Good deal on Samsung Series 5 with the low voltage Intel i7-3537u CPU?

While I am pretty tech savvy I made a little blunder when I picked this laptop up at best buy:



Now, I thought the laptop had an i7 desktop equivalent processor. Immediately when I saw the specs and took note of the i7, I thought wow, it has 4 cores and 8 threads right? Wrong, after buying the laptop I later realized looking at the detailed spec, that this is a dual core processor...2 cores and 4 threads.

So I am debating on returning it for something with a quad core. I realize that this laptop is actually a good deal considering that the processor in it is low voltage and has 17-watt tdp versus a 45-watt tdp 3630qm processor. That is a pretty significant chunk of power saving it would seem when on battery mode.

I think the only real demanding thing I would do on this laptop is the occasional video editing with sony vegas 9.

So I suppose I can get away with buying this laptop and it would fulfill my personal needs. But I wonder if I will desire more power down the road, and if the price is right for a laptop with these specs. I have checked around and there isn't a cheaper laptop out there with the i7-3537u...

But there are amd-a8 laptops out there for less than 400. But I figure the i7-3537u would be faster than that and much more power efficient, and quiet. And I'm starting to think that laptops with a 3630qm might be a bit loud, hot, and power hungry in comparison.

What do you guys think, guess I'm justifying my purchase here, but would like opinions on this samsung laptop. Seems to have gotten great reviews on best buy.

 

Notebookcheck has a very useful list where you can compare benchmark results for different mobile CPUs.

You will see that there isn't a big difference in performance in single-threaded benchmarks (eg the Cinebench single tests). The quad core CPUs pull ahead when given multi-threaded tasks where twice as many cores can do the work in little over half the time. For the rest of the time the low power CPU will do the work in similar time with less heat and fan noise.

John

 

does anybody have successfully replaced it's series 5 CPU for a compatible sandy/ivy bridge one?...mine is OK, but I wonder, just in case...

 

Many notebooks use soldered (BGA) CPUs to avoid the extra thickness needed for the socket. I'm not 100% certain but I suspect that the ULV CPUs are only available as BGA.

John