i5 540M vs i7 620M for Lenovo t410?

Hi guys, im just wondering how much faster is the i7 in this comparison? Can anyone give me any sort of advice please?

 

My advice would be to stick with the i5 540M (which is more powerful than pretty much any Core 2 Duo out there), unless you have a specific CPU-bottlenecked task that you need the i7 620M for (ie: video encoding).

What will you be using your T410 for?

 

Like MidnightSun said , depending on ur tasks , u can get either one... personally , i would just get the i7-620M which is more powerful especially if ur not planning to upgrade ur laptop for a few years as the extra speed might help out with the more intensive applications in the future...

 

The 620M isn't typically worth the cost of upgrading as it would only yield about 5% or less performance benefit on average compared to the 540M, which isn't really noticeable in a real life situation.

 

I do Java and C# multithreading for my university final year project, real-time stuff.

Im thinking though, if there is negligible difference then in 2-3 years time, both would be pretty 'naff' for any future applications? Unless there was a huge difference (25%+), the i7 wouldn't be any better offer for future apps?

 

Add to that the fact that it seems the i7 does decrease battery life slightly, and I do not think it is worth the upgrade for most users.

 

I agree a 540 would be more than adequate for just about most users and unless you push your CPU to the limit with extensive tasks on a near daily basis, I believe the higher price tag of the 620M doesn't justify it's performance increase for most users.

 

I look at it like this - if the i5-540M can't run something well, then in all likelihood the i7-620M will not be able to either. So, the i7-620M is probably not worth the extra money.

 

This article may prove useful:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Processors-Arrandale.25085.0.html

In particular, pay attention to the Power Consumption bar graph.

 

PC Mark vantage is also 10% higher though.

 

The point of the article was to show that the performance gains of the i7-620M were minimal, if non-existent, over the i5-540M, while also consuming an extra 15W more and incurring a higher price.

 

10% performance for 15% power assumption and 10% price increase aren't too bad.

 

I don't know what the reviewers were smoking or they got a faulty batch, but the 620M should not consume noticeably more power than the 540M's. More likely it should use equal or less because its a better quality bin.

 

10% on one test? It's pretty much 0-3% for every other test, and it's sometimes lower.

In any case, the original poster wanted to know if it would be worth the increased cost. It most certainly is not, considering that the differences between the two processors are minimal and insignificant.

And the cost? For 1000 units, it's $257 for the i5-540M versus $332 for the i7-620M. I'm pretty sure that's not a 10% price increase.

 

I am finding the notebookcheck graph hard to believe. I thought both the chips have the same tdp. I know 620m has slightly higher frequency and l2 cache, but 15w high seems too much. Do we have any other review confirming the same information. Also did notebookcheck test with retail or ES version of the chip?

I remember reading at anand that there is still lots of optimizations possible for intel's 32nm process. May be next revision will have much better power consumption numbers.

 

TDP doesn't equal to power consumed. While the difference is a bit high for that review, it is higher nonetheless. Intel rushed their first generation of 32nm so it doesn't have a lot of power optimizations, but the next generation will.

 

PCMark is also what's known as a "synthetic" benchmark. Sure, it'll show you that your 620M is faster than the 540M, but it's not really representative of the actual performance that you'll see in useful programs because they are dependent on many other resources.

 

Well if ur doing such stuff as the OP is doing , a quad would really help along with a lot of RAM... so now i review my recommendation and i recomnmend u get a core i7 quad and 4GB RAM ++...it might cause ur battery life to decrease but it is power efficient and shuts of cores when u don't need them... core i7 quad will really help with multi-threading...

 

Are you sure about this? Would you give us some test data?
I'm hesitating on i5 or i7 now. Price is not my concern, but hear/noise is.

 

They have updated their power consumption graphs. The i7s do consume slightly more power and hence would produce more heat and noise than the i5s, but if price is no concern, just get the 620M.

 

From Notebookcheck: Review Intel Core i3/i5/i7 Processors ?Arrandale?
The power consumption different from i5-540m and i7-620 is too big. This is the only review made me hesitating. I really hope their test is way off accurate.
i5 i7
idle.min 17.6 26.5
idle.max 20.5 30.2
load.max 50.5 64.7

Can't believe this. Even idle has big difference.