Sorrybut question on core i5 580M vs i7 740QM

Hello, everyone, I don't have enough time and energy to finish the topic Envy 14 Gaming Lounge...But I see somebody who said this:

"BF:BC2 is a dx11 title released in 2010 and is quite demanding, especially on the CPU-it only runs smoothly on quad core machines with a decent GPU. Dual cores definitely struggle in BC2, causing a performance bottleneck no matter how fast of a video card you pair with them. On dual core machines especially, I've found BF:BC2 to eat up resources when there is a lot of action in the scene, especially when there are physics based events occurring (such as buildings collapsing, etc), causing the frame rate to drop dramatically. You really need 3+ CPU cores to play the game smoothly."

and then another person said this:

"When counting CPU cores here, do you count virtual cores created by e.g. Hyper Threading or do you mean actual physical cores? That is, with your experience with this game, do you reckon that i5 processors will suffer from its lack of cores compared to i7's?"


So now, I am pretty confused with that. As I am ordering a HP ENVY 14 beats and I chose the core i5 580M, I don't know if I still have the possibility to change the order especially I cannot contact HP myself(ebay reseller). Because I am a ex-geek gamer. I still play a lot, less than before. And I really hope that recent games could run on that with high detail at least.

So my question is in the title, which one should I take? Can I change the order? I passed my order last friday. On the one hand, i5 would really nice for the battery, because we can switch to integrated GC to save autonomy. But i7 seems to perform better when doing multi task. And on notebookcheck, the 580M is better classed than the 740QM. But I don't know what about in games. I am really confused right now.


Thank you in advance for your help.

 

im sure in the next year 2 more games will require a quad core but for now a dual core i5 is more than enough for current games. The only downside of i7 is battery life. U will get about 2h with i7 and 4h with i5 on integrated. If u dont care about battery life and money, get the i7. I dont plan on keeping my envy for more than 2 years so i got the i5 and i can get an i7 notebook with my next notebook upgrade cuz by then more programs/games will need quad core, and the new i7s wont use as much power

 

yeah, thanks. but the big question is does the i5 580 perform better than i7 740QM? notebookcheck show a better rank for i5 580 than i7 740

 

Well currently the 580 outranks the I7 740 in games because quite frankly, no games at this present moment in time are optimized for quad-core machines. However in the future quad-core games will become more prevalent and you will see quad-cores becoming alot better obviously. This does not make the dual-cores horrible in anyway, due to hyper-threading you will have 2 physical cores and 2 'fake' cores so there shouldn't be to much slip between the two. I can guarentee you that your Envy 14" and so will everyone elses will be able to play future games at good graphics levels.

If you doing multi-tasking or Auto-Cad like programs or heavy calculations are quad is alot better. I do video editing and photo editing using Photoshop CS5, Adobe After Effects and Sony Vegas. They all run fine and will still run fine. Personally I picked the i5 because I wanted more battery life and thats important to me (playing on the daily commute is fun) its all up to personal preference and what you need the processor for.

I've probably rambled on to much but there you go.

 

Your i5 will be fine for gaming. I find that on this forum, there are a lot of people who have no idea what the hell they are talking about (same for most forums).

Orange Canary summed it up.

If you want to do more outside reading, check out Anandtech.com and look at his CPU reviews. His site is very well respected and well put together with tons of good information.

 

When BF:BC2 was first released, it was not performing well on Dual Core at all. Only after a patch was this problem fixed. The i5 will be fine as long as it is paired with a good GPU and that you have no interest in playing GTA IV.

 

ok Thank you guys. I will stick with the i5 580M so. I 'd better stay with the best of i5 instead of the second worst of i7