Is It Worth The Upgrade? I7-3630QM vs I7-3740QM?

[NvidiaX]

Hi,

I'm going to buy the Optimus IV from pc speciliaist with the I7-3740QM processor, but today I also noticed that the cheaper I7-3630QM is now also available.

The 3740QM is 2.7ghz and the 3630QM is 2.4ghz there is a £90 price difference between the two.

Is that extra 300mhz different worth the 3740QM's price increase? I will be doing intensive tasks on a regular basis such as video editing, but will that 300mhz make that much difference?

Thanks in advance,
Louis

 

[mi1ez]

is it also 300MHz difference in turbo speed?

 

[NvidiaX]

is it also 300MHz difference in turbo speed?

Yes it is. 3.4 vs 3.7

 

[nbelote]

What will you be doing with the laptop in general? I would hate to make a blind recommendation to spend more money.

 

[azathoth]

The 300Mhz difference will essentially be a 10% performance increase.
This means 10% less rendering time.
This means 10% less work-time.

 

[NvidiaX]

The 300Mhz difference will essentially be a 10% performance increase.

But how will that 10% help in intensive applications. For example how much quicker would it be at rendering 1080p video? (which I do on a regular basis)

 

[NvidiaX]

What will you be doing with the laptop in general? I would hate to make a blind recommendation to spend more money.

Well I do a lot of video editing on a regular basis (1080p for youtube), but I just don't know how much that 300mhz will help, I will also be gaming as it has a 660m

 

[das_stig]

Go for the I7-3630QM and use the cash to spend on a fat SSD, extra ram or next model of GPU.

 

[NvidiaX]

Go for the I7-3630QM and use the cash to spend on a fat SSD, extra ram or next model of GPU.

The only other upgrade I could afford is an SSD, which I was going to buy at a slightly later date anyway?

So should I get the i7-3740qm and a 500gb HDD (then upgrade to a 120gb ssd next month for £50) or get the i7-3630qm and a 120gb SSD and 500gb HDD now without having to spend any extra later?

 

[NvidiaX]

My Dilemma is the fact that I can very easily upgrade the SSD at a later date, but I cannot upgrade the CPU easily. But if £90 for 300mhz is just ridiculous then I wont bother.

 

[azathoth]

10% performance directly translates to 10% faster rendering for you.

 

[NvidiaX]

10% performance directly translates to 10% faster rendering for you.

Is 10% worth £90 because I have no clue

 

[azathoth]

Is 10% worth £90 because I have no clue

Well how much is the overall price of the laptop? Easy way to justify it is whether or not is if it's 10% or less onto the total system cost.

 

[NvidiaX]

Well how much is the overall price of the laptop? Easy way to justify it is whether or not is if it's 10% or less onto the total system cost.

The total cost of the laptop plus the i7-3740qm is £800.

 

[agksmehx]

the sequence is more ram, faster disk, even more ram, faster processor if you find you still need it.

 

[megadrum]

I'm having the same decision to make man! Doing heavy music production/light video editing in my situation, and am also curious if this 10% increase is reasonably priced. I found this benchmark test, may help you out a little: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

 

[megadrum]

Came across this too, it goes into more detail : http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-3740QM-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3630QM

 

[jaguarskx]

The difference in base clockspeed and Turbo Boost clockspeed is 300MHz for the CPUs. So at the base clockspeed the i7-3740QM is clocked 12.5% higher than the i7-3630QM. At max Turbo Boost clockspeed the i7-3740QM is clocked almost 9% higher. The max Turbo Boost clockspeed assumes only one of the 4 cores are being used. If all 4 cores are being used, then the max speed is lower. That is also assuming the CPU itself is within a certain thermal limit. If the CPU temp is too high, then Turbo Boost is limited or disabled. If all 4 cores are being used the max Turbo Boost clockspeed may only be 3.3GHz for the i7-3740QM and 3.0GHz for the i7-3630QM exact clock speed is unknown and the only possible source of info is Intel technical white papers for their CPUs which has a lot of technical data that is likely very difficult for a layman to understand, much less process.

It all boils down to how much is your time worth. Let's just say a the performance difference is 10% to keep it simple. I've done some video batch processing of my own from time to time and in once batch I had around 20 videos I was encoding. Based on the settings I used to do the video conversion, it tool a total of 50 hours to compete the entire batch. A 10% increase in performance would have cut that down to 45 hours.

 

[Neodinium]

Time is money.

If I was doing CPU intensive tasks all day, I would spend the extra £90. So, for about 10% more in cost, you get 10% more in speed, which saves you 10% more in rendering time.

Say you kept this computer for 3 years. In a standard US work year, you work 2,080 hours.

2,080 hrs * 3 yrs = 6,240 hrs

Let's say you spend half that time rendering.

6,240 hrs / 2 = 3,120 hrs

3,120 hrs * 0.10 = 312 hrs

312hrs / 24hrs = 13 full days

How long does it take you to make £90? How much money do you make per hour? Is that worth gaining 13 full days of your life back in 3 years that you don't have to sit and wait for something to render?