Sony Z Cpu?

I've been looking and shopping for the new 13" SONY Z but 1 thing has me a little confused as to which way to go, the CPU!
I'm going to use it mainly for work but will do some gaming on it too when I get the urge.
My question is i5 or i7 for gaming, which one is best?
Will the i7-620 be that much better? It's only $100 extra from SONY STYLE but I'm looking to get it as cheap as possible.
My configuration from SONY with the i7 is going for a little over $2100 but i have seen i5 models going for $1700-$1800 range on Ebay and other sites.
$300-$400 savings is a big difference so what would you people suggest.
Thanks.

 

This subject has been discussed many times, digg in the official owner thread...

But in my opinion there is not a big difference.

Too bad for you, i7 was free last week on the Z :S

 

Hey there,

I'm reading here quiet a while now and decided to register, since im pretty sure now, a Sony Z will be mine soon and I am looking forward to swap the DVD for a HDD.

It has been said, that i7 will drain the battery slightly more, but this wont affect the uptime (just in terms of minutes).

Now look what i found no Notebookcheck.net:

Notebookcheck: Review Intel Core i3/i5/i7 Processors ?Arrandale?

This is ~30% more power consumption, is it possible that the effect is that small on battery life?

 

That article is well known and widely disputed.

 

ignoring price, i'd still choose the i5

 

It is the same for me, I prefer 30minutes of battery life over the power+ an i7 can provide.

I think the i5 520M is still a killer-CPU for a 13"er

 

Same here. A few minutes of battery isn't too big of a deal. For me, I'm more concerned with heat issues and how often the fan has go into turbo mode, especially in such a compact form factor as the Z.

 

Personally, I wish they had a model with the i7 640LM, which has a 10W lower TDP, and isn't a lot slower than the 540M (same speed when using turbo boost on both).

I'm willing to pay more to get less energy use, which is why I bought a Z in the first place (the ability to switch off the power hungry 3d card when not in use).

 

Even with i7 you can set you power plan so that its "maximum processor state" is, say, 90% in VAIO advanced power settings. Don't know how exactly that translates into fan operation and battery power settings though.

 

Get the i7.

 

@Ikas V

I say get the i5. The difference between i5 and i7 will not be noticeable when gaming, since the GPU will bottleneck before you max out the CPU potential of the i5. I would only get the i7 if you know you have some work programs that will require the extra processing power. I think what you save with the i5 (heat, battery life, money) is worth trading off the slightly higher performing i7.

 

there isnt much difference. power consumption should be roughly the same. ur just paying for the extra 1MB of cache.

 

This is not true -- the clock speed is different too, and the i7 has higher turbo boost multipliers (3/5 instead of 2/4), which also affects power usage.

Code:

        Core speed   2-core boost  1-core boost    Sec. cache
520M    2400 MHz     2667 MHz      2933 Mhz        3 MB
540M    2533 MHz     2800 MHz      3067 MHz        3 MB
620M    2667 MHz     3067 MHz      3333 MHz        4 MB

So yeah, the i7 is faster. The question is whether it's worth it, which is something only the buyer can decide.

 

Well, it's been widely discussed in the owner's thread and here are the main points:

- Not much significant loss of battery life
- Performance-wise you'd only notice in benchmarks
- In regards to gaming, bottleneck IS the gpu, NOT the cpu

So, the only reason to get the i7 (this is the reason I got it), is for bragging rights =). There are very few occasions where you would actually use the full potential of the i5 chip, so... if you're tied down on money, get the i5, it's a VERY capable chip, especially in a 13" form factor like the Z.

 

... and that is exactly why the God of War should get it I wouldn't expect Kratos to get anything less than the best...

 

Bragging rights or you're doing extremely CPU intensive work where it matters to you if some CPU-bound task completes 30% faster (i.e. 60 seconds instead of 80, etc.)

 

What do you mean i7 was free last week? on sonystyle.com?

I'm checking since last week VPCZ1290X CTO, it was available as upgrade option for $100.