i3-2310M vs i5-2410M for gaming

I was looking at the Lenovo y470 notebooks that come with a nvidia GT 550. There is one that comes with an i3-2310M Processor ( 2.10GHz 1333MHz 3MB ) and another that has a i5-2410M Processor ( 2.30GHz 1333MHz 3MB ) with Turbo Boost up to 2.9 Ghz. I was wondering if there would be any significant difference between these two processors when it comes to gaming? I remember someone mentioned on this forum that there would be no difference between the processors since the GT 550 is still the bottleneck. What does that mean?

 

If your car's engine can create 300 horsepower, but you have bald tires that can only put 200 down on the pavement before losing traction, the tires--not the engine--are the limiting factor in how fast you can go. They're the "bottleneck" for performance--the narrowest point.

The gaming difference between an i3 and an i5 is not big. In many games, it doesn't matter at all. In others, there's a difference, but not a night-and-day difference. GPU has more to do with gaming performance than CPU does.

Read this:

Review Intel Sandy Bridge Processors Gaming Performance - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

Significant difference? Depends on the game in question. But with a 38% possible performance boost from the better cpu, the gpu will also be allowed to stretch it's performance as much as possible too.

There is a reason why gpu's are tested in the highest performance systems (and O/C'd too...) to determine how much performance can be squeezed from them. In a lower end system (cpu power, specifically), most highend gpu cards would be cpu limited and not showing their true potential.

Will the GT 550 hit 38% more with the i5 2410M? Again, depends on the game, but if the system you're considering is Win7x64 with 8GB of RAM or more, the faster cpu would be my choice, no questions asked.

With the faster/better cpu and 8GB RAM, not only will you notice it in games (maybe not higher maximum FPS, but more importantly higher minimum FPS), but also in general computing too.

Good luck.

 

Thanks, that makes sense now.

 

You're welcome.

Here is the link I was trying to find, but couldn't when I last posted here:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/7836058-post13.html