AMD laptop cpu upgrade DualCoreVSQuadCore

[SammichPG]

First the facts:
- my laptop has a socket s1g4 which is the last one before the fusion cpus http://www.cpu-world.com/Sockets/Socket_S1_(S1g4).html
- this laptop has been reported to work even with black edition models (even overclocked from 3.1 to 3.4ghz) so compatibility isn't an issue
- I manily browse with 15+ open tabs (chrome), rarely edit images with gimp, torrenting, multimedia, irc client and office in the background
- I'm using an athlon p320 which is a dual core part at 2.1ghz and memory controller limited to ddr3 1066 (though my modules are 1333), each cpu upgrade will bump the ram speed to 1333
- the storage was upgraded to a 128gb crucial m4 which surprisingly runs at sata 3 speeds paired with the old HDD mounted inside a caddy in the optical disk bay


It's a very nice and silent machine, but sometimes I'd like it to have more cpu power since it struggles a bit with heavy websites, can't decide between a 3ghz dual core and a 2.3ghz quad.
Browsers aren't exactly multithreaded programs but on the other hand I'm running quite a bit of stuff in the background so I could use the multitasking performance of a quad core.
What cpu would be more suited for my needs?
Cost is similar from somewhat reputable (1200 99% positive feedback) ebay chinese sellers.

Thanks for reading.

 

[hans007]

I'd get the quad. And ram

 

[soccerballtux]

First the facts:
- my laptop has a socket s1g4 which is the last one before the fusion cpus http://www.cpu-world.com/Sockets/Socket_S1_(S1g4).html
- this laptop has been reported to work even with black edition models (even overclocked from 3.1 to 3.4ghz) so compatibility isn't an issue
- I manily browse with 15+ open tabs (chrome), rarely edit images with gimp, torrenting, multimedia, irc client and office in the background
- I'm using an athlon p320 which is a dual core part at 2.1ghz and memory controller limited to ddr3 1066 (though my modules are 1333), each cpu upgrade will bump the ram speed to 1333
- the storage was upgraded to a 128gb crucial m4 which surprisingly runs at sata 3 speeds paired with the old HDD mounted inside a caddy in the optical disk bay


It's a very nice and silent machine, but sometimes I'd like it to have more cpu power since it struggles a bit with heavy websites, can't decide between a 3ghz dual core and a 2.3ghz quad.
Browsers aren't exactly multithreaded programs but on the other hand I'm running quite a bit of stuff in the background so I could use the multitasking performance of a quad core.
What cpu would be more suited for my needs?
Cost is similar from somewhat reputable (1200 99% positive feedback) ebay chinese sellers.

Thanks for reading.

individual tab browser rendering in chrome is still single threaded so having a quad isn't going to help you any unless you get higher ghz.
here's to hoping they start multithreading individual tabs. They probably will.

For laptops it's really not much of a contest, you need Intel's single threaded performance since you can't overclock to 4ghz like on desktops...

 

[SammichPG]

After thinking about it and reading some more I'll go with the dual core Phenom II x620 BE 3.1ghz which comes with the multiplier completely unlocked, as I said people reported 3.4ghz on those while undervolting.
Even at stock it should match the single threaded performance to my core 2 quad q9550 that works pretty well.
There are worse ways to burn 79$ and I can resell my dual core cpu to people using single core V140 or V160 to make something back.


Quads are nice and all, but they have very similar clock to the cpu I'm using and they wouldn't bring a huge performance increase for my use case while being more expensive (black edition quads go for silly prices) and producing more heat.

 

[veri745]

For laptops it's really not much of a contest, you need Intel's single threaded performance since you can't overclock to 4ghz like on desktops...

Thanks for encouraging an upgrade to an intel part on a laptop, that's very productive.

I agree with the decision to go for the faster dual.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I'd go with a quad that is as close to the base TDW of your current. I wouldn't want to f-around with voltages, clocks and temps in a laptop. You're likely to kill the machine pretty early. That said, is the CPU even removable? Often enough they get soldered in.

 

[SammichPG]

I'd go with a quad that is as close to the base TDW of your current. I wouldn't want to f-around with voltages, clocks and temps in a laptop. You're likely to kill the machine pretty early. That said, is the CPU even removable? Often enough they get soldered in.

