i7-4700MQ worth upgrading to the i7-4800MQ?

I'm purchasing a new laptop with a GTX 780m, 16gb of 1600mhz Ram, with SSDs for OS and storage. I was going to get it with the 4700MQ but was wondering if you guys think its worth the $125 to upgrade to a 4800.
I use the laptop for work and gaming, the work I do involves engine work with Unity, Unreal, and other Engine software as well as some work inside Maya, softimage and other 3D applications (I am not a 3D modeler however).

 

For an extra 125.00 id say so. The 4800m is +300 higher on stock, and I think with intel XTU you can give it a a +400mhz overclock.

 

Do you think I will see a decent performance boost in games? The guys at Mythlogic told me It wasn't necessary unless I was running a lot of Virtual machines but I like to get as many opinions as possible.

 

Gaming performance won't change much by upgrading the processor as you will be limited by the video card.

For work the cpu upgrade should help out a decent bit, but won't do much for gaming.

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Not worth it. Games like Battlefield 3 which are CPU-intensive see little to no difference in FPS. Both will give you exceptional performance; gaming will be practically identical with either/or.

 

My w230st has a 4800mq which throttles down to 800mhz - 1.6ghz on battery and there is no difference in fps at all in grid 2, bioshock infinite, etc, you will be mainly bandwidth limited in newer games so just buy a 4702 to keep heat down and allow the gpu to turbo higher then overclock the memory.

 

I'd definitely go for the 4800 qm - its worth the extra. The 4700 mq has locked down multipliers in the bios like ivy bridge 3610qm which its essentially replacing. The 4800 is alot better value considering the extra grunt you get.

 

4700 = +200 max oc = 3.4ghz 4 core
4800 = +400 max oc = 3.9ghz 4 core
4900 = +600 max oc = 4.2ghz 4 core

 

If you have no money then definitely do not buy it. However... price for value... I would get 4800 if I could.

 

See:
PassMark - Intel Core i7-4800MQ @ 2.70GHz - Price performance comparison

See:
PassMark - Intel Core i7-4700MQ @ 2.40GHz - Price performance comparison


So... ~13% difference...

If the total system cost is over ~$1K - then this is a must have upgrade for you.


If... you're keeping the system as long as possible - and - you will put that processor power to use.


Looking at it another way - not only does the 4800 have more capabilities (in addition to performance) - but getting this kind of boost in performance/productivity in cpu limited workloads will be at least one or possibly two generation platform upgrades... which you could be enjoying for the low, low cost of about $25/year amortized over 5 years estimated ownership.


Good luck.

 

Getting 4702 over 4700 and 4800??

Wouldn't it be resticted by 37W max TDP??

On the same note, I'm also planning to get a Haswell laptop and if the 4700 is really locked down then I'd rather go for the 4800MQ.

 

Just go for the 4800. If your going to OC it, then why even bother, Haswells have power/throttling issues, on most notebooks. Bu if its stock turbo boosts that are interesting you then id go for it, as 300+Mghz on a haswell is decent performance boos, and noticeable. Though - the 4900 has an extra 2mb of cache, so, to me thats the best to get

 

Yeah but that adds nearly £100 to the cost of the laptop, so if the gain is minimal in games (4-10fps) then there is no point me spending that much more for it. :/

Considering I am going to have 2x Radeon HD 8970M GPUs in it. MYsn support also advise to go for the 4700MQ over the 4800MQ for gaming as the gains arent enough to warrant that extra spending on my budget.

Pretty sure I just answered my own question there lol, still want to know if the 4700MQ is really locked down like Meaker says it is.

 

£100 more over the lifecycle of the system. And it is not what you gain in today's workload (or FPS's...) - it is what you'll be stuck with near the end of life of the machine.

£100 over three, four or more years to gain about 13% raw performance gain (as I have previously posted) every single day is a no brainer: do it.

 

Hmm... if I do choose the 4800MQ then I'll have to take down my RAM to 4GB to stick close to my budget limit.

Others are saying no need to go for, you are saying that I should. I'm confused lol

 

Assuming proper BIOS and chipset support, you can overclock 4700MQ by 200 MHz, 4800MQ by 400 MHz, 4900MQ by 600 MHz, and 4930MX by whatever. The usual disclaimers regarding heat and power apply of course.

