i5 3230m vs i5 3317u

[nekromantik2013]

Hi guys
If you dont play games then is a £80 upgrade to a 3230m from 3317u worth it?
bearing it mind it downgrades radeon from 8730m to 7730m, yes its small difference but still a older chip.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

The U is undervolted. The m is the full force mobile version. Its not worth upgrading, imho

 

[nekromantik2013]

Yes I know the U is mobile, benchmarks show that its about 10 - 20% slower then the 3230m because of the higher clock speed.

Windows 8 is a bit laggy at the moment. Might be due to the crap Dell install on it however. I was expecting it to be much faster then my i3 330m laptop!

 

[ecosmartpc]

Are you using a hard drive or solid-state drive? If not a solid-state drive that will dramatically improve performance.

How much memory do you have installed?

It's very unlikely you are CPU-bound.

 

[nekromantik2013]

Are you using a hard drive or solid-state drive? If not a solid-state drive that will dramatically improve performance.

How much memory do you have installed?

It's very unlikely you are CPU-bound.

6gb DDR3 1600
Using a hard drive.
I do want a solid state drive but need to save up for one. Currently using a M4 64gb on my Desktop so might get another 64GB M4 for my Inspiron.

If I am going to be doing video encoding then will the 3230M suit me better?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yes I know the U is mobile, benchmarks show that its about 10 - 20% slower then the 3230m because of the higher clock speed.

The 3230M will be usefully-but-not-astonishingly faster if you're doing something that's CPU limited (like encoding.) But most of the time... meh.

Windows 8 is a bit laggy at the moment. Might be due to the crap Dell install on it however. I was expecting it to be much faster then my i3 330m laptop!

Nah. In general use, you shouldn't notice a difference.

The i3-330M is a 2-core, 4-thread CPU with a 3MB cache. So are the 3317u and 3230m. So the only differences will be clock speed, turbo, and IPC improvements in the newer Ivy Bridge chips.

The 330m will be on par with the 3317u running at its baseline speed (1.7GHz) but once turbo comes into play, the newer CPUs will perform better. Except the clock speed advantages will be more noticeable in synthetic benchmarks than actual use, since the other components of the computers probably aren't appreciably different. (The older laptop might be limited to SATA-2 and USB 2, and the GPU is probably weak, but they're all going to be using dual channel DDR3, etc.)

BUT!

If you're I/O limited by a platter drive, you'll never notice the difference in light-medium use, web browsing, academic work, office type stuff, etc., because any CPU newer than an Atom will be spending too much time sitting on its thumbs.

The five things that make a computer awesome: I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O, and Compute.

If it were me? Sell the new laptop, get the 330m Dell back, drop in a 240GB SSD and max the RAM.

 

[nekromantik2013]

The 3230M will be usefully-but-not-astonishingly faster if you're doing something that's CPU limited (like encoding.) But most of the time... meh.



Nah. In general use, you shouldn't notice a difference.

The i3-330M is a 2-core, 4-thread CPU with a 3MB cache. So are the 3317u and 3230m. So the only differences will be clock speed, turbo, and IPC improvements in the newer Ivy Bridge chips.

The 330m will be on par with the 3317u running at its baseline speed (1.7GHz) but once turbo comes into play, the newer CPUs will perform better. Except the clock speed advantages will be more noticeable in synthetic benchmarks than actual use, since the other components of the computers probably aren't appreciably different. (The older laptop might be limited to SATA-2 and USB 2, and the GPU is probably weak, but they're all going to be using dual channel DDR3, etc.)

BUT!

If you're I/O limited by a platter drive, you'll never notice the difference in light-medium use, web browsing, academic work, office type stuff, etc., because any CPU newer than an Atom will be spending too much time sitting on its thumbs.

The five things that make a computer awesome: I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O, and Compute.

If it were me? Sell the new laptop, get the 330m Dell back, drop in a 240GB SSD and max the RAM.

I need to replace the 330m as I cant do any GPU based video upscaling on it as it lacks a dedicated GPU plus its starting to overheat a lot and fan is on full all the time. So its got to go now. :thumbsdown:

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I need to replace the 330m as I cant do any GPU based video upscaling on it as it lacks a dedicated GPU plus its starting to overheat a lot and fan is on full all the time. So its got to go now. :thumbsdown:

Fair enough.

It won't be much of a difference unless you get an SSD, although upgrading to a laptop with a true quad core CPU (mobile i7) would be a big benefit in encoding and other CPU-limited tasks.

 

[nekromantik2013]

Fair enough.

It won't be much of a difference unless you get an SSD, although upgrading to a laptop with a true quad core CPU (mobile i7) would be a big benefit in encoding and other CPU-limited tasks.

Yeah chepest quad with mid range GPU is the MSI CX61 with i7 quad and GT 645m gpu for £599 but I would be downgrading to a 720p screen. I got 6 more days to decide to return the Dell but I like the full HD screen but then would like knowing I got a i7 to last me for 3 years at least.