intel i3 vs core2 duo 6600

Hey, so i'm buying an inspiron 15 from dell's website and can choose between two laptops which are pretty much the same, except -

one has an intel i3-330m processor (2.13Ghz, 4Threads, 3M cache) and 320gb hard drive and costs $1335 (NZ dollars)

and the other has an intel core2 duo processor (2.20GHz/800 FSB/ 2MB Cache) and 500gb hard drive and costs $1180 (once again kiwi dollars).

I'm pretty keen for a bigger hard drive to store music and videos on, as my current laptop only has 320gb and i'm running out. I'm also far from rich. But I also play some games (oblivion, need for speed etc). Is the new i3 processor really worth the extra NZ$150 and smaller hard drive????

Cheers

 

oh and would either comp be able to run newish games pretty well? Oblivion and so on...

 

we need more specs to tell you if it can play games well.

 

One is

Processor - Intel Core2 Duo Processor T6600 (2.20GHz/ 800 FSB/ 2MB Cache)
Graphics Card - 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330
Memory - 4GB Dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM
Hard Drive - 500GB SATA Hard Drive


The other is

Processor - Intel Core i3-330M (2.13Ghz, 4Threads, 3M cache
Graphics Card - 512GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330
Memory - 4GB Dual Channel 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Hard Drive - 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive

Is anything else important for gaming? I'm guessing the second would be better for games, but how much so?

 

GPU is more important. i3 would be better, but not fantastically so. Performance would be bottlenecked by the ATI 4330.

 

any particular reason you're going between those two notebooks?

for gaming, you might be able to find a notebook more suitable for it, though it may or may not be a dell

there is a lenovo model:

lenovo IdeaPad Y550P(324156U) NoteBook Intel Core i7 720QM(1.60GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory DDR3 1066 500GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M - Retail

retail is 999.99 USD. this would be a quad core notebook with a 240m, has the DDR3 memory and your 500GB HDD.

 

My current and previous laptops have been dells and i've really liked them. But neither had a dedicated graphics card and it's harding my laptop back. Gaming wouldn't be the only use, also general uni work, music, videos and internet and I don't tend to play the newest, fanciest games. But I was worried the ATI graphics card wouldn't be that great. Was going to go with dell again since they seem to have much better specs than other laptops around the same price. But any other ones you'd recommend? I would need at least 320gb space and was definitely wanting 4gb ram. Oh and cheers for the help.

 

i editted my post, wasn't sure if i did it in time when you posted, but the lenovo notebook is a nice deal. asus has decent medium end gaming notebooks. though, do note that laptops with a dedicated gpu often have lower battery life, though not as bad as they used to be.

usually 2-3.5 hours of battery life from notebooks with dedicated gpus.

i didn't really see that you were using NZD. that puts the lenovo one at ~1400 NZD, which i guess may be a bit over what you were looking for?

 

ah yip, unfortunately new zealand can be a bit backwards in some regards. Usually costs alot more than the equivalent US dollars, if they can even be found here. Did a quick search and can't find that lenovo one anywhere. There's mostly just dell, acer, asus, hp and toshiba laptops around. Apart from HP, i've always felt the others are kind of budget (and not in a good way), but maybe that's just me being unfair...

 

Have you considered filling out a thread in the WNBSIB forum?

 

Dell has shifted their gaming notebooks to alienware and only some of the highend dell branded ones have a mid-range gpu as an option. The machines with the configs you're looking at have a gpu that will be a bottleneck for most of the graphics intense games at decent settings let alone being future-proof.

 

Ah, thanks. So what kind of graphics card would be the next step up? From looking round, any ones with more than 512mb memory seem to be a huge step up in price and I'm not really sure what other aspects of the graphic cards I should be looking at. Oh and Dtwn, posted it in the other forum as well but to no avail.

 

I would recommend ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 / 4670, or Nvidia hardware that perform the same.
Its not a super GPU, so the price should be much lower.
You cold also choose a HD 4570 if you want to save some more cash.

Examples:
Dell Studio XPS 16 includes Intel i7 quad ATI HD 4670.
Dell Studio 15 includes both i5 dual & i7 quad with ATI HD 4570.
Dell Studio 17 includes i7 quad and ATI HD 4650.

 

Ah, that's helpful. So how do I tell how good graphics cards are? For instance, in which way are the 4650/4670/4570s better than the 4330?

 

4330 < 4570 < 4650 < 4670 is basically how it goes. For actual performance figures, that's a little tougher.

Looked at your other thread, do you have any other options aside from Dell?

 

4650 and 4670 are at least 5 times better than a 4330... u can play most or all modern games on medium-high ... with a 4330 , u can play on low or not even play the game... if u wait a while , u could get better laptops with core i5 and i7 and better ATI and NVDIA GPU's...

 

Also recommend waiting for ATI HD 5000 and or Nvidia 300m (Even if its a rebadged 200m).
Heard ATI lowered power consumption on their newer chips.

 

he'll have to wait a month or 2.. stuff that comes to NZ comes slowly and is overpriced...

 

5 times? Don't mind if I ask you where you got that idea from.

Looking at notebookcheck's results, and more importantly, at the individual results, it would seem 2-3 times better would probably be more accurate.

Crysis Benchmark low
4670 = 52.5 and 55.5 FPS, P8600 and P9700 respectively
4330 = 30.7 with a T6570.

3dmark06
4670 = P8600 6705, P9700 6828
4330 = P8700 2385

 

Buy this, more value. And dell sucks.
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache...+i3&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

 

I'm sure shipping it to New Zealand will be easy peasy.

 

and not to mention that intel HD graphics... crap intel integrated... even worse than 4330... anyways i said 4650 is about 5 times better...