Y510P Core I5 vs I7 difference worth 180?

Right now one can buy the Y510 Core I5 for 879 vs the Core I7 model for 1063. My question is, is the core i7 processor and +2gb more of RAM worth the 180 difference in price ?

1. In terms of gaming, will the i5 vs i7 really make that much of a difference except in cpu intensive games like SC2 ?

2. Are there any other differences I should be aware of ? Thanks.


Newegg.com - Lenovo IdeaPad Y510p (59390909) Intel Core i5 4200M(2.5GHz) 6GB Memory 1TB HDD 8GB Hybrid SSHD SSD 15.6" Notebook Windows 8
Newegg.com - Lenovo IdeaPad Y510p (59388313) Intel Core i7 4700MQ(2.40GHz) 8GB Memory 1TB HDD 8GB Hybrid SSHD SSD 15.6" Notebook Windows 8

 

Hi I hope this may help u a little for general gaming the best thing to go for is speed second is what else should u be doing with the cpu are u going to be doing some graphics work where the actual hypo thread cores will actual be ov some use to you ??? if not buy the fastest I5 u can and extra ram I suppose no more than 12 gig as 8 gig is as good as it get at present for games but I always like to try and have some extra if u have more than one app on the go , but the down side ov what I just said is that more games are actually being written with hypo thread in mind so u could say that u would be better to long term invest in a faster i7 and make do with less ram but no less than 8 gig. I hope this helps I can only give u this ov course from my prospect as I was not so smart and when I had my lappy built for me I bought the 2720CQ @ 2.2 GHZ ov course I got turbo boost and 4 cores and 4 hypo but what I should have done was gone for the fastest i5 much cheaper and had less ov a bootle neck in my laptop. I probs have given u no help but I can only speak from my own xp.

 

Whatever you do, make sure to get the 1080p display.

 

Yep both models have the full hd 1080p screen so that's not a factor in the decision.

Also, there's a 5% off coupon which effectively knocks both models down.

Core i5 will cost 841.
Core i7 costs 1023.

The i7 suddenly got more tempting. Anymore thoughts anyone ?

 

Go to lenovo.com and use the coupon code USPY5051031 to see what it comes out at.

 

Hi Dibe, USPY5051031 does not seem to work. There's already a "DEALS" coupon which knocks 400 off the price, bringing it down to 1199.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/y510p/?sb=:000001C9:0000F3AF:&cc=[:000001FD:]

 

I am not sure all of the configurations it works with but I pulled up IdeaPad Y510p High-Performance 15.6" Multimedia Laptop from Lenovo | Lenovo (US) clicked the "Add to cart" button on the right. The coupon code I posted knocked 450 off,

 

Ah your right, it seems to work on the lower tier models without the dual SLI graphics, which is pretty much a deal breaker. Thanks anyways though !

 

Great thanks junky77! The i5 from newegg can actually be had for 841 if you purchase thru their mobile app , which is 5% off, up to max of 50. What is the 25 off coupon you are referring to?

Secondly, please do let me know how bf4 performs! Any other games you can bench, along with what settings your playing and what fps you are getting would be much appreciated.

From what im reading, im suspecting the i5 and i7 perform very similarly as not many games leverage the hyperthreading that the i7 provides.

 

There's no question to me that an i7 is a must for performance gaming in this day and age. Most AAA games in the last couple years have seen significant benefits from a quad-core and the really CPU-heavy ones, such as BF3 and BF4, will scale up to 6 or 8 cores/threads! 64-player multiplayer in Battlefield is a different game on a quad-core compared to a dual-core. BF4 Beta had consistent 80-90% overall CPU usage on my i7-3630QM. A dual-core like the mobile i5 would be slaughtered.

The mobile i5 performs slightly worse than the desktop i3. Both are dual-core Hyper-Threading parts with the same amount of cache but the mobile chip is a few hundred MHz slower. The mobile i7 performs similar to the desktop i5 in games. Both have the same amount of cache but the i5 is a few hundred MHz faster while the i7 has Hyper-Threading, which contrary to popular belief is utilized by some games. One very relevant example would be BF4, which scales up to 8 cores/threads.

BF4 CPU benchmark:



BF4 CPU usage per core/thread:



As you can see, the quad-core i5 and i7 are anywhere from 50% to well over 100% faster than the dual-core i3. And Hyper-Threading gives the i7 a 15-20% advantage over the i5. CPU usage per core/thread shows that BF4 is completely maxing out the i3. Clearly, dual-core CPU's are not sufficient for this game.

An i7 will allow OP to take full advantage of the power of 750M SLI without being bottlenecked by the CPU. Compared to single 750M, you are more likely to be CPU-limited rather than GPU-limited. SLI has some CPU overhead as well due to the nature of how multi-GPU technologies work.

It's a no-brainer to me that paying 20% more for the i7 system is well worth it in light of getting 100% more performance in games such as BF4. And looking at the big picture, games will only become more multi-threaded and take advantage of more CPU cores/threads as time goes on due to the next-gen consoles.

