these intel i5/i7 processor thingys?

jdmufc

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i´m toying with the idea of getting a new laptop and am looking for some advice on these i5 and i7 intel thingys.

which processor out of these two would be the best or is there not really much of a difference apart from the price?

these are my two options in my price range.......

an i5 2.6ghz or an i7 1.6ghz
 
Gaz doesn't start writing that post of his till tomorrow, that's how fast these things are.
 
ibm%20cell.jpg


4GHz baby!

This is not viral marketing in any shape or form.
 
Depends what you want. Do you want longer battery life or better performance, for example?
 
jdmufc said:
no-one knows which processor would be best then or shall we just keep talking about wanking over photos??
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i7 is obviously better than an i5 but it depends on what kind of work you use your laptop for. If it's just for general gaming, watching movies and stuff then the i5 is more than enough.
 
wr8_utd said:
i7 is obviously better than an i5 but it depends on what kind of work you use your laptop for. If it's just for general gaming, watching movies and stuff then the i5 is more than enough.
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thanks, i was veering towards the i5 because of cost and the fact that i dont really do much with my laptop apart from downloading torrents and surfing the net.

it was just this 2.6/1.6GHz thing that was confusing me
 
jdmufc said:
thanks, i was veering towards the i5 because of cost and the fact that i dont really do much with my laptop apart from downloading torrents and surfing the net.

it was just this 2.6/1.6GHz thing that was confusing me
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Are you sure you read the i7 as 1.6Ghz? I really don't think that's possible. i7 is definitely more than the i5!

But as you said if your major use is just downloading and surfing the net it makes no sense to get the i7 when the i5 is considerably cheaper and also has Turbo Boost like the i7. If your into gaming save the cash on the processor and try get in a better GPU
 
wr8_utd said:
Are you sure you read the i7 as 1.6Ghz? I really don't think that's possible. i7 is definitely more than the i5!

But as you said if your major use is just downloading and surfing the net it makes no sense to get the i7 when the i5 is considerably cheaper and also has Turbo Boost like the i7. If your into gaming save the cash on the processor and try get in a better GPU
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the laptop i´m looking at is running this....

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

i´ve no idea if thats any good or even if thats what you´re talking about :confused:
 
jdmufc said:
the laptop i´m looking at is running this....

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

i´ve no idea if thats any good or even if thats what you´re talking about :confused:
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Yeah that's quite good for a laptop. I have the 1GB version of the Mobility 5650 HD on my laptop and an i5 and it runs pretty much every game fine :D
 
wr8_utd said:
Are you sure you read the i7 as 1.6Ghz? I really don't think that's possible. i7 is definitely more than the i5!

But as you said if your major use is just downloading and surfing the net it makes no sense to get the i7 when the i5 is considerably cheaper and also has Turbo Boost like the i7. If your into gaming save the cash on the processor and try get in a better GPU
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i7 = Quadcore. i5 = Dualcore.

jd - I can't really add much to this thread other than i7's are the top of the range. The best i7 is basically the best commcercial CPU available. The i5's are more than good enough though. The mid to top-range i5's are brilliant and I recommend them.
 
AVARiCE said:
i7 = Quadcore. i5 = Dualcore.

jd - I can't really add much to this thread other than i7's are the top of the range. The best i7 is basically the best commcercial CPU available. The i5's are more than good enough though. The mid to top-range i5's are brilliant and I recommend them.
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The Lynnfield i5's i.e i5 750 is a 2.66GHz quad core but does not have Hyper threading. But then this is a laptop so we're talking about mobile processors so the i5 could possibly be Dual core. Not sure about that. But anyway as you said the i5 is more than enough for the kind of use he needs it for.
 
I fear I'll have to explain myself again then. In this particular case, where the lesser i5 range has a high clock speed whereas the superior i7 has a lower clock speed, the logical reason is that this specific i5 is dualcore whereas this specific i7 is quadcore.