I've played with this cpu and its voltages quite a bit, undervolted by 15% and temps dropped by 8°C, replaced the thermal pads with arctic mx3 and temps dropped by another couple degrees.

My next gripe was that the fan was always on and speedfan didn't have any support for my laptop so I edited the hex values in the dsdt and now my laptop runs passive up to 80°C or whisper quiet depending on the dsdt I choose.

One day I might take my dremel and find a way to mount another fan on this thing 😀

Browsing is still poorly multithreaded so explain me the advantage of running 3 idle cores while one gets boggled down by page rendering instead of having a massively faster (1ghz more per core) core doing the same job.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I've played with this cpu and its voltages quite a bit, undervolted by 15% and temps dropped by 8°C, replaced the thermal pads with arctic mx3 and temps dropped by another couple degrees.

My next gripe was that the fan was always on and speedfan didn't have any support for my laptop so I edited the hex values in the dsdt and now my laptop runs passive up to 80°C or whisper quiet depending on the dsdt I choose.

One day I might take my dremel and find a way to mount another fan on this thing 😀

Browsing is still poorly multithreaded so explain me the advantage of running 3 idle cores while one gets boggled down by page rendering instead of having a massively faster (1ghz more per core) core doing the same job.

Are you sure it's a CPU problem? What is your GPU? And why kind of content is running on those pages? My gut says you have a Radeon 4200 IGP or something like it.

 

[SammichPG]

Are you sure it's a CPU problem? What is your GPU? And why kind of content is running on those pages? My gut says you have a Radeon 4200 IGP or something like it.

Yes I have a 4250igp which should have decent 2d performance... One of my family members has a clarkdale i3 igp and it feels smoother.
I suspect that my cpu's memory controller being limited to ddr3 1066 speed bottlenecks badly the whole gpu+cpu system, the new phenom x620 will "upgrade" the system memory to ddr3 1333 (they are 1333 modules downclocked to 1066 because of the current athlon p320)


One of the worst websites I've found is eurogamer.net, it's really awfully slow to load even on my q9550, smells of terrible coding.

Youtube isn't lightweight either.

 

[Cerb]

IMO, pay attention to the cache. AFAICT, the best you'll find is 2MB L2 in certain dual and quad core Phenom II mobiles. Compared to your 1MB, that should be a nice multitasking boost.

Heavy websites are bad on other CPUs, too. It's just a matter that entire XML libraries, JQuery, etc., are being used where people used to hand-code 20-30 lines of javascript, and javascript is difficult to make run fast. I think Dell's site is slower than Eurogamer, but yeah, that's slow.

 

[SammichPG]

IMO, pay attention to the cache. AFAICT, the best you'll find is 2MB L2 in certain dual and quad core Phenom II mobiles. Compared to your 1MB, that should be a nice multitasking boost.

Heavy websites are bad on other CPUs, too. It's just a matter that entire XML libraries, JQuery, etc., are being used where people used to hand-code 20-30 lines of javascript, and javascript is difficult to make run fast. I think Dell's site is slower than Eurogamer, but yeah, that's slow.

Afaik it's 512k L2 per core and I don't think cores can share each other's cache.
Either way, my order is placed, let's wait 2-3 weeks for the shipment from China to arrive hoping to dodge import taxes...

Will report back if people care to know.

 

[Cerb]

Afaik it's 512k L2 per core and I don't think cores can share each other's cache.

512K L2 per core, 128K L1 per core, all exclusive, which is a total of 1.25MB. Some of the Phenom II duals have 1MB L2 per core, and the quads all have 512KB per core, each of which comes to 2MB L2, including the x620 BE. I could not find any Phenom II mobile CPUs sporting L3.

The cores can and do share L2 cache, in that they can use the other's cache. If you have a line that core 0 needs to read from in core 1's cache, it can go read it. It an write to it, as well. Shared memory between threads and processes can take advantage of this with separate or shared caches. The behavior isn't the same as a shared cache, and a shared LLC would be preferable, and provide a greater benefit, but the added caches are not going to waste just because they are managed by a lone core on the CPU.