 

Just pick the cheap 4700, tweak some settings in the BIOS and Intel XTU and you will replicate the 4702 for a lower cost. You can even disable cores and replicate ULV CPU's if you want.

4800, 4900 and 4930 are useless for gaming. However if you need to run lots of VM's, emulators and scientific computing, then definitely go for them. MX is only worth it if you have monster cooling to support all that overclocking potential.

 

Thanks for all of your replies! I think I'm gonna go for the 4800MQ and reduce the amount of RAM to 4GB, I can always upgrade that.

The laptop I'm getting (XMG P723) has sufficient cooling to not throttle the powerful CPU so I should have no issues, also I want the laptop to be as future-proof as possible.

Still £1,535 will be a big hit on my wallet haha

 

You're gonna add more RAM ASAP right? 4GB is below minspec (actual minspec, not artificial like in CoD: Ghosts) for games like PlanetSide 2 which will crash and not run well with so little RAM. Star Citizen's minspec calls for 8GB RAM. For a gaming PC you should have at least 8GB. 12-16GB is recommended to be futureproof. I use 8GB as the baseline because that's what the next-gen consoles have and future game development will be very much tied to them.

 

A poor choice. That ~13% number that is floating around this thread is not going to show up in your games. Nor are your songs and movies going to run any better. It would shave off a few minutes off of video encoding and stuff like that.

Purchasing a gaming laptop with 4GB of RAM because you want to upgrade from 4700 to the 4800 is a very big mistake.

 

Yep I will be ordering another stick of RAM the same day I order the laptop!

It just works out cheaper if I buy it elsewhere and not from MYsn.

Well it translates to 4-10FPS rise in CPU intensive games, but I'm still getting contradicting answers from everywhere.

Oh and as I said in the above post, I will be buying more RAM immediately after putting the order in for the laptop. So I will end up with 12GB 1600Mhz DDR3 Crucial Ballistix Sport RAM.

 

Well if you're getting the RAM along with the CPU upgrade then go ahead. It's only a 300 MHz increase though and cache stays the same, so I'm not sure how much the small-to-nil performance increase is worth the price premium. Keep in mind that the 4700MQ can be overclocked by 200 MHz as well. If it was me, I'd keep the 4700MQ and spend the difference on a bigger SSD.

 

Ok thanks!

Well, what I've decided is to get DVD-RW instead of Blu-Ray and bump up the RAM back to 8GB. The re-seller I'm buying from only has Blu-Ray burners which is an extra £44, personally I don't play or want to burn Blu-Ray discs so that money would be much better spent on the RAM. That also allows me to stick to the 4800MQ!

 

Tell me you're at least getting an SSD though.

 

I will do when they get cheaper nearer to Xmas.

For now I'm getting the Travelstar 1GB 7200rpm HDD.

As a Trance DJ I always seem to run out of storage, and it really pisses me off lol

 

How many games can you fit on a 1GB drive?

There should be some good SSD deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday so keep your eyes open. HDD to SSD is the biggest system upgrade you can do, much more so than adding a marginally faster CPU or excess amounts of RAM (after a certain point).

 

Hahha, hopefully all of them!!

Metro 2033
Metro Last Light
Mirror's Edge
BF3
BF4
Doom 3 BFG Edition
Bioshock 1, 2 and Infinite
Need For Speed Most Wanted 2012
Dead Space 1, 2, 3
COD MW2 + MW3
COD Black Ops 1 + 2
COD Ghosts
Burnout Paradise
... more

I seriously need to catch up on my gaming lmao

Btw Crucial have some good offers on the M500 right now until Wednesday, sadly somehow I think I wont be able to grab it before then.

 

1 TeraByte, not GB lol)
I believe SLI needs 4800QM for more than 5 fps.

 

Don't understand.

 

Nope. 4700MQ can't even bottleneck dual 780M's. Or even a titan on an eGPU for that matter.

 

Short of an extremely-overclocked 4930MX, any laptop CPU will bottleneck 780M SLI. And whoever thought of using a Titan as an eGPU should not be allowed to procreate.

