i5 or i7?

Seriously, its really hard to choose between the two. Which one do you guys think that will save a little bit more power in order to get the most out of the battery? just for you guys to know, Im getting this laptop this time mainly for its portability for going to school. So, i really need an extended period of time of long battery life without bringing the power brick in my bag.

Also, should i upgrade the WLAN to the 6205? will it consume more battery?

Please help me which processor to get if the main reason is battery life. Give me suggestion to me the best spec that you guys think.

 

I'm wondering if this is still relevant to this type of discussion?

 

Good question, it was like a kind of Performance vs. Battery Life.

But If I were to choose I would choose performance over battery life.

 

Honestly will it make that much of a difference? Maybe 10 minutes? I would just get the i7. You can squeeze a little over 5 hours with a i7. My system was below 10 percent at the 5 hour 22 minute mark.

 

Ah, but what about price vs performance?

 

Are folks still talking about this? Seriously? Yes their is a difference between I5 and I7. Yes it will cost you FPS in games. How many will depend on game. Witcher 2 I7-2630qm with 4 threads active 19-21fps stock speed. 8 threads active 35-36fps. So yes, 4 threads will cost you.

If your worried about $100 dollar difference, you might want to switch to a Dell xps or Asus or sager or something else.

 

go with the i7!

 

One more thing add to this:

i5 are Intel's mainstream CPU and majority of them are Dual Cores and No HT (Hyperthreading).

i7 are Intel's high-end CPU and all of them are Quad Cores* and all has HT, and performance on i7 will also higher since their memory speed will be higher.

*Except for the Mobile 600 Series and low power or embedded 2600 Series one that isnt quad.

For more info.

List of Core i7 Ranges:
List of Intel Core i7 microprocessors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of Core i5 Ranges:
List of Intel Core i5 microprocessors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The thing to remember here is that not all games will use more than 2 cores.
Those that do more often than not the GPU will still be the limiting factor,
otherwise most games would not run so well on a M11x.

In both the i7 and the i5 the power settings will control your battery life just remember that the I5 is more conservitive with battery as it uses less power, as for the I7 and at most we are talking about 3 to 10 FPS depending on the game. It's not easy to balance battery/processing power/graphics.

And since we are talking about Sandy Bridge I7 support Hyperthreading. I5 does not. but most of your games at this time do not take advantage of this So don't let this worry you

http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/968533-does-hyper-threading-affect-gaming-performance-2.html

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=287



The hundred bucks is just your wallet talking. in the end it's still your decision, either way you win both are very good CPU's.

 

so, m14x can last for 5 hours or more even you guys pick the i7?

I am leaning towards i7 from the very first start but concerning that I will use it a lot outside home, that i5 distracts me. If you guys still get 5 hours or more with i7, then battery life is not an issue anymore.

whats your settings of your power plan? turn alienfx off and use the intel hd graph?

 

Lower everthing, or thing that you dont need like screen brightness, the illuminate keyboard etc...

like KSSR said, i5 will have less performance but will be conserve the more as well as it doesnt use lot of power. Like my first post, this is a Performance VS. Battery Life topic, should you sacrifice battery life for performance or vice versa.

For me I rarely use my laptop outside because I intend to get M14x for desktop replacement, so I choose performance over battery life. So in your case I'd suggest u to choose i5 but at the highest possible clock speed if u still want to get a decent performance. If not choose the lowest as you can save lot of $$$ and will have the best battery life as well.

 

i7 all the way! the bigger the better =]

 

This is like the diffrence between the su4100 and the hundred dollar more su7300. At the end of the day it came down to weather or not you wanted to keep the money.

Go for the i5 keep the longer battery life and keep the cash.

By the way, your gameing exprience unplugged with the M14x; your games will be more of the AOE (Age Of Empires) type than Crysis 2 due to power constraints.

 

If you are comparing quad core to dual core, definitely the quad core. But if you only have dual core choices, definitely the i5.

 

...this thread is full of morons, just saying.

i5's DO have Hyperthreading, please stop spreading misinformation.