Damn pedantic gits! :lol:
 
AVARiCE said:
I fear I'll have to explain myself again then. In this particular case, where the lesser i5 range has a high clock speed whereas the superior i7 has a lower clock speed, the logical reason is that this specific i5 is dualcore whereas this specific i7 is quadcore.

Damn pedantic gits! :lol:
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Do you get quad core i5's for the laptops?
 
AVARiCE said:
Nope. The only i5's for laptops are named Arrandale and they're all dual core. The best i5 processor for a laptop is the i5-580M and it's only recently come out, late Sept/early Oct I think.

The Arrandale i7's are also dual core. The quad core i7's are all Clarksfield.
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Yeah know about Clarksfield i7's.

So basically the Lynnfield i5 does not exist for the laptop. That's a shame.
 
If I upgraded to an i5 or an i7 from my current Intel Pentium Dual Core, would it work in the same socket or would I also need to upgrade my Motherboard to a different socket board?

Would I get a noticeable boost in speed?
 
Pexbo said:
If I upgraded to an i5 or an i7 from my current Intel Pentium Dual Core, would it work in the same socket or would I also need to upgrade my Motherboard to a different socket board?

Would I get a noticeable boost in speed?
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You'll need a new mother board. For the i3 and i5 series you need the LGA1156 socket. It will work on P55 mobo's but the integrated graphics won't work on the P55 mobos.

All Core i7 900 series processors use the LGA1366 socket. This is only found on motherboards using the X58 chipset.

Found this somewhere :

It is generally accepted that the Core i5 750 remains the best overall value out of all the processors in the Core lineup. The Core i5 750 offers performance which is surprisingly close to the Core i7 processors in most situations. The Core i3 and Core i5 600 series products are not slow, but because the price gap is so small it usually makes sense to go for the Core i5 750.


In fact, Intel's Core i3 processors are up against stiff competition from not only Intel's faster processors but also from AMD's budget quad cores, which offer similar or better performance at a slightly lower price. The wild card, however, is energy consumption. If you're concerned about how much energy your computer uses you'll prefer the Core i3 processors as they are much more efficient.


The Core i7 800 series products are also a good value, particularly the Core i7 860, which typically sells for around $280 or $290. The Core i7 900 series products are a bit pricey considering the minimal performance advantage they provide over the Core i7 800 series. However, the more feature-rich X58 chipset will appeal to power users who need or want extremely powerful systems with multiple video cards, hard drives, and gobs of RAM. Of course, each of the latter will add to your build cost as well.


The best buys from a performance on the dollar perspective are the Core i5 750 and Core i7 860.
 
Count Duckula said:
You'd need a new motherboard, and yes.
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wr8_utd said:
You'll need a new mother board. For the i3 and i5 series you need the LGA1156 socket. It will work on P55 mobo's but the integrated graphics won't work on the P55 mobos.

All Core i7 900 series processors use the LGA1366 socket. This is only found on motherboards using the X58 chipset.

Found this somewhere :

It is generally accepted that the Core i5 750 remains the best overall value out of all the processors in the Core lineup. The Core i5 750 offers performance which is surprisingly close to the Core i7 processors in most situations. The Core i3 and Core i5 600 series products are not slow, but because the price gap is so small it usually makes sense to go for the Core i5 750.


In fact, Intel's Core i3 processors are up against stiff competition from not only Intel's faster processors but also from AMD's budget quad cores, which offer similar or better performance at a slightly lower price. The wild card, however, is energy consumption. If you're concerned about how much energy your computer uses you'll prefer the Core i3 processors as they are much more efficient.


The Core i7 800 series products are also a good value, particularly the Core i7 860, which typically sells for around $280 or $290. The Core i7 900 series products are a bit pricey considering the minimal performance advantage they provide over the Core i7 800 series. However, the more feature-rich X58 chipset will appeal to power users who need or want extremely powerful systems with multiple video cards, hard drives, and gobs of RAM. Of course, each of the latter will add to your build cost as well.


The best buys from a performance on the dollar perspective are the Core i5 750 and Core i7 860.
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Cheers guys.

I'm in a similar position to OP only my setup is working fine but I fancy an upgrade.

