That's ugly, it's getting to be as bad as graphics cards.
On 12/6/2010 6:24 PM, Stanley Brinkerhoff 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
