i7 comparison question.

[JoshGlzBrk]

I'm buying a new highend laptop soon, (hopefully monday), but I was wondering which cpu would be best (fastest).

I know one is dual core and one is quad, but the dual core has a faster base clock speed compared to the quad, should I just go with the dual core based on the faster base speed and faster overclock (turbo) speed?

http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=43124,43560

[Pickelo]

Well it depends on what you are going to be running on the system.

Not a lot of software is optimised for a Quad Core processor. So you won't see a great improvement in performance over the Dual Core processor.

The only real software that would see an increase in performance by using the Quad Core is Video Encoding and Raytracing.

Everything else like Browsing the web, flash videos, office suites and even games will see much better performance with the Dual Core processor.

Which by the way uses a lot less power and will result in a cooler running notebook and one that lasts longer when running off the battery.

I'd go with the Dual Core.

[JoshGlzBrk]

Well I'M a programmer and I run quite a few things at once, don't really play games on the pc, have a PS3 for that.

Do you happen to know the speeds of the i7 820QM at each of the # of cores in use and on turbo, and the clock speeds for the 620M also?

[gshv]

I7-820QM - http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SLBLX.html

I5-620M: http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SLBPD.html

Frequency increase for turbo mode is on the bottom of the pages.

Gennadiy

[JoshGlzBrk]

So personally, which would you choose for a performance laptop that won't be used for games?

[Qwerty]

Personally, I would buy a desktop instead of a laptop.

Almost all high-end laptops tend to overheat. It doesn't make much sense to have a super-duper CPU in the rig if it will run at 50% or 25% to prevent overheating
You should also know that the high-end laptops (they are also called "desktop replacement") consume much energy and therefore have a very short battery operaing time. All the power saving techniques throttle the CPU power or deactivate the superfluous CPU cores to achieve longer working time on batteries.

IMHO if you want a high-end machine you should buy a desktop and if you want to be mobile - you should purchase laptop with a low-power CPU and long battery operating time.

[Cobracon]