Intel i5/i7 VS Core 2 Duo

I'm thinking of exchanging my Vaio with a Core 2 Duo (2.1GHz) for a better laptop.

Lately i've seen tons of laptops with the new i5 and i7 processors.

I was wondering what the difference was between them. And which one is faster.

 

Well an i5 will definitely beat out the Core 2 Duo by quite a bit. The i7s are faster than the i5s but it all depends on your usage to whether you'll even notice the difference

 

Hmm.

This whole thing is starting to get rather confusing....

Would anyone consider this laptop to be "fast":

VGN-FW455D
Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 (2.10GHz)
4GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650
320GB Hard Drive

 

What do you plan on using it for?

 

Specs look good except for the CPU, which you could upgrade to a T9600/T9800 for about $300 and will make a pretty good speed boost... I'd say the T9800 is a as fast as an i5 520m but not the 540m. You just have to find what's more economical for you.

 

Not in most cases. The i5-520M was twice as fast as T8300 while video encoding the same file. The T9800 would put a dent in the time, but wouldn't be near as fast as the i5. Hyper threading and turbo boost are extremely helpful in CPU intensive programs vs the older Core 2 Duo's

 

The figure I've heard is that Nehalem is, on average, roughly 20% faster clock-for-clock than Penryn. That would mean that a 2.93GHz Penryn would equate to a ~2.44GHz Core i5. This puts the T9800 roughly on the level of the Core i5-430M, which Turbo Boosts up to 2.53GHz both on one core and on two.

 

Do you guys know if i CAN upgrade the CPU on the laptop?

 

You should be able to unless the CPU is soldered to the motherboard (which is very rare).


--

 

Well it is a Vaio.... =P


PS: I'm trying to use it for everything. Just high performance stuff in general. Mostly games. xD

 

You should try asking in the Sony forums. They might know for sure if the CPU is soldered or not.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony-owners-lounge-forum/278446-official-vaio-fw-series-owners-thread-566.html

Hmm i remember asking before. Someone said no, someone else said easily upgradable but it would blow up the warranty.

Nothing about whether it's soldered or not.

 

It's not soldered. But don't spend much money upgrading anything on it.

 

What line of processors should i look up if i am going to upgrade it?

Whats compatible with it basically?

 

Why do you want to upgrade it? The T6500 is a fine processor, and I imagine that it would be more than enough for 90% of users.

Compatibility-wise, any T- or P-series Intel Montevina processor should work just fine (ie: P8400, P8600, T9400, T9600, etc).

 

Again, what are you using it for? For games, that's more than enough, especially since the GTX 260m is still a very powerful card.

 

Uh, i have a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650. And i said i was using the laptop for everything i do, so I would need it to be a very high performance machine considering it's going to have to last me a long time.

And i think 2.10GHz seems like a pretty poor CPU speed by today's standards. According to the Windows rating thingy the CPU is what's dragging the computer down. (5.6/7.9)

So any T or P processor would work with my specific motherboard?

 

First of all, what is "everything"? If "everything" is checking email and surfing the web, the T6500 is more than enough. If it's playing games, my bet is the T6500 is still more than enough, since your GPU will be bottlenecking your performance, not the CPU.

Second of all, the WEI is a very poor benchmark that doesn't really reflect what's bottlenecking your system. My bet would be that in most cases, either your hard drive or your GPU is bottlenecking your system, not your CPU.

An upgrade that would be much more worth your money would be an SSD upgrade. Or, you could save up for your next laptop.

No, not any T- or P-series processor - it has to be a T- or P-series from the Montevina generation (ie: T9900, T9600, T9400, P9600, P8800, P8700, P8600, etc).

 

WOW....

I'm getting extremely contradicting info about these specs.....

I read that this particular graphics card is a high end one. (Albeit one of the lower ones)

Sorry, by "everything" i mean that the laptop would be fast enough to do anything. Like play games at high settings.

And isn't 2.10GHz a low clock speed? That seems kinda obvious that it would be slowing the computer down.

Plus SSDs only speed up load times and do not improve processing and rendering.

