2nd gen i5-2410M vs 2nd gen i5-2540M, worth $100?

2 upgrade options on a notebook I'm getting soon. 2nd gen Sandy Bridge core i5-2410M 2.3ghz turbo boost 2.0 up to 2.9ghz. $100 more upgrades it to a 2nd gen i5-2540M 2.6ghz turbo boost 2.0 up to 3.30ghz.

I'm looking to keep this the next 2-3 years or so. I looked at the performance benchmarks on here, they seem pretty close. Is it worth a $100 upgrade? Wasn't sure. Thanks

 

Sounds a bit rough unless you need VT-d and crave for additional CPU power. Granted I don't like the i5-2410M as it's almost guaranteed they'll gradually up the speed and in 6 months or so it'll seem outdated (remember the i5-430M that quickly became i5-450M, then i5-460M and i5-480M ?), but it's already more than enough for most people. And it's not much slower than the i5-2540M as you noticed.

 

I figured it seemed a bit pricey, similar to how going from 4GB ram to 6GB from most companies is $100 if you don't do it yourself. I'm not sure what VT-d is offhand lol, so I probably don't need it. Just narrowing down the choices on a mid-sized laptop for browsing/hd videos/maybe light gaming at most. The 2410M will be fine then. Thanks alot

 

I'm interested in this as well, but for gpu performance. 2410 vs. 2520 vs. 2540.

All have 650 mhz base clock speed, but the 2520 and 2540 turbo boost to 1300mhz instead of 1100mhz for the 2410. How noticeable will this be?

 

That'd be 18% in the best scenario assuming linear scaling so probably even less than that, idk. But then if you're really concerned by graphical performance you gotta ask yourself if you wouldn't be better off spending $100 in a notebook with a dedicated GPU rather than a CPU upgrade.

 

I don't game, but I use gpu intensive shaders when playing HD movies in MPC-HC. Eg. 'sharpen complex' puts my 3470 over 75% in some high quality movies. It should be no problem even on the 2410 since SB looks to be a huge jump (maybe 2x) over the 3470, but I'll probably spend the extra $50 for the 2520 just to have the extra margin.

 

No point, stay with the 2410M. In 2-3 years your next laptop will be quad core, so save the $100.

 

Thanks man

 

Does your laptop offer a discrete (Ati or Nv) graphics option?

Consider getting the fastest affordable i3 cpu and a discrete graphics adapter.

 

I had a Toshiba A665-S5170 with a i3 380 that runs at 2.53GHz and took it back and ordered a Toshiba A665-5177X with the i5 2410 and it is very fast. I can tell the laptop is much snappier and runs everything quite nicely. I was originally wanting a Sager 5160 with the i5 2520, but could not swing the time or money to get it right now. After running the 2410 I feel this is more than enough for the general use of this laptop. Save the money and maybe put it toward a SSD.

By the way I have loaded and tried SC2 and this laptop runs it in medium setting on single player campaign mode quite nicely.

Edit:
also the battery in my laptop is only a 48Wh and i get 4.5+ hours of run time, keep that in mind when deciding on the faster CPU (you will get less run time)