Solved! Need help deciding between I5 and I7 for laptop

[Juk3n]

The choice is between an I7 2630QM and an I5 2510 - 2540 range processor.

I had my heart set on an I7 laptop, until I got to the computer store and the guy was trying to talk me out of it. He advised an I5 as the power consumption is WAAAY lower (according to him, I looked it up and it seems that the I7 are 45 watts TDP and I5 are 35 watts) and clock speed is higher (his rationale was since most applications are single threaded I5 will be faster anyways).

This will generally be used for school purposes and related applications. I am a gamer, but I'll still tend to be using by desktop for gaming.

Any advice or pros/cons on performance / power consumption of these processors in laptops would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[eleclerc]

i5 is enough to do gaming. No game is coded more than 4 threads.

i5-2510E
http/ark.intel.com/products/53456/Intel-Core-i5-2510E-Processor-%283M-Cache-2_50-GHz%29
35W

i7-2630QM
http/ark.intel.com/products/52219/Intel-Core-i7-2630QM-Processor-%286M-Cache-2_00-GHz%29
45W

if you want compare the two CPUs
http/ark.intel.com/compare/52219,53456

 

[nordlead]

Go with the i5 unless you are a true power user, and gamer doesn't qualify. For gaming purposes the GPU will be the bottleneck, not the CPU. If you are in school for video editing, then an i7 would make sense.

 

[Juk3n]

Alright thanks guys, I think I will be going with the I5 then