i5-3340M is it worth upgrading? Confused!

[jof34]

Hello everybody,

I have a Dell Latitude E6430, which I use it mainly as a "portable" gaming device with an eGPU. It has an i5-3340M on board (2.70 GHz - 3.4Ghz turbo) and 8GB DDR3 RAM. I have the possibility to cheaply upgrade it to i7-3740QM with around 55 dollars. Is it worth it? Does CPU play that of an important role in gaming? I am using the laptop with a GTX 660 Ti I haven't gamed so much with it but will I see an improvement or not?

I read many posts regarding the importance of CPU in gaming and I am totally confused.

Thanks in advance for all the answers!

 

[zoltan.boese]

There articles may help, in general it depends on your use case:
https/uk.hardware.info/reviews/8463/how-many-cpu-cores-do-you-need-for-gaming
https/uk.hardware.info/reviews/7898/intel-sandy-bridge-core-i5-2500k-a-i7-2600k-versus-amd-ryzen-a-intel-coffee-lake-worth-the-upgrade
also read the bottlenecking guide: http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3192807/ultimate-bottlenecking-guide.html
If you want anything stronger than a 1060 the cpu can become a bottleneck. Regarding the core count, i7-3740QM would be a beneficial upgrade, otherwise not a must.

 

[keith12]

I don't think you can swap out those CPU's. Most of the time they are soldered. Specially with Dell. Do you think Dell would allow you to upgrade a laptop CPU? Highly unlikely. Then no-one would buy there new laptops!

To answer your other question, CPU's can certainly play apart in gaming FPS. But it's the GPU that's the primary driver of fps. Having a fast CPU will generally push out an extra 5-10% fps at certain resolutions from a powerful GPU. But this game dependent an not across the board.

 

[jof34]

These specific CPU's you can upgrade them. They are not soldered.

 

[jof34]

There articles may help, in general it depends on your use case:
https/uk.hardware.info/reviews/8463/how-many-cpu-cores-do-you-need-for-gaming
https/uk.hardware.info/reviews/7898/intel-sandy-bridge-core-i5-2500k-a-i7-2600k-versus-amd-ryzen-a-intel-coffee-lake-worth-the-upgrade
also read the bottlenecking guide: http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3192807/ultimate-bottlenecking-guide.html
If you want anything stronger than a 1060 the cpu can become a bottleneck. Regarding the core count, i7-3740QM would be a beneficial upgrade, otherwise not a must.

Thank you I will check it out. I know about bottlenecking the thing that I do not now is how important is the CPU in this case.

 

[zoltan.boese]

There articles may help, in general it depends on your use case:
https/uk.hardware.info/reviews/8463/how-many-cpu-cores-do-you-need-for-gaming
https/uk.hardware.info/reviews/7898/intel-sandy-bridge-core-i5-2500k-a-i7-2600k-versus-amd-ryzen-a-intel-coffee-lake-worth-the-upgrade
also read the bottlenecking guide: http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3192807/ultimate-bottlenecking-guide.html
If you want anything stronger than a 1060 the cpu can become a bottleneck. Regarding the core count, i7-3740QM would be a beneficial upgrade, otherwise not a must.

Thank you I will check it out. I know about bottlenecking the thing that I do not now is how important is the CPU in this case.

Using a GTX 660 Ti the CPU is no bottleneck. About core counts and gaming here is a fresh article : https/uk.hardware.info/reviews/8463/how-many-cpu-cores-do-you-need-for-gaming