i7-2630QM or i5-2520M? NVS 4200M or Intel 3000?

I am looking at choosing a T520 with FHD screen. I am still unsure on the cpu and gpu. I wonder if anyone who has a T520 could comment on their choices? Is it worth an extra $500 for a quad i7 and a Nvidia gpu rather than an i5 and only the Intel? (I am a general use, not games, but love reserve power for when i need it - see my present system). One angle would be: if you chose just the intel only, do you wish you had chosen the optimus with the dedicated Nvidia Quadro NVS 4200M? or if you chose the i5 cpu, you now wish you had chosen the i7 (especially the quad version)? Or vice versa! Any help based on experience rather than benchmarks would be much appreciated.

 

quad core CPU is great in Sandy Bridge. I have first gen i7 and I want either better CPU than 740qm or dual core 640m. But you should choose 500$ more expensive one for GPU+CPU

 

If you're looking at the T520 with quadcore and discrete graphics, I suggest looking that the W520. There's very little price difference between a fully loaded T520 and the W520, while the W520 has far more powerful graphics, usb 3.0, and other goodies

 

With identical specs (except for the W520 extras, such as the much more powerful gpu and DDR3 usbs) the T520 is more than $600 cheaper in Australia.

 

Wow! They are literally $30 different here in the states. That's just crazy considering they're just putting different addresses on their boxes!

Edit: If you change to United States in the drop down box at the top of the screen, then check the prices, you may want to shoot yourself in the face. I'm very sorry...

 

To respond to your original question, I can speak to my experience with the w520.

1) The intel video is very good. It powers FHD video without a problem and really is easy on the battery. Also, I know you said you weren't interested in benchmarks, but according to notebookcheck.net the NVS 4200 isn't much better than the HD 3000, to the point where I almost wonder if it would ever be worth the upgrade. See here.

2) The quad core does seem to hurt the battery life. I think it's rated to drain 10watts more at full speed than the dual core. Double check Intel's site for this, but I believe they draw 35w and 45w TDP respectively. It's also obvious to me that I'm not getting the maximum battery life that lenovo advertises even when I set "integrated only" in the bios, which may be a result of the quad core.

HTH

 

wesmain -thank you!
1) for browsing and office, does the optimus automatic gpu-switcher choose the intel? do you know when one gpu is running rather than the other?
2) though the TDP is 10w higher for the quad-core, I am surprised it runs hotter in mundane use - that is significant to me, as I like a silent machine (as my present one is).

 

The main idea of the nvidia is the far superior nvidia drives I think. For example, Starcraft 2 on the intel has a decent benchmark framerate, but I have heard that it was quite choppy, i.e. skipped frames. Perhaps all is better now with the newer intel drivers.

Also, CUDA.

 

@antskip: The choice largely depends on what you want to do with the machine. Graphics-wise, the Intel 3000 will give you plenty of reserve power if you're just doing standard (read: nothing that utilizes advanced 3d graphics too heavily) things. Processing-power-wise, the dualcore i5 is still a pretty powerful machine.

If your primary concern is machine snappiness for regular office work, the SSD is going to be the biggest performance contributing factor, not your processor.

If you gamed alot, and/or did 3D rendering/specialized graphics tasks on your computer, a dedicated graphics chip might be wise (however aside from gaming I'm not sure how much of an advantage a gaming-targeted chip would help for other 3D applications)

For processing power, the dual-core i5 already can process 4 threads simultaneously. For most people, this is enough to keep the machine snappy even when running several applications. If you really actually needed the quad core for whatever you do, you would already know. Most applications do not take advantage of parallel processing capabilities, so the quad-core would not speed those applications up much.

@Vassily: Yes Cuda, but why would he need CUDA? Unless he has a specific application that can leverage CUDA (statistical analysis platforms, such as R, or whatnot) there is no point in getting a CUDA compliant chip.

 

I didn't necessarily mean that it runs "hot," in that I don't feel the fan is blasting away unless I'm really pushing the laptop (e.g., gaming). I meant only to say that I'm not getting the ridiculously long 10.7hrs of battery life, even when setting the brightness down low, "max battery" power settings, and integrated graphics only. The only explanation I can think of is my quad core. But who knows, it's not like I've done extensive testing.

As for which graphics card is being used in optimus mode, I haven't seen a way to positively tell which one is being used, but there's a setting in the Nvidia Control Panel that let's you choose which you prefer for a given program. When I'm using heavy graphics the fan definitely blasts, although the w520's 2000m graphics run much hotter than the t520's 4200m.

