i7-620m 2.4GHz?

Hey - I have an Acer 3820TG with an i3-370m.

I was looking at CPU upgrades on eBay, and came across quite a few i7-620m CPUs with only 2.4GHz clock speed. I assume that turbo functions the same as the others, and would be 2.8ghz turbo using both cores.

Does anyone have experience with these? They seem to be engineering samples, which explains the lower clocks. However, it is significantly cheaper than, say, an i7-640m, which costs more than double.

New Intel i7 620M 2.4GHz to Turbo 3.066GHz 4MB L3 ES C0 on eBay.ca (item 120633339010 end time 09-Feb-11 15:56:00 EST)

What interests me is they still retain the extra meg of cache, which puts it above an i3 or an i5.

Thanks.

 

I wouldnt risk getting an engineering sample..not very reliable so you may have issues down the road. You can get an i5 560m with higher clock rates, I don't think the extra meg of cache would make much difference in real word use

 

That ES CPU looks like what would be an i7-600M if there was one. That means 2.4Ghz base speed, 2.8Ghz turbo on 2, and 3.06Ghz on one core, just you like surmised. On top of that, it is an earlier pre-production stepping. There is nothing wrong with ES/QS cpu's. If you are looking for an i7-620M, do not buy this. Then again, this is way cheaper than any i7-620M.

 

Hmm... the main thing that interests me is the fact that it's significantly cheaper than any other CPU on eBay.

I understand it's a crippled 620m, or the non-existant 600m, but the more aggressive turbo of the i7's make up for the 2.4GHz base speed.

There seems to be a mixed reaction regarding ES/QS chips. I'm interested in upgrading, and nothing else seems to be in this price range. The i5-5xx and normal 620/40 are at least $200+. Honestly if I was paying that much, I would go straight for the 640m. However, the price on this is very tempting.

Would it be worth it assuming it's stable? It's not the best chip I could get, but the value seems quite nice.

 

Well, part of it is that ES/QS chips are technically illegal. It's not as if Intel is likely to come after you directly or anything, but the fact is still there. Kind of like downloading music, with slightly less risk. The fact that these are not final production chips means that there's the possibility of errors that were corrected in the final release, or that these chips aren't as stable as they perhaps should be. For example, some of the ES/QS 920XMs that some people bought would automatically start to throttle at around 80 degrees Celsius, something that production chips don't do. And also, of course, being that these are technically still the property of Intel and not meant to be sold, if the chip should somehow manage to bork your system (unlikely, but possible), you'll have no warranty or recourse. Of course, for many warranties swapping out the CPU in the first place voids your warranty, but for some warranties, a CPU replacement doesn't, and in that case, you might be running a bigger risk.

As for whether or not it's worth it, well, that's really something that only you can decide. If you know what you're getting into, and have no problems with what I've just outlined, then you'll be fine.

 

You can always put the original CPU back in when you need to send it out for a repair, so most of the talk about voiding warranties is moot. Unless there is a sticker or seal you have to break to get to the CPU, but in that case it'll be void no matter what you replace it with.

 

Well, yes, but most of the time, a warranty that voids upon swapping out a CPU will have the seals and stickers in the first place. Or they can tell by the fact that you now have paste on the CPU instead of the original foil thermal pad, or whatnot. Point being, as I said, to be sure of what you're getting yourself into before you start. If you're already out of warranty, of course, or have a warranty that considers the CPU a user-replaceable part (many business notebooks and barebones, for example, have this), then the point is also moot.

 

You could just get a i5 520m for $100: Intel Core i5-520M 2.4G 3M Cache (SLBU3) - eBay (item 320645428174 end time Jan-26-11 07:57:03 PST)

Its still a pretty fast processor.

 

Hmm... thanks for the info Judicator.

I think if I end up jumping on an upgrade, it'll be that i7.

That i5-520m is very well priced, but compared to my i3-370m, all I would gain is turbo. The cache is the same, and the base clock is the same. It's also not as aggressive with turbo compared to the i7.

