What is the actual performance difference between the i3 4030u and i7 4510u

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codetoeternity

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hello folks, i am planning on buying a laptop in next 4 to 5 days at max. i have two options currently at my hand. both have same model. lenovo g50.
1) lenovo g50 with i3 4030u.
2) lenovo g50 with i7 4510u which costs around 165usd more.
the thing is. both these processors have the same number of cores (two) and almost same base frequency, but the i7 one has turbo boost upto 3.1ghz. now that is the point of confusion here. i am not experienced with this turbo boost thing and am not sure how much of a performance gain will it give me for 165usd. my uses with this laptop will be focused on asp.net development and android development mainly. with sometimes basic image editing in photoshop. so basically i am hoping for some good advice here, should i go for the i7 one or the i3? does the laptop stay cool for most of the time so turbo boost can actually work? thanks.
 
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KoopaCreeper
I would go with the i7 if your budget provides. Intel's Haswell chips, looking in CPU-Z, run at 800MHz at idle. Whenever you open a program, the CPU briefly turbos up to the highest possible clock speed. The i3 would be limited to 1.9GHz whether all cores are being used or not, whereas the i7 could briefly boost up to 3.1GHz with 1 core (2 threads) active or 2.8GHz with 2 cores (4 threads) active. That's how turbo boost works. Because the laptop enclosure is not Ultrabook-thin, you shouldn't run into any thermal throttling problems.
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Karsten75

Karsten75

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Turbo boost has less to do with heat per se. It has more to do with how many cores are active. With fewer cores active, Turbo Boost can increase the speed of the other cores and remain within the thermal envelope. Additionally, if hyper-threading is active on the i7 processor, you should get perhaps double the throughput within the same thermal envelope.
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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Apr 19, 2006
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Excluding turbo boost the base clock speed of both CPUs are pretty close; Core i3-4030u @ 1.9GHz / Core i7-4510u @ 2.0GHz. Therefore, both CPUs should perform roughly the same.

Turbo boost allows the Core i7-4510u to reach up to 3.1GHz when only one core is used and probably 2.8GHz when both cores are used. As long as the CPU remains cool enough and you are doing something that is CPU intensive, the Core i7-4510u can reach those clock speeds. Naturally when the CPU runs faster it also heats up, but the "U" series CPU are designed to consume less power and generate less heat than the more powerful dual core "M" series or quad core versions of the Core i7.

The Core i7 CPU should stay cool enough so that when you need it the extra performance it will be able to provide it. However, for prolonged CPU intensive tasks I do recommend using a laptop cooler to help reduce temperatures by 3c to 6c depending on which cooler you use, the locations of the vents on the underside of the laptop and how well air is circulated within the laptop (no one will have this information). I used my Dell Latitude 3540 with the i5-4200u to encode videos for around 36 - 40 hours straight. The CPU was basically running a 100% during that time because video encoding is extremely CPU intensive. The max turbo boost speed of the i5-4200u is 2.6GHz, but because both cores were being used, the max speed was 2.3GHz. The base speed without turbo boost is 1.6GHz.

 
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codetoeternity

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hyperthreading is enabled on both processors i mentioned.


 
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KoopaCreeper

KoopaCreeper

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I would go with the i7 if your budget provides. Intel's Haswell chips, looking in CPU-Z, run at 800MHz at idle. Whenever you open a program, the CPU briefly turbos up to the highest possible clock speed. The i3 would be limited to 1.9GHz whether all cores are being used or not, whereas the i7 could briefly boost up to 3.1GHz with 1 core (2 threads) active or 2.8GHz with 2 cores (4 threads) active. That's how turbo boost works. Because the laptop enclosure is not Ultrabook-thin, you shouldn't run into any thermal throttling problems.
 
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