 

Actually Borderlands 2 is very CPU-dependent. It's a pattern I've observed in all the DX9 UE3 games I've played.



BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider are both primarily GPU-limited. BioShock Infinite is running a more recent DX11 build of UE3.

I don't have Battlefield 4.

 

Junky, did you find out how to disable 2 cores on the Y series?

I wanna see if i can squeeze an extra hour of battery life for my non-gaming scenarios.

 

You need to test multiplayer, particularly on a full 64-player server, not singleplayer. As far as CPU/GPU usage and FPS are concerned they're two totally different games. As was the case with BF3, singleplayer doesn't care whether you have two cores or six, but multiplayer will slaughter the dual-cores for sure .

 

You people still havent answered my question.

How do i shut off two cores??

 

Use Windows advanced boot options to set the CPU to 2 processors only. You'll have a Pentium Dual Core level CPU if you do that. Setting the CPU to 4 processors will result to HT being disabled.

 

Is there a way i can get 2 cpu's + HT?

 

Your question is off-topic. Start your own thread or something.

Get an i5 or i3.

 

I get tired of repeating myself, but how can you draw definitive conclusions from what is essentially an unrepresentative test?

Read my previous post about benchmarking 64-player multiplayer. A test on a small empty multiplayer map might as well have been a singleplayer benchmark for all it shows. Throw 63 other players into a large, open map with chaos everywhere and you're basically looking at a different game in terms of performance and hardware utilization. So please test out for yourself a real-world scenario, because nobody plays by himself on an empty Domination map, and get back to me on this one.

 

Lets sum up this heated discussion:

If you are gonna replace your Y510p in 2 years, get the dual-core, it's a steal to get SLI+1080p @ 879$ on Newegg.

If you are gonna have yours last 4 years, go for the quad. It will pay off in the long run.

 

No, this does not sum up this discussion, Oh Enlightened One.

What I'm saying is that the i5 will bottleneck 750M SLI in some games right now and the i7 has practical benefits for gaming right now, to say nothing of the future where games will be even more multi-threaded due to the next-gen consoles. Why limit yourself from the very outset with underperforming hardware?

Point of emphasis: Get with the times, people. This isn't 2007 anymore. Games do take advantage of quad-core or greater CPU's and have done so for a few years now.

 

I bought mine at the time i5-4200M was not released. Seriously >_>

Specs in my siggy for 800$+tax back in June (5 months ago), decent deal if you ask me.

 

Well said indeed.

 

How did you end up being the punching bag for both sides of the argument, Jobine?

 

My friend has a y510p with the i5 and SLI model and when he plays bf 4 multiplayer his CPU is slaughtered. He can't play it at 1080p and at 900p with high detail no aa. My single gt 755m OC about 10% beats out his SLI. Bf4 is VERY CPU intensive. I would say you need the i7 to play
Multiplayer, the i7 makes a huge difference.

But the i5 is still a great deal and if you don't tend to play CPU intensive games I would get the i5 variant.

 

This is the point I've been trying to make the whole time. I know from personal experience how CPU-intensive Battlefield is and how miserable it is to play it on a dual-core.

 

Not to beat a dead horse but I played bf3 multiplayer on medium 1080p pretty much all day with a ulv dual core i7 that the dell has and it ran pretty much fine. Im not saying quads have no advantage but..

 

You are right, i got 2 cores disabled on mine and the performance loss in most GPU-dependant games is little to none.

I have a question though, were you playing singleplayer or multiplayer? There is a HUGE difference in CPU usage between the two.

 

Because you had a much weaker GPU so it was your GPU that was the primary bottleneck for performance. I can make BF3 completely GPU-bound too if I disabled SLI. With SLI, I'm still GPU-bound most of the time, but in certain situations, such as when there is a lot of destruction, especially on Back to Karkand maps, or when I'm up high looking out over an entire map, the frame rate drops to about the same as when SLI is disabled. It's clear to me that it's a CPU bottleneck because CPU usage goes up and GPU usage goes down when the FPS drops. I know for a fact that my frame rate would be higher in these situations with a faster CPU because I've tested it on my i5-2500K+Radeon 6950 desktop with the CPU at stock and overclocked to 4.8 GHz and I get about 15 FPS more when overclocked, which is almost directly proportional to the increase in clock speed.

 

Multiplayer. 64 players pretty much any map I managed to keep above 34 fps on medium 1080p with motion blur on, which wasincredibly impressive. the 750m gddr5 really helps

but yes the keyboard on this dell is horrendous i miss spaces all the time and itsreally mushy...and the lenovos are cheaper so im thinking of just returning this and going for them lol. the i5 on newegg has a hot sale and i have a gift card. also, there's the fact that the i5 should generate less heat than the i7 which is the main reason i didnt go lenovo before. also thebattery life issue...most of hte time i dont use it on battery anyway and if it can get near 3 hours thats fine enough for using on bed or for a movie on the couch