Mobile Core i7-920XM: Power Is The Price For Better Performance

[cangelini]

Nehalem has finally gone mobile. But despite the advanced manufacturing that has gone into making Core i7 Mobile more efficient, it's still rated at up to 55W TDP and includes features like Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost to keep it close to that limit.

Mobile Core i7-920XM: Power Is The Price For Better Performance : Read more

 

[anamaniac]

Great article as always Chris.

And for switchable graphics, how about the integrated for 2D mode and discrete for 3D mode?
I'd think that'd be the best way.

I appreciate you doing the thorough power testing. Nice to see what I can expect from these.

 

[cangelini]

Thanks much anamaniac--the challenge is that switching between integrated and discrete isn't completely seamless. In other words, you'd have to click/push a button to make it happen, according to the guys I've talked to, even with Arrandale.

 

[El_Capitan]

Nice review. I've been looking into notebooks for a while now, and am wondering why anyone would get the Mobile Core i7 720XM over a D900F with a W3520 or i7 920? Or the i7 920XM over a D900F with an X5550 or i7 975? The only reason I can think of is the weight of the notebook (and maybe a little more cost).

1. Power over battery-life. The only option for me to have something that powerful is to work when I'm away from home or the office. I do this on occasion, and rarely am I not plugged into a power source. I sleep on the plane, and if I want to watch a movie, I've got my iPod Touch (I read when I'm awake, anyway). Those looking to get a notebook like these aren't worried about battery-life.

2. Out-of-warranty usage. I go through notebooks about 1-2 years. Not because they break (all of mine still work... mostly), but because they're out of date for what I need them to do. I could upgrade the CPU's on some, but for a lot of money for just a little gain. I've sold most of my older laptops since "converting" them to desktops also costs more than just building a desktop with desktop CPU's.

The best thing about the D900F? Once you're done with it, you've got a desktop CPU to build a desktop with. Mobile CPU's? They go out of date pretty fast.

They should just stop making power-hungry mobile CPU's and just find ways to make desktop CPU's portable... but then they wouldn't be able make all that dough on the mobile market.

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]Brandenburgh_Man[/nom]Reading articles on Tomshardware, Anandtech, ExtremeTech, etc. is getting to be such a fucking pain in the ass. It's bad enough that the articles are divided into 20 pages just so they can show 100 advertisements per article, but scrolling through a page of text is like walking through a fucking minefied. If your mouse cursor accidentally rolls over a word containing a hot link, yet another bullshit advertisement pops up, blocking your view of a full paragraph's worth of text. And quite often you can't move these ads or close them without reloading the whole fucking page. Jesus Christ![/citation]
Use AddBlockerPlus and stop bitching.
[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Thanks much anamaniac--the challenge is that switching between integrated and discrete isn't completely seamless. In other words, you'd have to click/push a button to make it happen, according to the guys I've talked to, even with Arrandale.[/citation]
Damn... the simplest things just can't be easy, can they?
Though hopefully the dual cores GPU holds up well enough that we don't need a discrete (and for those that would require a discrete in the first place may be going for a quad core... assuming any affordable i7 laptops come out).

 

[Guest]

@ Brandenburgh_Man

That's adware that's infected your system. When you scroll over words like PC of HP or Dell, it's adware highlighting it, not the site. Time to disinfect.

 

[scook9]

Switchable Graphics is not a new idea necessarily....Alienware has been doing this in laptops for a while. The Area-51 m15x was the first with it I believe - It has an Nvidia discrete GPU and the Intel IGP

The M17x "All Powerful" also has this feature, using either the GTX 280m SLI or 9400m as needed for Power or Battery life. I have an M17x with 280m SLI and a QX9300 and when I switch to the 9400m I can enjoy about 3.5 hours of battery life with regular usage if the screen is dimmed. I was able to watch a complete blu-ray movie with the 9400m accelerating playback and then play solitaire for 45 minutes with a full charge all off battery on a plane.

I am looking forward to someone figuring out how to get SLI AND the mobile i7 into a laptop/desktop replacement but so far I don't think it is going to happen due to that just being too much power used at one time.

Outstanding review and exactly what I was looking for to get a reference point on these new CPUs

 

[Guest]

Doesn't look to be a very good product, IMHO. Way too much TDP, for what doesn't amount to enough performance gain. Laptops that run too hot and suck too much power will always be subject to reliability problems.

