AMD Vs. Intel GO! On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 6:24 PM, Stanley Brinkerhoff <[email protected]>wrote:
> Where I work we do R&D work that involves 3d modeling; computationally > heavy simulations, and the most system intensive of them all; Outlook. > Recently while refreshing out fleet of laptops I had quotes for Intel i5 > based laptops; and Intel i7 based laptops. My understanding was that i5 = > dual core. i7 = quad core. Right?? I assumed i3 was low end something or > other. > > So I ended up with the following CPU's: > > Intel Dual Core vPro i5-540M, 2.53GHz, 1066MHz 3M L2 Cache, Latitude E6410 > > Intel Dual Core vPro i7-620M, 2.66GHz, 1066MHz 4M L2 Cache, Latitude E6410 > > There was ~$250 difference in the machines (slight changes between > them)... > > Come to find out.. the I5 and I7 series -M CPU's in the 500/600 family are > BOTH DUAL CORE. These two CPU's are both dual core, and the i7 is roughly > 5-7% faster due to cache and memory bandwidth [1]. You don't get quad core > until you hit the 7xx and higher series CPU's. There are no low power quad > core I5's, so if you need a mobile quad core you need the I7. $250 is > hardly worth a 5-7% speed boost; especially when you are assuming a 10-40% > speed boost (quad core). > > I feel flogged by the Intel marketing machine. Remain vigilant when > purchasing your modern CPU -- and clearly do your independent research. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i5 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7 > > Stan > > > [1]: > http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i7-620M-Notebook-Processor.23043.0.html > -- -Eric
