Intel i7-7700HQ to work at 15W TDP

[mirkog]

Can this processor work at 15W TDP with turning off half the cores and decreasing the frequency.
If yes, will it be slower than i7-7500U if running at 15W TDP and by how much %.

I'm trying to decide whether to buy a t470(256GB SSD, i7-7500U, intel 620 GPU) or t470p(500SSD, i7-7700HQ, nvidia 940Mx)

The price difference is marginal(15%) but the specs difference is big
I will be running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS(work os, programming or 3D rendering in the future) and windows 10(casual gaming, battery life not important) on it

The nvidia GPU can be turned off so it should not affect battery life

Thank you.

 

[JazzPianist]

I don't think it is possible. Even if it would be possible, the TDP of i7-7700HQ is 45W. The half of 45W is 22.5W.

I own both HP OMEN i7-7700HQ and HP Envy i7-7500u. If you want to run Ubuntu in the virtualization environment, you definitely should buy i7-7700HQ. I often run MacOS, Windows and Ubuntu in the VMWare to run Visual Stuio, Xcode and g++/llvm. i7-7500u gets really sluggish if you run a virtual machine. But i7-7700HQ does really good job for multiple applications.

 

[Ecky]

TDP isn't what a CPU actually draws; CPUs like the 7700HQ may draw significantly more than even 45w for short bursts, they just need to be able to be cooled (on average) by a cooler that can dissipate 45w. Most of the time it draws a lot less. So, disabling half of the cores will not simply make it a 22.5w CPU.