All I'm worried about is reliability I suppose. Considering it's not even an existing model, perhaps there could be issues. However, since it's lower than any existing model, I'm hoping it would be solid.

 

Well, they say that's it's clocked lower because it's a pre-production/ES version of the i7-620M. The issue then becomes why, exactly, it's clocked lower; is it part of the architecture they hadn't finalized yet, or did they have to downclock it because it was unstable and couldn't reach final 620M speeds, or what other reason was there? These are the things that would personally worry me a bit. Of course, if you don't plan on stressing it much, I think it'll probably be just as stable as the seller claims. I just worry what other "little" issues it might have (maybe throttling at high speeds/temperatures like those previously mentioned ES/QS 920XMs? Hard to say).

 

I have a 620m I have to say that is a lightening fast dual processor even beating some of the quads about, for single threaded apps you can't get much better. BUT the premium you pay is pretty harsh. Even the i5 is a lot better value for money vs performance gains. i3 is still a reasonable processor even if you opt for that in the end. If you can afford the jump the i7 is worth it though but dont break the bank if you can't. Whats your laptops uses exactly?

 

Laptop I use for school, gaming (StarCraft II primarily, some other steam games) and emulation. An emulator I use currently runs at around 40-50 fps. It seems quite doable with a CPU upgrade to get to 60.

Right now I run the i3-370m:
2.4ghz with 3mb L3 cache.

Best case scenario is the i7-640m:
2.8ghz turbo to 3.2 (dual) with 4mb L3 cache.

What this i7-"620m" would give:
2.4ghz turbo to 2.8 (dual) with 4mb L3 cache.

It's certainly better to get the 640m outright, but the price is quite high ($300). I'm tempted to wait, but from what I've read, CPU prices tend to stay high if not go higher due to demand once they're phased out.

Just considering my options at my moment.

 

It depends a bit. The last generation, there wasn't really a clear boost at the high end (there were so many people "complaining" that their QX9300 was better than an i7-920XM, etc), so there was still a much healthier demand for the older chips. With Sandy Bridge showing much more dramatic improvements across the board, prices are a little more likely to drop this time around. This is all speculation, though. Oh, and last generation there were some crazy sales to be had after the i7s first came out. HP, for example, was selling a very high end C2D at a really good price. I'll see if I can find the old thread for you.

Edit - Here we go. http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...ore-2-extreme-qx9300-mobile-cpu-502-55-a.html

 

My 620m overclocks to 3.33ghz maybe yours is the ES version because 2.8ghz seems slow to me, from your list the 640m is by far the best choice! As far as dual core goes you cannot get much better.

i7 was a big step up from the last technology in terms of speed. The architecture is about 20% quicker and hyperthreading allowed large but short jumps. People need to look at facts and not just written clockspeed methinks. With unlockable multipliers for the extreme i7s they even trample all but the most extreme sandys because they cannot be unlocked. QX9300 isn't even comparable. Beware the above post is very misinformed! Core 2 is much slower than i7 even i3 is quite a bit faster. Do not buy old technology unless you are looking for a cheap deal. Core 2 quads still do okay but comparing the QX9300 to a 920xm is silly, a better comparison is the 720xm.

I'd take a 640m dual over a core 2 quad just because of the raw mhz speed difference, overwhelmingly most processes are still single or double core it will get destroyed in that range.

 

I'm afraid that your post is a bit misinformed. The initial Clarksfield quad cores were clocked ridiculously low. The "facts" as you put it, are these: The QX9300 is a quad core that runs at 2.53 GHz stock, and has an unlocked multiplier so it can be easily overclocked (there are a fair number of people that like to run theirs around 3.5 GHz or more, for example). The i7-920XM is clocked at 2 GHz stock, and also has an unlocked multiplier. Now even given the 20% clock for clock advantage of the i7-920XM, that's only an "effective" 2.4 GHz for the i7-920XM compared to the QX9300... and remember that since this was when the i7-920XM first came out, we had no universal method of overclocking it at the time, while overclocking the QX9300 was well understood. Even with Turboboost, on all 4 cores the i7-920XM only pulls slightly ahead (2.26 GHz * 1.2 = 2.7 GHz). As you can see here, with these numbers for the QX9300 compared with the i7-920XM, comparing the QX9300 to the i7-720QM means the i7-720QM gets completely blown out of the water (there is no i7-720XM). Try digging back through the NBR archives, and this "issue" is rather well documented.