 

Wow, feel like I'm stepping on some toes here... or starting a fight lol

 

Oh RLY? Are you so sure? Because even on one 780M 4700mq vs 4900 on many games can show difference in more than 5 fps. And OP has SLI of slightly slower AMD cards.

AnandTech Portal | Choosing a Gaming Laptop, Back-to-School 2013 Edition

AnandTech | Mythlogic Pollux 1613 / Clevo P157SM Review Benchmarks are here.

 

Slightly different question - which SSD to go for?

Choice between 3, Samsung 840 250GB, Samsung 840 EVO 250GB or Crucial M500 240GB??

 

Not really. I was just pointing the mistakes in Jobine's post, albeit in a slightly sarcastic manner.

Crucial M500.

 

Hmm... ok!

I've been reading reviews all over and the 840 Evo seems like a faster drive all round.

Benefits of the M500 only shine through when you get to 480GB and over.

 

Except the Samsung drives use TLC NAND which I would not touch with a 10-foot pole, and Crucial drives have a great track record of reliability. It's not always about raw speed, as the differences between SSD's are so minute as to be inconsequential during normal use.

 

Not really valid benchmark for what you stating.
Look at 1080p only skyrim, grid and sc come ahead.
Put some mod on skyrim and it would be gpu limited. Sc is always cpu limited, but for sc you don't need 780m ne ways.

If you buy 780m and play at 900p then be my guess.

Cpu benchmark :

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7255/intel-core-i7-4960x-ivy-bridge-e-review/5

 

Faster? Uhm, no.


See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...g-evo-250gb-same-price-point.html#post9457281

 

That's a very broad statement to make. CPU usage depends on the game. Some games will see benefits from a faster CPU, some will not.

 

Hmm ok, well the guys at XoticPC seem to suggest that the 840 reliability is pretty good and the PRO drive was their recommended SSD. Look here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...0sm3-p375sm-owners-lounge-98.html#post9462231

 

I made a mistake calling 2 AMD cards working together as SLI while wanted to say CrossFire because I usually call SLI as 2 GPUs together in general.

But still what I wrote is easy to understand. 1080p vs 900p adds extra pressure on GPU but considering OP is going to have 2x Radeon HD 8970M GPUs it gives more headroom to breath for graphics and much less for CPU.

 

Talking about Crucial M500 not Intel 530.

Games are more likely to be CPU-bound with a powerful GPU like 780M SLI, which can pump out a ton of frames but a weaker mobile CPU might not be able to keep up. Some games like PlanetSide 2 and BF4 are CPU-limited by nature and performance in these games scales almost linearly with available CPU resources assuming a fast-enough GPU. Mantle solves this but right now it looks like it will only be a thing on AMD cards. The most sensible setup to me is to pair 680M/780M SLI or 7970M/8970M CrossFire with an XM chip overclocked to 4.3-4.7 GHz.

840 and 840 EVO use TLC NAND, 840 Pro uses MLC NAND. Get the Pro if you must have a Samsung drive.

 

I would purchase the 840 PRO unless you get the Intel cheaper. There isn't a monumental difference between the two. If you get one cheaper than the other and by more than ten bucks (or would you rather I say "quid"? ) go for the one that is cheaper. Here's some people that did a test with the new TLC based Samsung drives and I doubt you'd be writing hundreds of terabytes of data onto that disk in the next few years.

 

TLC NAND doesn't seem to be a problem anymore going by few notebook retailers and reviewers.

Not interested in the Intel. Its 840 EVO or M500 for me.

The 840 EVO works out cheaper by £6, and its a good option from the suggestions and reviews so far. Reliability doesn't seem an issue anymore like it was with TLC NAND before.

 

However the i7 4700MQ is more than enough for just about any game, and the extra dough can be spent towards 100$-150$ in upgrades, such as a SSD, improved cooling and a better display.

 

Why would you need 2 ssds in laptop? Or you think people never buy anything more wxpensive than for 1600$?

 

In that case upgrade the GPU. 4700 + 780M > 4800 + 770M

 

To get RAID

Well, I'm thinking about the 120hz screen, but then I'll have to remove the SSD.

One Radeon HD 8970M is all I can afford in terms of GPU.

 

Buy 4700mq and 2nd GPU or just one but better.
Buy 128gb ssd judt for OS and couple games