I5 7300HQ for gaming

[Jimmidk]

Hi guys.

I can buy a Lenovo Legion Y720 15" with spec:

I5-7300HQ
Gtx 1060 6gb
16gb 2400mhz ram
256ssd + 1tb hdd
For what is about 1348$.

The laptop has Thunderbolt 3 port, so i can connect a eGPU if needed in the future.

The same laptop with same spec but a i7-7700HQ is almost 300$ more.

But my question is, is the cpu strong enough for gaming, eg. In the future?

Thanks

 

[BigBoomBoom]

Yes, it's quite strong (for a laptop) for gaming. Future proof or not is a different question. The i5-HQ is a quad core CPU with no HT, whereas the i7-HQ has HT which usually increases multithreading by 30% at best. Some games do benefit from more than 4 logical cores i.e Assassin's Creed Origins, so the i5-HQ won't be as good as the i7-HQ on that terms.

 

[photonboy]

It's generally very unlikely you'd see much benefit to the i7-7700HQ in gaming.

AC Origins is very atypical for CPU usage, and it's also very new so there may be some optimization issues.

In fact, it appears that Origins is running in a Virtual environment as DRM to prevent hacking which is adding a LOT of CPU processing overhead.

So again, for most games paired with a mobile GTX1060 dGB a 4-core/non-HT CPU is great.

Just FYI, but I'm not sure how much bottleneck you can expect with your system but you may see minimal to no benefits getting a faster external GPU. I looked at some numbers before and there were huge losses over using in desktop.

Having said that, it's been a while so I'm not clear where the problems where. A quick Google seems to reveal most issues are fixed now, plus the GTX1060 not running means the CPU can run at a higher frequency since it's not throttling due to thermals or power draw.

eGPU boxes are way too expensive, but in say two years we may see a card with GTX1080 performance in an enclosure for $300 to $400.

 

[Jimmidk]

Okay i think i'll go with the i5. The idea of an eGpu was to be able to play games at good settings in the future when the GTX1060 is not sufficient anymore.