Where the i7s excelled compared to C2D was with hyperthreading, and turboboost (not hyperthreading) to boost situations where all 4 cores weren't being used. However, as mentioned, at the high end, with all cores in use, the i7-920XM was not nearly the great advance over C2D that Sandy Bridge is over first generation i7 (and even there, most of the boost is across the low end, not the high end). If you want to go into the details about the design of the microarchitecture, Nehalem/Westmere was designed by Intel's US team, which tends to design chips that are comparatively less efficient (although usually still more efficient than previous generations), but with more brute power. Sandy Bridge was designed by Intel's Israeli team (which designed the C2D series), and they tend to come out with the more efficient microarchitectures. In this case, this is the main reason for the gains of Sandy Bridge over Clarksfield; Clarksfield is rather power hungry and hot (comparatively), which is why the Clarksfield CPUs are clocked so relatively low; they needed to be downclocked to remain within heat constraints. Sandy Bridge doesn't have that problem, so it can be clocked higher (as is obvious).

Lastly, please, try to read the entire post and take things in context; the issue here is whether or not prices will drop due to a new generation appearing, and my post about C2D is only intended to reflect the likelihood of that happening; and the basis for comparison is the last generation change (from C2D to Core i).

 

That's been established already. But the ES 620M is a whole lot more CPU for the $, which is why the OP is asking about this.

Actually Judicator is correct. Even at stock clocks (2.26Ghz turboboosted) the 920XM is only a smidge faster than a QX9300. All it brings to the table is faster clocks via turbo boost when using 1 or 2 cores, which is pretty rare for CPU intensive tasks these days, and hyperthreading, which only comes into its own on number crunching type tasks. It really was not a leap in performance, just a little bump.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I've been digging around eBay a bit more and I think I've found a compromise.

This appears to be a completely standard i7-620m:
Intel Confidential Core i7 620M 2.67GHz 4MB CPU on eBay.ca (item 140502885225 end time 18-Feb-11 12:03:20 EST)

However, I'm not sure what this "Confidential" means. From the picture of CPU-Z, it doesn't look like an ES chip. Does anything look out of the ordinary?

The value seems to be quite good, as price + shipping ends up being $165, slightly higher than the $135~ of the ES 620m, and much lower than the 640m's $300~.

 

It looks fine to me, however it does say (ES) at the end of the specification line

 

As stated, the specification line does say ES, which is probably what the "Confidential" refers to; it was an ES chip supplied "confidentially" to the original tester, who is now selling it off. It looks fine otherwise, though, and the seller appears reputable. If you're willing to go ahead with an ES chip, it doesn't seem to be a bad choice. I don't know enough about steppings and versions for the i7-620M to tell you anything else, though.

 

You guys are right. I'm not sure how I missed that ES.

However, I think I'll grab that regardless. Nothing else seems to touch it for value. Unless you guys think prices on the i7-640m will be dropping anytime soon. Not only that, but it'd have to drop significantly to be a good value.

It's only 140mhz more on the i7-640m, but it is the best of what it is. I wouldn't mind paying more, but just not double the price more.

 

It's not exactly extremely noticeable, you really almost have to be looking for it (the ES). I really couldn't say about the prices; I'd guess that they'll stay high for a while, at least until dual-core Sandy Bridge is released (or about to be released), which isn't for another month. After the dual-cores are released, they _may_ fall. As stated before, though, this is something that's really difficult to predict (and with dual cores apparently not being as big an advance over Arrandale as quad-core was over Clarksfield, we may be back in the C2D to Clarksfield transition again, with people seeing less reason to upgrade an existing Arrandale).