life is important to you. i5 will come with integrated GPU, if you look for a machine with switchable graphics, you can run off the integrated GPU for power savings, plus the i5 consumes less power in general.

That being said, I found my Core 2 Quad @ 2.4GHz in my Sager worlds faster than an i5-520m that I used in a laptop for a while. The i7-720QM is probably similar performance.

 

Eh, you are really going out on a limb there. Windows simply knows which two virtual cores are part of each physical core so that it can task threads to each core before dumping a second thread on any core. There is no difference in performance for assigning work to either of the two virtual cores that are part of each physical core. By allowing two threads to run simultaneously on a single core, they can make more efficient use of a core's finite execution resources.

 

If one of a hyperthreaded core's "virtual" cores is loaded and the other is not, the loaded one will (or at least, should) be given all of that core's resources to play with (this is done within the CPU itself and is invisible to Windows). If both cores are loaded, they'll each use at ~60-65% of the core's available resources (thus creating a total gain, as the two threads together are running at 120-130% of the speed of a single core).

That being said, any of the i7s in turbo mode are more than powerful enough already to run any single or dual-threaded game out there (remember, 1 ghz on a core-i translates to about 1.2 ghz on a core 2), and future games are undoubtedly going to be able to take advantage of the extra physical cores the i7 provides. For instance, my Y460 with the dual-core i5 stuttered tremendously in ArmA2, but my Y560 with the 740qm runs it fine.

 

Yes but by running two threads on one core rather than two will incur a significant performance penalty, it will take longer to finish its task and it will spend longer out of idle state.

 

Syberia, when you have one thread working at 100% on a core, it can't use up all the resources. The thread might not use some types by default, and there will be mispredictions and cache misses, etc that mean there will be clock cycles where all the execution resources go idle. So just having two separate threads that can jump in there at the same time means that less goes to waste. But of course hyperthreading is not perfect, and can have anywhere from a -5% impact on performance to up to a 30% increase in performance, depending on what you are doing.

Yes, that was implied in my explanation. Since the OS is not completely oblivious, at worst hyperthreading can incur a small 5% performance penalty, at least as far as I've seen.

 

Thats more of a case that running hyperthreading has an amount of overhead.

Now lets say a program's thread is actually heavy on all or certain parts of a core. A second similar thread is not going to be able to use spare resources because there are not any.

So your second thread does not execute any extra resources (they just swap use and get 50% of cpu time) so therefore you get no gain but get hit by the overhead.

 

If that was the case, hyperthreading would not provide nearly as much benefit as it can now, and would likely not be implemented.

Here is a blurb from Intel:

 

Ok, ok yes there are clever things you can do with an out of order architechture so that you can get round these limitations.

There are cases where you cant get round it, thats when you see the performance impact.

I was trying to keep it simple.