And as for the WEI, yeah i know its not very accurate but i just wanted to provide some sort of example. xD

 

I'm confused. Do you own this laptop or are you in the process of buying it?

 

I own it currently.

 

The Mobility Radeon 4650 is a midddling mobile GPU from last generation. Sony also underclocks their GPUs quite frequently, so without tweaking and/or overclocking, the 4650 in the Vaio FW will perform more poorly than normal.

To compare, I have a laptop with a Mobility Radeon 5650, which is essentially the 4650's successor. It's a little faster, has a few more SPs and has DX11 functionality. At native resolution (1366x768 in my case) I can't have all the eye candy turned up even on games that are a year or two old.

No mobile GPU is going to give you bleeding-edge gaming performance with all the bells and whistles. As many other posters in this thread have said, the 4650 is going to bottleneck you on most games long before the T6500 does. Some games (RTS games, games with lots of physics/AI calculations and poorly-optimized graphics engines) are CPU-limited, but this is not the majority of games.

I suspect that you will have noticeably worse results than I do, as your card is a generation older, has fewer SPs, plus the native resolution of the Vaio FW is at least 1600x900 (and can be 1920x1080)... meaning more pixels to render than mine.

The 4650, 4670, 5650 cards are not gamer GPUs. They are suitable for some light gaming at low resolutions, but try to feed them something demanding on maxed detail and you're going to see a slideshow.

 

Wow. Ok. That explains everything.

What can I do then to make the laptop faster?

What can I upgrade?

 

If you want more powerful graphics capabilities, you need to sell your current laptop on ebay, craigslist, or something, and buy yourself a new one with a more powerful graphics card.

 

Ok. When i'm buying a gaming laptop, should I even bother looking at the CPU clock speed? Or is it just all about the graphics card?

 

It's all about the graphics card because a manufacturer won't pair a processor that will bottleneck a high end laptop GPU and they are often not upgradable, and a huge expensive PITA when they are. Also you should go for a dual core i-series processor and not a quad since the quads are more money and more slower cores is slower in gaming than fewer faster cores. The fact that the 32nm dual cores get better power consumption is an added bonus. But if what you can find at a good price with a good GPU happens to have a quad, don't shy away from it. Just don't go for a quad all else being equal.

 

For gaming the GPU always takes the top priority above everything else. Next is the CPU, which by today standards (CPU and game requirements) a middle CPU (say i5 or some poeple even say an i3) should suffice. Also by today standards a quad core (i7, note not all i7 are quad cores) is an overkill for the majority of uses (gaming included). And after these two priorities then enough RAM and hard drives comes into consideration.

In any case for the level of GPUs offered today in laptops (low level in comparison to desktops), it is the GPU the key critical point for an improved gaming experience.

 

Ok. That makes sense I suppose.

But wait i'm confused again. i series are the same as dual cores and quad cores?

What is an i processor exactly in relation to dual Cores? I was told at Futureshop that i7 was equivalent to 8 cores and i5 had 4 cores.

For example: an i5 processor has a CPU speed of 2.50GHz. So it would be that times 4. etc.

Is this correct?

 

No, but it does confuse lots of people. i3, i5, and some i7's are dual cores, and some i7's are quad cores. The core i processors all have hyperthreading, which represents each core as two cores to the operating system. The advantage to hyperthreading is that in some cases it will improve the work the processor can get done. If a core is working on one task, it may have to wait for information to come from memory, and during those cycles the core isn't being used for calculations. Hyperthreading gives the core alternative work to do during those times it would otherwise be waiting, boosting the productivity of the core. Sometimes this boost can be quite large while other times this boost can be negligible or actually slightly decrease performance. Gaming does tend to be one of those situations where hyperthreading doesn't do much. Either way, the performance of one core with hyperthreading will never even come close to the performance of two actual cores.

 

OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH.

So the i series processors are just super dual cores then? (or quad)

They each have 2 cores but because of hyperthreading, the computer treats it as an extra core.

Doesn't having multiple multiple cores make it faster than just 2 cores?


ARGH! My brain hurts! =P

 

It is good to just forget that hyperthreading makes a processor look like it has twice as many cores in the operating system, as that aspect is really unimportant and a huge source of confusion. A rough estimate is that on average, core i processors are about 20% more powerful for the same clock speed than core 2 processors with the same number of real cores.

