Third gen Mobile i7 vs Second gen Mobile

[HardwareExtreme]

Hello everyone. I have a Toshiba l775 s7307. It currently has a Pentium B950. I found out it has a HM65 Chipset. Based on CPU-Upgrades page, Here the i7 3610qm is supported as well as the 2720qm (Yes, I know that since it is OEM that some CPUs may not be supported). However, is the 3rd gen i7 really much better than the 2nd gen i7? Based on the prices I saw, the 2720qm is about $50 cheaper. And in case anyone asks, I will use the extra cores in virtualization and CAD, in programs such as Solidworks. I also do some light to medium gaming on it. Could anyone provide any insight?

 

[Solandri]

Except for the integrated GPU, Sandy Bridge (2nd gen) and Ivy Bridge (3rd gen) are identical. Ivy Bridge was just a die shrink of the Sandy Bridge architecture from 32nm to 22nm. That is, the actual layout of the transistors, and thus the performance, is the same clock for clock. Only the iGPU was upgraded (as well as some minor bug fixes).

The primary advantage of getting Ivy Bridge is lower power consumption. Which would translate into cooler temperatures and longer battery life.

That said, the Pentium B950 has a 35 Watt TDP. That's Intel-speak for saying a laptop using that CPU only needs a fan and heatsink capable of dissipating 35 Watts of heat energy. The two i7 CPUs you've listed have a 45 Watt TDP. Unless the laptop was sold with a quad core i7 as an option (so its fan and heasink are capable of expelling 45 Watts of heat), there's a good chance that replacing the Pentium with an i7 will cause it to overheat and throttle, resulting in much less performance than you'd expect from from an i7.

 

[HardwareExtreme]

This laptop has a beefy cooler, and I do believe that it had Core i7s as an option. (It is essentially a high end laptop, the person who got it went and got a big screen and large hard drive, and skimped out on CPU. I got it after the hard drive died) I am also not worried about battery life, since most of the time I have it plugged in. It also has a decent amount of area on the underside to allow heat to dissipate.
I also have a L755 (Same demise, bad hard drive) with a i5 2410. The only reason why I don't use that is because the l775 has a larger screen, and has 6gb of ram over the 4 in the l755. (I could swap the processors, though)
Will the GPU really make a difference?