I agree with the others: If you aren't doing any serious 3D stuff, there's probably not much benefit to getting discrete graphics. The Core i7's do have more L3 cache than the i5's, however, which supposedly helps (I think there's a Tom's Hardware review on this).

Edit: I also agree with Mr. Chaos, above, about the awesome power of SSDs. The difference is amazing. Just don't get the SSD from lenovo, they overcharge drastically. Go to an online retailer and buy one separately. I recommend the Intel 320 series, they're very reliable.

 

Seriously, if you're doing just office-style work (Word, Excel, etc) and some browsing, with the occasional flash game here or there, HD videos from youtube, etc, an i3 would even be sufficient for your needs. Intel has come a LOONG way with their sandy bridge processors. Now, most of the people who buy the higher end chips don't actually know why they're buying them. It's just marketing. If you can come up with a concrete reason why you need it, then go for it. Otherwise, save your money. Buying a nice solid (don't go for cutting edge because those are usually more trouble than they are worth, with driver issues and whatnot) SSD and that will be the BIGGEST performance kicker for you.

If you're on a dual core machine right now, I suppose a good indicator of if you need the quadcore would be: go download a CPU-meter app (or hell just use task manager). Check out the graphs under the performance tab. During normal usage for you, do you see all of the graphs peaking out at 100% alot (if its a more recent dual core, you should see 4 graphs, 2 cores x 2 threads per core) Keep in mind, when you're doing this, you'll want to ignore the 100% when a program freezes, as thats not a good indication of normal usage. If you see that all 4 threads are constantly being utilized at 75%+ then yes, by all means switch to a quadcore. If you are like most users, you will rarely see all 4 threads at 100%, in which case the only way to speed up your machine would be to buy a processor with a higher clock speed, not more cores.

Edit: Basically, what the test above is trying to see is, do your programs that you're running actually properly support multithreading, and/or are you running enough processes that will actually fully load your dual-core machine.
The logic behind this is as follows: Alot of users seem to have the misconception that to get your total speed, you take # of cores and multiply by clock speed. IE: the "performance" youre getting out of a quadcore @ 2Ghz is 8Ghz effective. this is NOT TRUE. There are a few scenarios where this is true, but for most real world scenarios, this is simply not true.
An analogy would be this: Say you're computing Fibonacci, which is largely a serial-type logic (you can't continue to the next step until you finish your current step). You can only run this on one core at a time, and that core is clocked at 2Ghz. What can your other cores do during this time to contribute? Nothing. Nothing at all. Even though you have a quadcore, you're effectively only getting 2Ghz out of it. Most programs nowadays are written this way.

Say you wanted to sort a large stack of papers. You and your friends can all sort 10 papers/minute. If you sorted on your own, you're only going at 10/min. If you split the stack up among your friends, each of your 3 friends could actually contribute to this effort, so you effectively get 40 papers/minute as opposed to 10. This is because the task of paper sorting can be divided up this way. There are few applications that actually properly utilize this parallelism, such as video encoding, 3D rendering, etc.

 

wesmain. thank you. A q re third-party SSD's. I bought one for my W500 and found it wouldn't fit in the rubber rails, so don't use them. The 520 range has a different entry system to the HDD/SSD. Any problems with placing the third-party SSD in place of the HDD? Do you use the rubber rails provided? I could buy a pre-installed Intel 160Gb SSD with the system (that is my intention at the moment) - I have no idea whether it uses the rails.

 

I saw this somewhere else in the forum. HDDs use rubber rails. SSDs actually use plastic brackets, as the rubber rails sometimes cause the SSD to not fit properly (I've had this problem). You can order them from Lenovo, but you'd have to dig around this forum more and/or ask a sales rep for the part number.

 

I personally use the Intel X25-M 160gb with my w520 and it fits just fine in the primary bay. Yes, I put the drive in the little caddy and put the rubber thingies on the side. Works great. By all means though, don't get lenovo's SSD; it's probably just the intel 160gb for a couple HUNDRED extra dollars. If you get the 320 series (which I just put in my father's t510), you'll get a modern drive at like half the cost.

This is the drive I just put in a t510. The Chassis is EXACTLY the same between the two computers. Only the logo is noticeably different from my w520, along with a quieter keyboard). Trust me, the drive fits. You'd just be wasting your money on the Lenovo one.

So, I agree with Chaos. If you're looking for performance per dollar, and if you're just using standard Office and Internet-type work on your computer: Get a cheaper processor (they're still great), integrated graphics, and an aftermarket SSD. You'll thank yourself.