 

Yes.
And games don't utilize quad cores really, only video editing stuff does. Quad cores are more expensive, for example, you would be getting like a 1.6 GHz i7 Quad core compared to a 2.5 Ghz i5 Dual core. The i5 would be a lot better for you.

 

So for gaming, always go for dual cores? Particularly i5s?

Namely i'm just looking for a laptop that will last me a loooooooooong time and can handle almost any game or application i throw at it, but won't burn a crater in my wallet.

Or an upgrade for my current laptop that will bring it up to snuff for current games.

Thats partly why i was wondering about a new processor and what specifically the new i series was.

 

i5-540M sounds like a good one for you
with a discrete graphics card for games

 

How much do you think a laptop with those things would cost?

Or could I upgrade my current laptop with that processor?

 

You could get a decent high end specced notebook for $1200.

 

Do these specs look good:
$1063.79
Estimated Ship Date 06/15/2010

VPC-CW290

*
Intel® Core™ i5-520M processor (2.40GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 3.33GHz
*
Microsoft Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
*
Royal Indigo
*
4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
*
320 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
*
DVD +/- R DL / DVD +/- RW / DVD-RAM Drive
*
NVIDIA® GeForce® G310M GPU (256MB VRAM)
*
14" VAIO Display (1366x768)
*
Standard Capacity Battery

 

The turbo boost for a i5-520M is 3.06 i believe. But anyways I think it would suffice.

 

Actually, it's 2.667Ghz dual-core boost and 2.93Ghz single-core boost.

 

The 256MB VRAM on the graphics card seems pretty weak though.

Or does that even matter at all?

 

It doesn't matter at all on such a low-end card. It would probably suffice with 128MB. If you really want a laptop for gaming you need to get something with a gpu quite a bit better than that.

 

If you're looking to play games, I wouldn't recommend it. It's a low-end laptop GPU; midrange laptop GPUs can be as much as 4x more powerful, and high-end laptop GPUs are around twice as powerful again.

As Trottel said, the issue isn't the VRAM; if you want to get technical, the issue is that the 310M has very low processing power and memory bandwidth.

 

Am i better off just upgrading? Cause i'd rather not have to spend $1200 on another laptop....

 

So, you currently have a T6500 and an HD 4650? Can you clarify what kind of tasks you've felt it was slow at so far? If you feel it's good enough, there's no need to upgrade.

If you want to see a big jump in gaming performance, you'd want a high-end laptop GPU; the cheapest offerings with that kind of performance would be the many refurbished ASUS laptops with the GTX 260M, followed by the MSI GX640 (with the HD 5850) at $1100 new.

 

I definitely need more gaming performance. Or just high performance in general. I'd like it to be able to last me a couple of generations. As oppose to having to buy one every year.

So i guess upgrading the CPU and GPU is out of the question?

 

If you could upgrade the GPU, that would be great, but you almost certainly can't.

Could you be more specific as to how gaming performance has been inadequate with your current setup? What games and what settings?

 

Well, currently, games like Crysis are only playable at medium or less. It can't even run other games like World of Warcraft at max.

The whole point of the laptop was to be fast enough to handle almost any game at max and be able to last me through out my university education (first ear student currently). But we kinda got ripped off in terms of the price VS specs. ($1300)

 

Well, if higher settings are unplayable while lower settings are fine, that's a definite sign you need a better GPU. Generally, if your CPU is too weak for a certain game, you'll find that you'll still have some trouble even at low settings.

If gaming performance is of the utmost importance, a desktop is generally a better choice. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a gaming laptop, you should fill out the form and post a thread here.

 

Well, to be honest. It's mostly for school. I'm planning to get into media arts. You know, 3D stuff and whatnot. But I figured that getting a gaming laptop would be logical cause then its equiped for anything else i could possibly need to do on it. Gaming laptops being the fastest on the market.

 

My old 1.8GHz cpu bottlenecked my 8800m GTS.

I would suggest the OP start saving for a new laptop if he wants to play games at high settings.