i7 Question about capabilities :confused:

J

justing943

New Member
Hi,
Tonight I was talking to a couple friends on MSN about the new laptop I'm getting, and it ended up in a MASSIVE and moderately interesting debate which I ended up involving numerous people in. My question was whether an i7 1.6ghz processor would be able to run a game that requires, say, for arguments sake, 3ghz processing speed. Some friends said yes, whereas some friends said no, the processing power of two low power cores cannot stack to make up for a big one. Can someone explain? :) My main concern is whether or not an i7 1.6ghz would be able to run like a game which has recommended requirements of a Pentium 4 3.0ghz processor. One last thing, my new laptop's specs are i7 1.6ghz processor, 4gb DDR3 1333mhz RAM, and a 512 RADEON graphics card. The rest is moderately irrelevant to my question, haha.
Thanks in advance!
 
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Processors have become much more efficient today and are capable of performing more operations per clock. A 3.0GHz Pentium 4 from a few years ago would be completely annihilated by an i7 at any speed today.

On top of that, game performance is typically based more upon GPU capability than CPU speed. An i7 with some, we'll say onboard GPU wouldn't play a game as well as say a P4 with some nice, dedicated GPU.
 
Ahh, okay cool thanks, I kinda get it xD~
My question is though (this isn't hypothetical) ; okay, so a laptop has an i7 1.6GHz processor, 4GB RAM, and a 512 RADEON Graphics Card. For a game whose "recommended requirements" are the following:
Processor P4 3.0GHz or AMD equivalent with SSE
Memory 1GB RAM
Graphics Card GeForce FX or better with 128MB of memory
Network Connection Cable Modem or DSL connection
Software Windows XP, DirectX 9
Disc Space 3GB 5GB for high resolution
Would the specs of the mentioned laptop probably be able to run the game with highest quality graphics, effects, etcetc?
 
It'd help to know specifically what GPU we're referring to here, but seeing how high the rest of the specs are, I'd say yes.
 
Awesome. Thanks for the help (: If you could, could you give me a brief explanation on why the i7 1.6ghz [with sufficient specs in the other factors] can run a 3ghz single core game and yet the cores cant stack their processing power?
 
justing943 said:
Awesome. Thanks for the help (: If you could, could you give me a brief explanation on why the i7 1.6ghz [with sufficient specs in the other factors] can run a 3ghz single core game and yet the cores cant stack their processing power?
Click to expand...

First of all, i7 supports Turbo mode which allow it to auto-overclock when not all the cores are active

For example, the Core i7-720QM 1.6GHz that you are talking about can go up to 2.8GHz when one core is active.

intel-mobile-core-i7-specifications.jpg



Also, clock for clock i7 is much faster than Pentium 4 . Thats means that i7 can process more things per cycle.

So, if a game says that Pentium 4 3.0GHz is minimum requirements then it will run fine on i7 with much lower clock speed.
 
Wow. That's awesome. Thanks! I didn't know mine would have it cause for some reason the Dell website had *overclock supported* on some i7 cores and not others. Or maybe it wasn't from a Dell website, I don't remember. But since all i7s have that, cool ! :D
 
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