Edit: And no matter what, the SSD is still the best performance increase. My 5 year old x60 boots in 40 seconds (power button to desktop) using the X25-m, while even the t510 took twice that long with a standard hard drive.

 

chaosphoenix thank you. I have always had a dedicated gpu, so I struggle with the idea of a cpu-run gpu. But I don't play games anymore (smile). I have had quite a few problems with gpu's going bung over the years, and up till now have been happy that when the gpu has a problem, it doesn't take the motherboard/cpu down with it. The problem is also with the way Lenovo packages options together. To get a 4-core cpu it is always (here in Australia, at least) bundled with a dedicated gpu. I am interested in a 4-core because it makes a lot of sense to go further down the line of parallel processing from 2 to 4 cores. Also, Lenovo has said somewhere that 4core will be basic in all systems in 2012. So that seem the future - and software optimizing for 4core will follow...I also like it that the 4core I am looking at runs at a lower clock speed (2.0) than the 2core (2.5)....and apparently shuts some cores down and lowers speeds cleverly...

I agree utterly re comments on SSD's. As you can see, I use one now - and have done so for 2 years. I have never had an upgrade that has impacted more on a system than this SSD. And the system is utterly silent. The only question is to one of 1) have pre-installed Intel 160GB SSD of unknown specificity 2) get a 3rd party 120GB SATA2 SSD or 3) 3rd party 120GB SATA3 SSD (reviews I have seen suggest that the extra speed of the SATA3 comes with the downside of much greater power use/heat?).

 

I personally think benchmarks skew the public perception too much. Yes these systems do perform up to those benchmark numbers, but those are wholly unrealistic. If cost really is a concern, even a budget SSD would work out (Kingston has SSDs that easily approach <$1 per GB) I can't vouch for the raw performance of these drives, but the reduction from a 20ms average seek time to a 0.1ms average seek time is what makes the world of a difference with a SSD, and every (correct me if I'm wrong) SSD should have roughly the same performance with regards to seek time.

The optimizations for the quad-core apply to the dualcore as well. The dualcore i5 can smartly scale each core independently. Quadcore is becoming standard, yes, but until then it still fetches a premium above market standards (which now is dual-core).

Regarding software being optimized for quadcore, that isn't so true. There are things that simply can't be parallelized. (Trust me on this, I'm taking a 10 week course on parallel computing right now) Yes you will get performance increases with a quadcore, but they will be marginal. The biggest difference was when they went from single core to dualcore, as windows is smart: With 1 core, you have your foreground application (where most people perceive lag and system slowness) competing with all of your background apps for processor cycles. With 2 cores, now your system can dedicate 1 core to foreground and the other core to background. This is why there was such a huge performance increase and reduction in lag. With 4 cores, your foreground application most likely will only run on 1 core, so unless you're running 50000 applications in the background, the other 3 cores aren't going to be fully utilized. A good analogy for this is your typical small business CEO. He has a secretary so that misc background things/chores don't have to be handled by him. Why doesn't he have 20 secretaries? Because then most of them would be sitting around doing nothing. If he had no secretaries, he'd be running around all day taking phone calls and scheduling things and wouldn't be able to do CEO-y things.

Following your assumption that quadcore software will follow, then shouldn't we have dualcore software by now? As the mainstream market is saturated with dualcores? We don't. Simply because alot of things that computers do aren't parallelizable. It's not a matter of if people will adopt it, it is a logic problem, and if you have the solution to that, you'd be very rich The applications that can take advantage of parallelism already have adopted it. Photoshop I believe can take advantage of multiple cores. Video editing applications can too. Google chrome (by the way it splits each tab into its own process) can effectively take advantage of parallelization, but aside from that, you won't see much advantage in a quadcore.

If you're skeptical about Intel HD3000 vs dedicated Nvidia chip, don't be. I was skeptical at first too, but I took a leap of faith and got the x220. HD3000 has come a LONG way from the original intel integrated graphics.

Edit: Sorry for the book I've written here. I'd like to educate people on the differences in these technologies and not just have everyone follow the bandwagon. The technological advancements are great and awesome, however alot of the time users' perceptions of what these advancements would do is blurred.

 

*Embarrassed for not reading sig*

I actually got a quad core for the same reason you're considering: future proofing. I do have my moments of regret though, where I wonder if the quad is what's killing my battery.

 

wemain. thank you. I don't care at all about battery life - I almost never run my notebooks away from the mains. I do like speed (i.e. as close to instantaneous as possible, whatever the program in use - internet connection permitting, of course!) and silence (minimal fan, no HDD).

 

Then I just feel for you and those terrible prices you're facing. I recommend either robbing banks or becoming an american. I know an immigration attorney...

