i5-3210M vs i7-3610QM (NOT performance-wise)

I was wondering what the differences were between the i5-3210M and the i7-3610QM. I know the obvious difference in performance, but I am curious about other differences. Like battery life, temperature, anything.

Thanks in advance!

 

It's cheaper, that's about it.

 

Like Meaker said, it should be available for cheaper (or rather should be the stock option).

Battery life depends on power consumption. My 3610QM consumes, according to throttlestop, about 30 watts under heavy load (I am assuming Crysis 2 is pretty heavy load).

Heat also depends on power. Considering the 45W TDP of the i7, let us consider that wattage number. 45 watts of power is not really THAT much of heat energy per second (power is energy per unit time). Laptops main heating issues are usually caused by GPUs in today's times (or CPU as well if the fan has issues).

As such, cost is your only difference.

 

They both have similar battery life and temps at idle, but the i7 will have higher temps and power consumption under load.

And, as mentioned, the i5 is cheaper.

 

Which computer are you looking at, and what is your full configuration? There are probably more important issues than the processor.

 

Dell Inspiron 17R Special Edition, or another laptop with the GT 650M (preferably GDDR5). I want to play games, but I don't care if I can't play a few games at max settings. I also don't care about the future, and whether or not I will be able to play games then. The GT 650M GDDR5 should be capable enough to play Call of Pripyat at (near) max settings, and I have seen the benchmarks and know that Call of Pripyat doesn't use quad core at all, and that there is no improvement. It might be different for other games of course, like BF3, but I don't want to pay 100 euro extra just so I can play BF3 with 10 FPS more. That is why I was wondering about other differences beside the performance. I think I'm going to be quite happy with the i5-3210M.

 

Have you looked at an msi ge60/ge70?

 

I have. I've looked at several laptops with the GT 650M. MSI, Clevo, HP, Dell, Acer, Asus. For now I like the Dell Inspiron 17R-SE the most.

 

Also i5 3210m is dual core i7 3610qm is quad core. lenovo y580 is another ok choice and I saw a medion akoya quite cheap as well.

If you like the inspiron and its cheap go for it.

 

Lenovo y580 is quite expensive in my country. The Medion Akoya you are talking about is ridiculously cheap, but there are some things I do not like about it.

I know i5-3210M is a dual core. I would go for the i7-3610QM but not for 100 euro more. I think that's too much. I've seen a lot of gaming benchmarks, comparing dual with quad, and only a few games really benefit from quad core. Other games only benefit like 5-10% or not at all. Might be different with future games, but I don't care about that.

Also, the i5-3210M has HT so that should help a bit for games that are really multi-threaded. Sure the i7-3610QM also has HT, but I doubt any game will use 8 cores.

I've been looking at the MSI MS-16GA by the way, a barebones GE60 (I think). It is quite cheap but it doesn't have a second 2.5" SSD/HDD bay. The Inspiron 17R-SE looks amazing for the price. Not the cheapest, if you compare it to Acer or Medion, but still quite cheap. And it has everything I need, looks nice, and build quality seems to be okay too. With those Dell Coupons I should be able to get one quite cheap. Still waiting for a notebookcheck review though, if it will ever come.

 

Just looking at the processors alone, the i7 supports Trusted Execution Technology, and the i5 is cheaper (naturally). Aside from the core/performance differences and TDP, they're both the same.