Intel® Core? i5-2410M Processor (3M Cache, 2.30 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SR04B, SR04G

Cores: 2
Threads: 4

Not only that, but with the power (or lacktherof) in mid-range laptop graphics like the GT 555M, damned near everything except a couple of choice games (Starcraft II for example) is going to be GPU limited, not CPU limited, so going from the quad-core i7 to dual-core i5 won't make much of a difference.

 

Totally agree with you. Lots of bad info in this thread like people saying all i7 are quads etc....There's i7 sandy bridge CPUs that are dual cores and have hyper threading ex: i7-2620M Intel® Core? i7-2620M Processor (4M Cache, 2.70 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SR03F, SR041

 

It's things like this that I find infuriating. If Hyperthreading could be disabled this would solve a lot of problems.

 

Now my mind is clearer after you guys have given me the right info. But, something really bothers me when I am looking the smaller cache in the i5. Does bigger cache giving us difference in processing power? Basically, what does it do? Sorry guys, Im still a noob here. haha..

 

If you said that, I want to make sure that I'm not one of those, I didnt say i5 doesnt, but I said majority of them, but one thing I forgot is about the Sandy Bridge version does.

 

All mobile i5's have Hyperthreading. Only desktop i5's don't (and even so, ONLY the Sandy Bridge & Lynnfield desktop i5 chips don't have Hyperthreading; i5 Clarksdale chips of the last generation [i5-6xx] did have Hyperthreading, too).

 

Okay, thanks for the extra info, man I think i'm one of those 'moron' lol I should have do more research before I post the stuff up, :laugh:

 

So difficult to bang head into wall while eating crow....

Never should be reading wikopedia at 1am to check hyper treading, big, big mistake.

To Hyper thread or not to Hyperthread with out a big enough GPU your dead,
as I have so often said. On my M14x I will be ordering it with the I5 saving the 100USD for upgrade on the screen. Battery life is more important to me than how well a CPU does on Cinbench.

 

total lamer is wrong...newer games use more cores...witcher 2..fable3..bfbc2..cod bops..dirt3..and on and on..if you need more battery order i7 and use msconfig to limit cores

 

Kinda agreed and some games they stated it on their ads, said it was enhance for multi-cores CPU, so I think it the more cores the better. And like BFBC2, minimum Dual core, while recommend is Quad core.

To think about this, if Quad is worse than Dual, then why not use Single .

 

This is going in my sig.

 

ok so after considering all of the info you gave to me, Im gonna order m14x with basic i5-2410m for the sake of having more battery life on the go, maybe the only thing im gonna upgrade is the screen. I dont really need additional signal from the wifi 6250 and i believe the standard wifi on m14x is more than enough for browsing in school.

 

Yeah, but if you still want some decent performance out of it, you should choose the best of i5 ranges, if not just select the lowest in clock speed, so the battery can last longer.

 

+1



/10char

 

For 80% of buyers of the M14x the I5 is enough, the screen choice should always be the 1600x900.

Glad to see you made your choice!

 

i7 definitely its a 100$ more and its worth it

 

For regular gaming is the i7 worth the extra heat or would it be better to use the i5 and have not as much heat?

 

I think the i7 (or should I say more generaly: the quad cores) are worth the heat, especially as more and more games have started using multicores (more than 2) to boost performance. A few years ago it was only GTA IV, last year was BFBC2 and BLOPS, and this year so far The Witcher 2 + the upcoming MW3, BF3, Fable 3, etc. (Yes, I'm sure I've missed a few games, but the point it to show that there is an increase on releases that use multicores).

Also, while still all games can be 'played' with dual cores, it is well known for example that GTA IV and BFBC2 need a quad to run smoothly (or 3.0+ GHz dual core).

Just my 2 cents.

 

I saw somewhere where It said i5 is quad core , just can only do 4 threads whereas i7 can do 8 threads.

 

I am new to all this but according to this link it says the i5 has 2 cores 4 threads. Intel® Core? i5-2410M Processor (3M Cache, 2.30 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SR04B, SR04G

and this is the other option with 4 cores and 8 threads


http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52219&processor=i7-2630QM&spec-codes=SR02Y