 

What's your battery life like? I get about 8.5hrs light surfing on Wifi, near 7hrs not so light surfing and some other stuff such as music, and around 6hrs when I add in Flash and other videos. Practically everything I access with this computer is through Wifi as all my files are stored on my desktop. My boot time is 45 seconds with the factory image and some other programs (Yes, with the 320GB 7200 RPM HDD).

If the T520 is anything like the W520 (which from what I gather, it is), then the fan isn't that amazingly quiet on stock settings. It's quiet enough for me, but it's not silent by any means. By quiet enough, I mean so quiet that it gets drowned out by my desktop which uses Arctic Cooling fans (quiet fans).

 

What about if you plan to use the machine to replace a desktop? Would the I7 and Nvidia help power larger screens plugged into the display port?

 

In theory, maybe. But honestly, for most locales, the W520 is cheaper compared to a fully loaded T520, and it has a much better GPU and some other stuff.

 

kirayamato26: I hardly hear the fans on my W500. When they are really needed, they are very evident, but go away quickly too, once cooling is achieved. I guess very similar to W/T510 and W/T520 series?

richman: I use my laptop and its screen for everything. I like very fine detail (high PPI), so don't use an external monitor. The brighter FHD screen on the new Thinkpads is the prime reason why I am very interested in upgrading from my still wonderful W500 (with WUXGA and SSD).

Kirayamato: Cost difference is a huge issue if I buy in Australia, but if I buy on ebay from USA or via a virtual USA address like provided by PriceUSA I can buy W-series at a comparable price to the T.

My status at present is one of 3 options:
1) wait till the next decent discount in Australia, and buy a T520 maxed out (I lean towards a quad, but the high end dual might do as well. I have no clear evidence yet, so lean towards the quad)
2) buy from a USA ebay supplier - then W and T series are similarly priced but one has to go through the hassle of not-quite-right configurations, Australian customs, and the pain of speaking to Australian Lenovo support re-registering for warranty in Australia [I went through that hell with my present system, bought 2 year ago on ebay - it is like running the gauntlet - yet their onsite technicians are wonderful). But prices are excellent even with added tax and freight, etc.
3) If I go with (2), I have 2 systems under consideration: a W-series with quad, and a T-series with high-end dual. Price is similar, and so are other specs. I am no longer concerned that the quad is a heat-demon, but think that the powerful gpu on the W is a problem more than of benefit - I had a 55W gpu on my last notebook and it dominated the machine and created enormous heat. I think the T-series Nvidia is probably a cleverer option, and will be in use more...

 

The high end dual core (i.e. Core i7 2620M) doesn't have too much of an advantage over the Core i5 2520M, it is probably within 5% for most things. The quad core Core i7 2720QM will turbo to the same frequency as the 2620M when two cores are loaded. The GPU isn't a problem for heat as the system has Optimus and it's off unless you need it.

 

The QM chips i believe turn cores off when idle, too.
the only time the quad will *truly* impact battery life is if you're running all 4 cores at full load. but even the 2520m at full load will bring my battery life down to an hour.

 

Thank you so much, all those wonderful people who post on this forum, and in particular those who helped me in my latest purchase! I have now made the order, and look forward to its arrival. I will of course report back here. My specs are, in summary:
T520, i7-2630QM, FHD, Nvidia Quadro NVS4200M Optimus, 8GB ram, Intel 160GB SSD, 6 cell battery, wifi 6300, 720p HD Camera, bluetooth

 

I believe even with being able to turn off the cores, the quad core models drain more power idling than dual core models. The difference (tested by AnandTech with MacBook Pros) can be anywhere up to an hour or so on battery for practical situations (web surfing, video watching, etc.).

 

kirayamato26: your observation came too late to help me with my decision - I chose the quad i7-2630QM over the dual i7-2620M. I still worry whether that was right way to go, but I guess I will see! There was no significant price differential to affect the decision. I have no concern for battery life - but do like a quiet and cool system. The reviews and comments I managed to view suggested the quad runs very cool, with extra reserves as well as abilities. No-one suggested the dual-core i7 was the way to go. So I went with the quad. If it is a problem, I will be returning it. I hope that will not be necessary (smile) Be assured I will be posting my experience here to perhaps help others with their buying decisions...

 

I know this is an old thread, but I could not find a way to send a private message to the original poster, so I hope you can excuse me...

antskip -- I'm thinking about purchasing a similar T520 (quad i7-2630QM w/ 4200M) and I was just wondering how your purchase turned out? Any regrets? Pros/Cons?

Thanks!