T420 vs W510 - which has best performance

[amadlopes2]

Hello,

I'm looking for notebook to replace a toshiba sattelite u200 with intel t2400 nd 4gb of ram. I found on ebay this machines but I have doubts which one has better performance for my tasks.

Lenovo T420: core I7 2620m 2,8 Ghz 2nd gen dual core, 8GB ram

Lenovo W510: core I7 820qm 1,7 Ghz quad core, 8GB ram

My only doubt is that the benchmarks give the dual core a win but what about in real world use ? With real life use is it more important to have double the core/threads or the clock speed is more imortant ? I have Manjaro Linux installed (Archlinux based) and I work with Firefox and Chromium at the same time, with 30 tabs opened and Gimp and sometimes with a virtual windows 7. With the Toshiba it's almost impossible to work if the win 7 virtual is on because of CPU load. The question is if it's better more clock speed or more cores.

Any opinions are wellcome.

Thanks

Afonso

 

[psycrow395]

hello there i tired looking up those laptops and it appears that the t420 is an old 2012 model with a 2nd gen? what is your budget because the standard now is 4th gen and there are plenty of laptops that will do what you need at various price ranges i would recommend getting something newer than either one of those hope this helps

 

[hang-the-9]

Both of these are good laptops, I actually have a few W510 models sitting at home. The T420 is a bit newer and faster per core, but the W510 should have a better video card, a better screen and has 4 RAM slots. If your programs run on multiple threads well, the W510 may be better. Better yet, get a W520. As long as the RAM is in 4GB sticks you can also upgrade the W510 to 16GB easily with two more 4GB sticks. You may want that for how much stuff you have open. If you use the laptop with the built in LCD and not in a dock, you may also go for the W over the T for the larger screen.

While new ones as the person above will be faster, to get to the quality of the used T and W series you will be spending about $800-$1,000 on a new laptop instead of $250-300.