Are i7m's necessary for a gaming laptop?

[atathus]

I recently read the "Best CPUs for the money" article and now understand that, for PCs, there is no need to get more than an i5-3570K as the returns are extremely diminished in comparison to price change.

Is this the case for laptop CPUs as well? Is there a point in which the price increase for a mobile processor is not worth the marginal gains? If so, what is the mobile processor at which these minimal gains begin? If not, is it reasonable to assume, then, that the smartest choice for a mobile CPU is to simply buy the i7-3940XM? (Assuming one is looking to build the most powerful laptop they can as cost efficient as possible)

 

[mesab66]

Correct - for gaming, this applies to laptops also. You don't need an i7 or whatever top of the range comes out. But you do need any system to be balanced - extra headroom is ok but not a bottlenecked component.
As you'll know, it's the GPU that is the most crucial part and is the one most folk focus on/upgrade (providing the cpu/psu/etc has enough headroom).

 

[maestro0428]

The i7s have hyperthreading which means they take advantage of up to 12 threads. Most games just don't do that yet. Clock speed is more important when running games. Just get the fastest 2 or 4 core you can afford, there is no need for more threads than that unless you have software that can take advantage of it.

 

[jaguarskx]

Very few games use more than 2 cores. BF3 is one such game, though I have never played, I have read that when playing mutliplayer with a dual core CPU, a few of the NPC will be dropped.

I would simply go with an i5 CPU, the basic difference would be the amount of cache, but games generally do not gain any performance improvements with CPUs that have larger cache. Just go with clockspeed.

If you are doing something that is really intensive and can make use of 4 cores (like video encoding), then go with an i7 "QM" model if it fits within your budget.

 

[atathus]

Best answer selected by atathus.