core2duo or core i5

100 dollar price difference, and I've read that in term of gaming, the core2duo's performance actually trumps the i5 in some situations since the i5 sometimes runs on only one core mistakenly. All I need to know is if core2duo will run Vindictus smoothly since that's what I am interested in doing.

Additionally, r1 version also has VGA which r2 i5 does not. And the manual graphics switching is more preferred compared to optimus I believe.

Which one is more worth it?

 

IMO.. the R1 cause of the battery life and switchable graphics ..

 

IMO.. the R2 cause of more power and optimus ..

 

I got the r2 for the same price as the r1. The r1 was on order but I cancelled it and got the i5 r2. The reason? The r1 no longer has driver development, the r2 does. I find this very annoying and opted for the r2. In retrospect I realise the r1 would have taken a linux install more easily but even so, the r2 is great and it comes with a faster cpu. Battery life is lower though, take your pick I say.

 

This was a huge reason why I opted for the R2.

 

Yep. I went R2 as well.... Plus it was very cheap. I got 8gigs of ram and more HDD space for far more value than that 100 bucks.

 

the driver support shouldnt really be a solid factor in your choice. after the first solid driver is releaced for a specific chip the drivers that come out after the fact dont really ever show more than 2-3% improvment. in most cases thats only a few fps.

 

Then there are other cases where new drivers contain fixes for graphical glitches and other rendering issues on certain games.

 

Okay I was convinced about the i5 performance after my friend showed me how UT3 ran on his m11x i5.

 

Yea but it really just pissed me off. If dell is gonna stop supporting the drivers for a computer thats just shy of a year old, then hell, Im not gonna buy it. Not when I could get the r2 for the same price. I will miss the battery life but meh.

 

Except in this case, the 2xx.xx drivers substantially improved performance of the 335, which is why every R1 user who takes gaming seriously is using modded drivers. Case in point, Metro2033 and DOW2 had massive bumps (20-30%) going from stock Dell to fresh nvidia.

 

yea i hear ya. thats kind of common with bigger companies tho.

i got my R1 for $550: but if the R2 was $699 when i went to buy my M11x i would have gotten the R2 as well. considering i spent $170 for my RAM and HDD, with the R2 at that price the only thing you need to ask is, more CPU power or battery life?

 

i stand corrected then. never heard of dirvers alone to raise that much before.

 

My friend has the i5 and I have the i7. Hes tested both systems and so have I and he agrees with me in saying that get the R1 if you are not going to get the i7 R2

 

The way I saw it was that if I bought the stock r1 for 599 I'd still be spending at least 100 dollars on hdd and ram upgrades. For about 40 dollars more I got the r2 with the upgraded hdd (320gb) and ram (4gb), since they're stock on the r2, and I got the stronger processor. It was a no brainer for me.

 

Makes sense. Nobody can argue with the logic there.

Nice buy.

 

I felt the same way. It wasn't until a few days ago that I realized drivers could have a significant improvement when I took my M17x R2 from 8.753 Dell drivers to the 11.2 AMD drivers. Look at my GPU scores and GPU clocks. The AMD drivers helped out quite a bit. Much more efficient. I only installed them on my benching SSD so far.

Dell Drivers:
GPU Score: 18627
GPU Clocks: 935/1270


AMD Drivers
GPU Score: 19036
GPU Clocks: 920/1220



Sorry for going a bit off topic. As far as the Core i5 vs. C2D, I bought my system when only C2D was available. The week the M11x was first launched. The plus to the i5 is that it can have an increased TDP throgh throttle stop, giving it the turbo boost power that it needs. However, in a small unit, I want battery life so thats why I still perfer the R1. I also like to be able to switch graphics when I see fit. The R1, if you have the right PLL can also be pin modded to about 2GHz, up from the 1.6GHz in overclock mode. Which is one of the things I intened to do (pin mod) when I get some more time.

I guess it really comes down to two things, battery life or more driver support or gaming. But in the end I think dell will still release new drivers for the GPU. Probably one last time, but well see. Should be easier to create new drivers since it doesn't use optimus. We'll see.

 

vindictus from nexon?

it'll run it easily.

 

i see, that is a nice jump.

 

Heard it ran choppy from an i5 user on this forum. Also, I saw this YouTube - Vindictus - Final Slingshot (Season Of Macha)
YouTube - Vindictus - Hell Beyond The Door (No potions)

the framerates in these videos make me cringe.

 

it runs fine are my R1.

i do have it overclocked though.

 

Vindictus runs choppy for me in town but it seems okay in instances (have only played a couple hours) on my R1 that won't overclock.