Is it worth paying extra for i5-2430M chip

  frybluff 11:49 AM 08 Jan 12

I have been research a replacement for my old Pentium laptop. Not really into gaming, but do want fast and good grahics laptop, for photo and HD video editing. Understand most features, but not any sort of electronics expert. Having narrowed choice down, my question is this: ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, is it then worth paying a bit extra for an i5-2430M chip, as compared to i5-2410M. I know it's a "gnat's whisker" faster, but is it actually BETTER at particular tasks, such that I'm actually likely to notice a benefit?

  interzone55 12:43 PM 08 Jan 12

The quick answer is no.

The longer answer is there's so little difference between the performance of the two CPUs that you will not spot any difference with any normal workloads.

In my job I sell servers for CCTV recording.

Our kit normally uses a pair of quad core Xeon chips clocked at 2.23ghz. Lately this chip has been in short supply, so our vendor started to fit chips at 2.4ghz.

That's a big jump, so we thought a quick bench test was in order.

We loaded the old model, and the new model, with 64 CCTV streams at 25fps each, which is a very heavy load, as they're all encoded at H264.

When both systems were running at full tilt there was only around 2% difference in CPU utilisation.

So really, unless you want the highest clock speed for one-upmanship there's no real point...

  frybluff 18:33 PM 09 Jan 12


Thanks for that. Not into one-upmanship, but didn't want to save a few quid on the slightly cheaper chip, only to get told I was an idiot for not spending the extra. Basically know how to use a computer, but understand chip specs......? Regards. frybluff.

  Forum Editor 18:54 PM 09 Jan 12

Transferred to Consumerwatch from Speakers Corner.


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