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Shloogy
12-13-2009, 08:46 AM
Greetings everyone
Im about to purchase a new laptop and I have doubts regarding the processor:

What would be faster to imports? a higher CPU clock or a better technology?

I dont know whether I should get Core2Dou 2.5\3 GHZ or a Core i7 1.6 GHZ

Thanks in advance

Patvs
12-13-2009, 02:24 PM
Do you know the CPU numbers?

A quote from an old post of me:



The trick is to buy/build a "balanced system".
DDR3 RAM memory has a maximum bus speed of 1066-2000 Mhz (and transfer rate of 6400 MB/s), the fastest ATI 5970 videocard is 4000 Mhz (fastest PCI Express 2.0 slot 8 GB/s), X58 socket mainbords 6400 MT/s, the Intel i7 920 processor 4x 2.66 Mhz,.... but the fastest SATA harddisk is limited by the maximum 300 MB/s of the current SATAII ports.

Most prebuild systems have a fast CPU/RAM but have a slow videocard/harddisk, many people think "just adding more RAM" to their system will solve all their problems, many gamers wrongly think only buying a new videocard will solve theirs.

The question for you (and everybody else) is not if you should buy a dualcore or quadcore system, but WHICH quadcore system you have to buy.

Take a look at his. The following Intel CPUs all have the same "clock speed":
Q6700 4x 2.66 Ghz (8 MB L2 cache)
Q8400 4x 2.66 Ghz (2x2MB L2 cache)
Q9400 4x 2.66 Ghz (2x3MB L2 cache)
Q9450 4x 2.66 Ghz (12 MB L2 cache)
i5 750 4x 2.66 Ghz (8 MB smart cache)
i7 920 4x 2.66 Ghz (8 MB L3 cache)

To must consumers they look the same, but performance wise they all perform very differently, based on the chip architecture, available L1/L2/L3 cache, energy efficiency, etc. The MAIN difference is the i7 is the only one that supports hyper-threading. (My computer is running around 1200 threads now - you can see this in TASK MANAGER - Performance). The i7 has 4 cores.. and each core runs two threads. So the i7 has 4 (physical), and 8 (logical) CPUs.

The new released Intel i5 only has 1 thread per core just as the Qxxxx series.
The early 2010 release i9 will have 6 (physical) and 12 (logical) CPUs and the i9 is compatible with the X58 chipset motherboards, that's why they're more expensive.

Do you really need 8 CPUs? Eh... No. Do you need hyperthreating? No... Hardly any program supports it. In fact I've played games that didn't support it at all, and I had to turn it OFF in the BIOS just to be able to play it.
The i5 750 is the best CPU on the market today. That leaves one final problem: the 300 MB/s maximum transfer speed of the current SATAII harddisks will always be the main bottleneck of your system (and the NEXT generation SATAIII which only supports speeds up to 600 MB/s will not solve that).
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I'd buy the new i7 because it has a newer chip architecture and is more energy sufficient (=longer battery life for your laptop).. but you should check a speed comparison on Tomshardware.com

To improve import speeds, read: my post in this thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/48/computer-technical-help/can-ssd-make-hem-faster-654505/

(and check out my Top 10 HEM performance tips thread in my signature)

Shloogy
12-13-2009, 02:36 PM
Thanks for the reply

Are you sure that the processor has no influence on the import speed? I mean isn't the CPU who is in charge about the parsing which is the most difficult task when importing the hands?

Patvs
12-13-2009, 03:23 PM
Memory speed and harddisk speed have a influence just as big.