Processor confusion - old vs. new

Hi all,

Been a while since I've been in the market for a new notebook but now I'm looking to get a new one. The current one I have is a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ780 with a Core 2 Duo T9300 2.49 Ghz.

When looking at the new specs with the i5's and i7's should I be paying much attention to the stated processor speed when comparing what I have and what I want? Obviously I want something better than what I have but I don't really know how to compare the different processors. Need something light and portable that I can do audio and video work but nothing really intensive.

Thanks,
Ho'okani

 

Don't compare speeds. Any Ivy Bridge (latest gen CPU from Intel) will be at least twice as powerful as your Core 2 Duo.

If you do audio and video work, if your software supports or is accelerated by using more cores, get a quad core. Otherwise any dual core will do. Faster ones will get it done faster obviously.

 

Any Ivy Bridge CPU will absolutely annhilate a Core 2 Duo in raw processing speed, you can't compare 2007 technology to 2012. Alot change just from Generation 1 Arrandale/Clarksfield Core i series processors, and now they are on the 3rd generation of the Core processor.

 

So in order to better a 2.5ghz core 2 duo what speed i5 would I need to get? Or is basically any new i5 going to be better.

Thanks,
Hookani

 

Any. Hell, a newer Pentium (Bxxx) would out-compute the C2D. Let alone a current i3 or i5.

 

Most of all the notebooks (ultrabooks) ive been seeing that are reasonbly priced have a 1.7ghz core i5.

Thanks,
Hookani

 

Right now I have a Lenovo Ideapad U310 in review and so far I think it's a great little Ultrabook for $720.

 

Still outperforms any C2D as of now if it's an ivy bridge CPU.

 

Thanks for the info.

Hookani

 

Well, maybe a few of the very highly clocked C2Ds might still be on par in performance, but it definitely beats that T9300.

 

1.7 GHz will probably still be faster for almost anything. 1.2 GHz, it might depend on what you're doing. While by and large Sandy Bridge (and Ivy Bridge) are a lot faster, the Core 2's do have an advantage in more L2 cache, which is beneficial for some applications.

I don't personally know whether audio or video work likes large L2 caches, but those workloads are common benchmarks, so my guess is they don't particularly, so they'd probably be much faster with the newer i5s.

 

If you get an i3 you won't notice huge difference but it will do far better in gaming.

Get an i5 and you will notice a big difference. An i5 3210m is a lot faster. Its like having 80% more speed overall which is a big difference.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

This is good for comparing. Your t9300 holds its own against the 32nm i3 330m westmere. The new i5's will gain a lot on rendering video encoding and audio and gaming like gta 4 an i5 will run gta 4 while your c2d does not have the memiory bandwidth and has no hyper threading so yours will slow down at gta 4.

 

I went from a Core 2 Duo P7450 that runs at 2.13GHz (also in a Vaio), granted a weaker processor than your T9300 but the same architecture, to a 1st generation Core i5 520m at 2.4GHz and the P7450 is absolutely mullered by the 520m. Everything I throw at it is faster (Photoshop, having a bazillion tabs running with no lag, etc) ceteris paribus. The performance increase for you would probably be significant with the newer Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge chips.

 

It's not "a lot" faster, actually. All i3 and i5 mobile chips are dual core, though the i5 has HyperThreading, so it's a fake quad in a sense. Some games, like GTA, will like this, but a lot of games still do not take advantage of anything more than two cores (of course this will be resolved in the future, but how long will it take?). Even then, GTA runs perfectly fine on a dual-core like the i3. Even had no CPU issues with San Andreas back when I had a Pentium T4200.

 

i3 has hyperthreading as well. My brother has an a500-1gl with i3 330m and another toshiba with i3 380m and it has hyperthreading. gta 4 should benefit from i3 and i5. If you go on notebookcheck i5 are a big performance improvement. Ivy bridge i5 3210m basically nearly doubles his t9300 performance nearly overall.

core 2 duo's are good at running different tabs but there problem is memory bandwidth and no hyper threading and your i5 has turbo boost and higher power consumption then a p7450 which means it should easily win.

I am interested to know with same settings lets say at video encoding fraps files of 1gb how much faster is your i5 to a p7450 at encoding.