It may work fine if you never do anything CPU intensive, but I'm sure it probably hits in the neighborhood of 100c if you do something CPU intensive like compiling a Linux kernel or transcoding video. If you never do anything CPU intensive, then you don't need this anyways.

 

[_mrvtcng_]

I better read the articles from Techpowerup.com, it is more trustworthy. I dont like the articles from Tomshardware, it's only for noob who likes to be fooled.

 

[godwhomismike]

Why not review the Mobile Core i7-720QM instead of the i7-920XM, since 90%+ of your readers will likely only be able to get a 720QM or an 820QM? I'll admit the 920XM is an impressive processor, but in this economy, there are very very few of us who have the money to buy a computer which has a $1000+ CPU in it.
I look forward to an article that will compare the 720QM vs the 820QM, and see if the extra cache and speed make much of a difference.

 

[masterasia]

WOW! GTX 260m with i7 920XM sounds really good. Add an Intel X25-E SSD and it would be totally awesome. It's too bad that it'll probably cost like $3000 or more.

What does AMD have up their sleeves to counter this? Nothing probably. I've always hated AMD mobile processors because they use so much power and get so little performance. i7 mobile's 45 and 55 watts isn't too bad because the performance is out of this world.

 

[godwhomismike]

[citation][nom]masterasia[/nom]WOW! GTX 260m with i7 920XM sounds really good. Add an Intel X25-E SSD and it would be totally awesome. It's too bad that it'll probably cost like $3000 or more. What does AMD have up their sleeves to counter this? Nothing probably. I've always hated AMD mobile processors because they use so much power and get so little performance. i7 mobile's 45 and 55 watts isn't too bad because the performance is out of this world.[/citation]


I thought AMD had some very low power energy efficient Quad Core Desktop CPUs in the sub-2.0GHz range. Why can't they just convert that into a mobile CPU and market it as a inexpensive quad-core laptop?

 

[bounty]

Using a toggle switch isn't completely seemless, but "they" seem to think joe average can handle it for turning off wireless. Hey at least the support calls are quick. "You can't get the wireless to work... try playing with the buttons on the side... ohh it came up. Thanks for calling."

 

[MiamiU]

[citation][nom]masterasia[/nom]WOW! GTX 260m with i7 920XM sounds really good.[/citation]
don't be fooled by Nvidia, that GTX 260m isn't really GTX 260 technology under the hood. It's just a rebranded 9800m GT/GTX, and the 9800m was a rebranded 8800.

Instead of wasting money on old technology, people in the market for a gaming laptop might be better off waiting for "real" new mobile graphics to pair it with these cpus.

 

[Guest]

I think a lot of the productivity benchmarks (winzip/rar/lame etc...) are favoring the I7 mobile, because of the reduced RAM latencies, and improved ram speeds.

 

[jgs9455]

Why did this system take a top of the line CPU and pair it with only 2GB of memory? Also the Sager NP8690 (based on the same Clevo W860CU) comes with a GTX 280M standard instead of the GTX 260M.

 

[amdgamer666]

Nice article, I was curious as to how much better these new mobile i7s would perform compared to the aged C2Q's. But, as other commenters have stated, the vast majority of people aren't going to be using $1000 top-of-the-line CPUs. I would love to see a comparison of upper-mainsteam a la Core i7 720QM vs. C2Q Q9000

 

[cangelini]

This comparison is coming up, guys! Stay tuned,

 

[Shadow703793]

Just curious, why the need for pins (on the CPU)? Couldn't it be cheaper and easier to make LGA type CPU?

 

[dingumf]

Typo in the GAMING pictures.

"No AA/8xAA"

 

[digitalrazoe]

Can someone tell me for what good reason would someone spend over $600 bucks for a 400mghz speed bump ? I mean .. don't get me wrong .. You have to "pay to play"... but even the old quad core extreme is still asking for almost a grand! ... it just isn't worth it in my book. Then again I am not John Q Gamer either. 2 different sockets for the desktop now this ? Not to put AMD in the mix.. And I have read reports where "the socket is getting old in the tooth" but atleast you get a bang for your buck even if it does trail behind intel in performance. Times are tough intel!!! Yes Salaries gotta get paid. But not at the expense of flooding the consumer with so many options that they smack their head and go "I should a had a V8 !!!"

 

[digitalrazoe]

...dont get me started on the Mobile chip !!! Come back to earth Intel... we live on Terrafirma !!!