Currently got:

Intel Dual Core Processor, £2.6ghz but I clocked it to 3.06ghz.

Nvidia GT 220 1gb PCI-Ex which is SHITE.

2gb Ram (:()

Think I'm going to blow my Christmas bonus on a new setup.

Is it worth upgrading or as I'm buying the most expensive components, just buy a new ready built PC and sell my current one?
 
Pexbo said:
Cheers guys.

I'm in a similar position to OP only my setup is working fine but I fancy an upgrade.

Currently got:

Intel Dual Core Processor, £2.6ghz but I clocked it to 3.06ghz.

Nvidia GT 220 1gb PCI-Ex which is SHITE.

2gb Ram (:()

Think I'm going to blow my Christmas bonus on a new setup.

Is it worth upgrading or as I'm buying the most expensive components, just buy a new ready built PC and sell my current one?
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Neither. Buy the components and learn how to put them together. It's much, much cheaper.

However, of the options you've given, I'd say the second. I'm not a big fan of upgrading though. The processor's decent as is the RAM but the graphics card is crap. Thing is, if you don't think the current setup is good enough then you might as well just go all out and get a new PC. I reckon buying a new one and selling the old will be cheaper anyway. If it's not cheaper initially it'll be cheaper over time. (The new PC won't need any additions for years whereas if you upgrade the current PC you might have to upgrade other hardware sooner.)
 
AVARiCE said:
Neither. Buy the components and learn how to put them together. It's much, much cheaper.

However, of the options you've given, I'd say the second. I'm not a big fan of upgrading though. The processor's decent as is the RAM but the graphics card is crap. Thing is, if you don't think the current setup is good enough then you might as well just go all out and get a new PC. I reckon buying a new one and selling the old will be cheaper anyway. If it's not cheaper initially it'll be cheaper over time. (The new PC won't need any additions for years whereas if you upgrade the current PC you might have to upgrade other hardware sooner.)
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Well I've built my last 4 or 5 PC's over the last few years and 5+ years ago I used to notice it was considerably cheaper to do it that way.

The last couple of PC's have been upgraded component by component and I've noticed the money I have been spending, £100 on a processor here, £100 on a graphics card, £100 on a Motherboard, £80 on a Hard Drive and so on, it's all added up to a point where I wonder wether I would be better off just buying a new PC as a full system has come down in price so much.

If I was to buy a new Processor, a new GPU and as my Ram is 2x 1GB I'd have to replace both for at least 2 x 2gb and then I'd still need a new Motherboard to accomodate the new CPU.

I used to be so up with this sort of thing but after about 2 years of not bothering, everything has changed to a point where I don't have a clue on pricing and what components are best. Putting it together is square peg, square hole stuff these days anyway and they even colour code it to make it idiot proof. The real beauty of putting together a machine is doing it tidy and in a way the air flow is dictated across the components.
 
Pexbo said:
Well I've built my last 4 or 5 PC's over the last few years and 5+ years ago I used to notice it was considerably cheaper to do it that way.

The last couple of PC's have been upgraded component by component and I've noticed the money I have been spending, £100 on a processor here, £100 on a graphics card, £100 on a Motherboard, £80 on a Hard Drive and so on, it's all added up to a point where I wonder wether I would be better off just buying a new PC as a full system has come down in price so much.

If I was to buy a new Processor, a new GPU and as my Ram is 2x 1GB I'd have to replace both for at least 2 x 2gb and then I'd still need a new Motherboard to accomodate the new CPU.

I used to be so up with this sort of thing but after about 2 years of not bothering, everything has changed to a point where I don't have a clue on pricing and what components are best. Putting it together is square peg, square hole stuff these days anyway and they even colour code it to make it idiot proof. The real beauty of putting together a machine is doing it tidy and in a way the air flow is dictated across the components.
Click to expand...

Is there any site where I can go to read about from the basic of hardware stuff? I'm looking to buy a new computer, I can figure out what's better purely on specs mostly, but I want to know why it is better.
 
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