Intel Core i7: 4720HQ or 4980HQ ?

[Omega Force]

Hello.

I'm going to buy a MSI GT80, but I don't know if I should go for the one with Intel Core i7 4720HQ or the one with the Intel Core i7 4980HQ ?

Is the 4980HQ really better than the 4720HQ?

It seems the 4980HQ has a slightly higher operating frequency than the 4720HQ : 4 GHz vs 3.6 GHz.

But the 4720HQ is more recent than the 4980HQ : January 2015 vs July 2014.

I’m not going to play any video games on this computer.

But I’m going to play chess and backgammon on it, and use powerful chess and backgammon softwares.

I'll also use interactive development environments such as MatLab and SharpDevelop.

I’m going to watch a lot of videos, series and movies on it.

And on Firefox I’m a massive tabs user: I always have a few hundred tabs open at the same time. So the laptop better be able to handle all of these tabs without making Firefox crash too often.

So which CPU do you think I should go with: the 4720HQ or the 4980HQ ?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

 

[digitaldoc]

The two CPU's, the 4720HQ and the 4980HQ are quite similar. They are both mobile CPU's that are quad core, with similar base and turbo clock speeds. I would not expect you to see much difference in terms of CPU performance.

http://ark.intel.com/products/78934/Intel-Core-i7-4720HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/83503/Intel-Core-i7-4980HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-4_00-GHz

However, the real difference is the integrated graphics as the 4720 is HD4600, and the 4980 is the newer 5200.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested/10

In many games, the 5200 does offer faster benchmarks. However, for a chess game, it will be far more CPU intensive, rather than GPU.