 

[cookoy]

there's not much advantage in using a super fast cpu to watch a video. the movie has to retain the same frame rates otherwise you'd be watching a 2-hour movie squeezed into 5 minutes. so most of the processing power is wasted. just like using a supercomputer to write this comment. so using video runtime to benchmark battery life is a bit misleading.

 

[WarraWarra]

Cookoy:
If you wanted to watch a video then you have a lcd dvd player in your hotel room or do it on your 5 year old GSM mobile phone.
They are trying to process a movie from one format to another as benchmark "video editing", we used to do this on Apple laptops 5 years ago on KLM airlines 30000 feet over the Atlantic ocean and stream back via inflight internet wifi connection.

Article:
Very nice article and Eurocom guy has it on the ball with size specs ect.
Would love to finally have a laptop with useful specs / video card that I can upgrade too.

Perfect/minm Specs for a laptop:
17" or 15" 1440x900, with a video card something equivalent to (slow desktop 260gtx) and not current rebranded mx440=mobile 260gtx joke, SLI / Crossfire, quad core equivalent of a slow useless desktop intel Q6600, 4/8gbgb ram, ssd+hd (+raid 3 drives) or pure SSD.
If I wanted slow and useless I would buy a Apple laptop or netbook. If I wanted a rebranded (m260gtx)IGP as main GPU then I would buy a $299 junker laptop with IGP only.

Bad screen res = smaller than 1440x900 or larger than 1440x1000 15" / 17" and LED screens please. (16:9 or 16:10)

Usage:
Always plugged in and only when needing to move the laptop then let it run on 90w battery as it is always on performance or on demand for both screen and cpu.
Either the laptop is on or it is switched off and in a carry bag. When on it has to be in a workable win desktop in 30secs to max 45secs or ssd 15secs win xp lite ready to start a game or do photo editing.

I am tired of having to take a standard win xp 200mb cd/ vista 400mb cd / win7 700mb cd and remove the rubish just to get a decent working win OS, rubish = outlook IE frontrow netmeeting Dell OEM junk ect ect. rubish that loads and does noting during boot next to time jqs ituneshelper ect ect.

Nothing more annoying when you don't have time and need to show something on your laptop at customs/border control or a customer and you wait for a Apple / win xp laptop and wait and wait.

Extended testing:
Would be nice to see performance from what is tested here versus same cpu in a desktop motherboard and also on a (no reason or value yet) to upgrade old laptop Dell E1705/XPS m1710 intel t2600 nv7800gtx 4gb ram "OCZ" SSD against.

Intel t2600 reading 3 different temps = core, core0, core1 speedfan ?

This comparison will be able to make me buy or not.

PS> Does the Eurocom have hotswap hard drive similar to tape in car radio switchout / Dell E1705/XPS M1710 hard drive hotswap ?
This is extremely useful feature and sold above dell laptops to me.

 

[WarraWarra]

[citation][nom]scook9[/nom]Switchable Graphics is not a new idea necessarily....Alienware has been doing this in laptops for a while. The Area-51 m15x was the first with it I believe - It has an Nvidia discrete GPU and the Intel IGPThe M17x "All Powerful" also has this feature, using either the GTX 280m SLI or 9400m as needed for Power or Battery life. I have an M17x with 280m SLI and a QX9300 and when I switch to the 9400m I can enjoy about 3.5 hours of battery life with regular usage if the screen is dimmed. I was able to watch a complete blu-ray movie with the 9400m accelerating playback and then play solitaire for 45 minutes with a full charge all off battery on a plane. I am looking forward to someone figuring out how to get SLI AND the mobile i7 into a laptop/desktop replacement but so far I don't think it is going to happen due to that just being too much power used at one time.Outstanding review and exactly what I was looking for to get a reference point on these new CPUs[/citation]

Alienware has sli 280m and crossfire 4870 with the mobile i7C.

http://notebooks.avadirect.com/Notebooks/Gaming_and_Performance_Notebooks/

Avadirect has 17" Clevo D900f models for $2832.24 with desktop i7-920 1ssd+ 2hd's(raid0) and 280m NO sli.

The desktop i7c-920 versus mobile i7c 920 balances out the need for SLI on laptop with desktop i7c and you are not paying for new tech we have to buy the GM of a company a new holiday home.

Ati Stream and CUDA is not yet useful enough/ working properly to offload extra needed cpu processing power for playing games yet so have to take the better cpu over SLI or at least take a video card mobile 4870 crossfire not (IGP equivalent 280M SLI) .