 

The Notebookcheck ratings are only pure CPU ratings; it doesn't factor into the rest of the laptop. Sure, an i5 will be somewhat better at CPU-bound tasks than an i3 (duh), but as far as actual, real-life performance goes there is no difference between the i3/i5/i7, aside from how many physical cores there are. Since both i3 and i5 have HyperThreading, GTA will only care about clock speeds between the two for the most part. i5 is really only worth the extra cash if OP needs the specialized features (Turbo Boost honestly doesn't help in games, AES-NI, etc.). If the price difference is a drop in the bucket (<$25 or so), sure get the i5, but if it'll take up a nice chunk of the upgrade budget then it's not worth it.

Also note that the linked benchmarks are synthetic and do not represent real-life performance situations. To any typical user (web, gaming, whatever), the only way to tell between two different CPUs would be to use these synthetic benchmarks. But that's like asking which family sedan is better by testing their ability to drag race. Not relevant to their use.

What really boosts game performance? The GPU certainly does, so I'd spend more for a better GPU (especially since you can't upgrade later). SSDs are the most noticeable improvement a user can *actually* tell the difference (compared to a HDD) without benchmarks. Same for display resolutions and contrast. But for CPUs, HTWingNut already explains:

Honestly, OP stated that all they want to do is "basic stuff", which doesn't call for something like an i5. Never asked us how GTA performs on the processors, or any game for that matter. We don't even know if this will be a gaming laptop anyway; could be just an internet machine for the most part.

 

If you want a new CPU with your laptop, makes sure the number that follows the i3/i5/i7 is in the 3000s [this indicates the Intel Ivy Bridge]. Ex: i5-3210m

 

He mentioned some video and audio work. My point was just that if it's multi-threaded he'll get best performance from a quad core. Dual core will be better with battery life and thermals typically.

 

Hey all, I am thinking of getting a gaming laptop around August. I was thinking of an XMG p702pro from MYsn.de. The choice of processors are the intel core i7 3610qm and the 3720qm. There is a .3ghz difference in speed but over 200 euro price difference. I'm not sure if the performance difference is worth the price. If anyone has any advice that would be great thanks.

 

If all you're doing is gaming, get the 3610QM - if you're also doing semi-serious work (including VM's) get the 3720QM.

For gaming; not worth the difference (at that price).

 

Agreed with tilleroftheearth on the CPU. That .3GHz is exactly that, a tiny difference. You won't notice it, let along any of the extra features of the i7-3720QM.

 

Thanks for all the discussion. I do some basic video editing and multi track audio recording for my band so what I have just barely squeaks by although it cannot handle the highest quality video that comes out of my camera, that totally bogs my system so I just don't shoot at that quality. The programs I do use do take advantage of multicore and hyperthreading and GPU.

Right now I'm kinda liking what I see with the ASUS U47VC but it doesn't seem to be available yet. The only U47 I've seen is the U47A at Bestbuy but it's the i7-2640 and doesn't have the separate graphics like the U47VC would. Pretty sure the U47A with on board graphics would beat what I have though even with the separate nvidia 8400M currently.

Thanks,
Ho'okani

 

If you're doing video editing: get the IB version of any notebook you're considering. Even with a system with just the igpu, the Intel 4000 is significantly faster than the Intel 3000 graphics the i7 2640 has.

With the right software, the Intel igpu (even the 3000 version) is much, much faster than any GPU you can get in a notebook.

 

Thanks for the processor advice

 

Please quantify this statement. The Intel iGPU is far from being much faster than any GPU you can get in a notebook. The HD 4000 is nearly equivalent to nVidia 620m or Radeon 6630m which are low end GPU's. It can hold its own with 720p gaming at low settings with newer games but it's far from a high performer.

 

I didn't think the 4K was so powerful, I expected it to perform similarly to the 3K. But your comment makes me think it can handle modern games, all this time I thought it was meant mainly for HD video and stuff.

 

Please re-read my original response: it was in regards to video editing - not gaming.

 

Agreed. A quad core is a must for any video editing applications, especially since all editing program are optimized to use them. This is far more important than a processor's speed. Which has not been a good gauge of efficiency for some time now.

Gaming and video editing computers differ widely in their choice of video cards. Therefore a choice must be made to determine which is more important since the two are optimized for their prospective purposes.