SU7300 (OC) or i5?

Hey guys, I know this has been asked god knows how many time, but it shouldn't hurt for another one

I have done some searches in the forum and found SOME information that I was looking for along with youtubing etc.

One of the answer I found on youtube is that GTA 4 can run at 34fps average on the SU7300 (OC) at the lowest.

YouTube - Alieware M11x R1 Benchmark GTA IV

Whereas i5 (Turboboost off if im correct?) runs at 30fps average if im correct at high detail + a decent resolution?

Another answer I've been looking for hasn't turned up yet (ish), is that what fps is SU7300 (OC) on Bad Company 2 at lowest resolution, lowest detail and tweaks which has been provided by certain members on the forum (steven etc )?

I've seen i5 playing well on Bad Company, however Im hoping for a answer for the i5 at below.

Whats the average fps on i5 playing Bad Company 32 players with Turboboost and without (No OC too) with medium setting and LOWEST setting too?

Another thing is that im not really a computer expert or been using computer/laptop much, as my xbox went into the red ring of death, I couldn't be bothered with another one and was interested into the portable gaming device m11x, my brother has many games on steam so it shouldn't be much problem !

Anyways the last (ish) question that I want to ask to the m11x community !

Does the overclock for SU7300 damage the m11x even though alienware constructed this overclock? Can I leave the overclock on forever (turned on in bios?) and have no problem in so whatever just less battery life?

P.S No, I don't want to buy a gaming rig, as my brother already has one which USES alots of watts and im looking for a portable laptop 11.6inch preferable unless anyone can recommend a 12.1inch or 13.3inch which has better specs and not too costly, I could consider it !

Hehe, thanks for your time!
Philo

 

Overclock is safe. Acer 3820TG (if you can find one) model configed with the HD5650 should be about the same price, yet a bit faster.

 

Is there a single source to compare the 4 cpu types with FPS on common games? I guess I am mostly looking for i5 vs i7 fps numbers but wouldn't mind seeing su7300 also. I bought a refurb i7 that had a problem and may get a new i5 instead now.

 

i5 is a higher performance CPU.
SU7300 limits you to hybrid nVidia GPU driver set.

If you know your game(s), know the current hybrid nVidia driver set and are happy with that for the life of your notebook, the SU7300 should be fine.

If you need to upgrade to a specific version of nVidia driver on an SU7300, you can only do so by enabling discrete GPU with no access to the Intel GPU. This is at the expense of battery life and a lot more fan action.

The Intel Core i5 is a safer bet for future nVidia driver updates and support.

 

One more thing, if you 're going to play bad company 2 don't take R2 as I know Optimus have problem with punkbuster.

 

This is scheduled to be fixed next month with the 165 drivers. Being that BFBC2 is CPU-intensive, and MINIMUM requirements is a Core2Duo @ 2.0 Ghz (non mobile version) and RECOMMENDED requirements is a Core2Quad, I would go with the i5, if not the i7:

Full System Requirements for Battlefield Bad Company 2

Minimum PC Specifications for BFBC2
Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz
Main memory: 2GB
Graphics card: GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900
Graphics memory: 256MB
OS: Windows XP
Free HDD space: 15GB for Digital Version, 10GB for Disc Version (BFBC2)

Recommended PC Specifications for BFBC2
Processor: Quadcore
Main memory: 2GB
Graphics card: GeForce GTX 260
Graphics memory: 512MB
OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
Free HDD space: 15GB for Digital Version, 10GB for Disc Version (BFBC2)

Battlefield Bad Company 2 System Requirements - PC Game Battlefield Bad Company 2 requirements

BTW. I plugged my specs in and here are the results for stock i5, a comparable OC'd i5 to ~2.2 Ghz, and an OC'd Core2Duo ~1.7 ghz. As you can see, even an OC'd Core2Duo doesn't cut muster.

 

From my experience of owning an R1 for a month then an i7 R2 for 2 or 3 months...

The battery life is a minimal difference, both systems give freaking too much battery life if used properly. Some people have arguments, but on both systems I've had over 3 hours gaming, or over 6 hours everyday browsing use.

Performance is a HUGE difference, between simple Windows tasks seem snappier with the R2, and nVidia's support of the R2 drivers has pushed it ahead. Only problem is punkbuster, which nVidia announced 2 weeks ago, is being fixed in the next month or so. Optimus has straightened out a lot, and this forum is here for that 1% chance you still find problems.

Look at it this way, personally I buy a laptop to own for 2-4 years, coming from my m15x before this, and old ASUS (Pentium 4 @ 3.4, 2GBRAM, nVidia 6800) before that. Future proof your system with the i5, the Core 2 Duo is becoming entry level by today's computer standards.

After owning both, and letting the Optimus and battery fixes come out for the R2, I see little to reason at all to get the Core 2 Duo anymore.

 

All the processors you can get are 2 cores on the m11x. - I've owned both and prefer the r1, for the simple fact optimus is a horrible tool.

I noticed not much of a difference in the i7 and the su7300 - with my su7300 i run dual monitors ALL THE TIME when im not in class. I generally multi box 3 shaman in world of warcraft, 2 split on one screen, one on the other full screen with itunes mIRC and mozilla open and while im chilling at 100% cpu usage i was on the i7 as well. Bottlekneck? what? if you can hit fn+f6, r1.

 

Did you have ThrottleStop with the i7?

 

Optimus is a horrible tool - if you cannot right click.

If you cannot right click and select a simple option, then believe what Spalding has to say.

You can even set defaults for every game on your PC, even your web broswer can be controlled. So everything becomes automatic - to your settings.

Also, the i7@stock is already faster than the OC'd SU7300, I have had both (sold the R1 to cleverpseudonym), and can speak from experience here, once the i7 is OC'd, the SU7300 stands no chance.

To state both are dual cores is ignoring the entire picture (sort of like saying the GTX480 is *just* a DX7 capable GPU). The Core 2 Duo is a dual core. The Core i7 dual core is a dual core with Hyperthreading. Even something as simple as a graphics driver is accellerated by multithreaded coding. NVIDIA graphics drivers to go multithreaded - The Tech Report (graphics driver interprets GPU API commands that have been passed on through DirectX, OpenGL, CUDA, etc, and sends them on to the GPU).

 

I understand this part, Thanks for your instruction!

 

Out of all of the games I own GTAIV is the only one that will simply not play properly on my M11x. Setting everything to the lowest values and lowest resolution doesn't help (in fact this makes the cpu bottleneck worse). Realistically GTAIV needs a quad core cpu (NOT a dual core with HT) to run without performance issues (stuttering or general low FPS).

BFBC2 with some tweaking (search this forums for stevens tweak guide) can run quite nicely on the R1. All of my other games either run fine or are limited mainly by the GPU.



If I was buying new now I would look at either the R1 or a i5 based R2 but only if the R2 was within £100 of the R1. Anything more than £100 over the R1 I would look at something else.

 

I'd go i7 but that's me!

 

GTA4 runs poorly on the Alienware M11x because it runs poorly on every PC. It is a console port that wasn't coded very well, so there is quite a bit of unoptimized code running.

I would never use GTA4 as an indicator of how well/poorly a computer performs, because it is just a poorly written piece of software.