Intel i7-3520m vs i7-3720qm and Turbo Boost 1

[PatCouture]

Hi! I'm currently looking for a new mobile workstation and I would like to clear up one thing. I know SolidWorks is mostly single threaded because of the feature calculation and all. So why would I want to buy a quad core processor?

The two processors are almost the same price (35$ difference) so it's not really a case of money but more about the performance specifically for SW.

the I7-3520m has a 2.9 Ghz clock speed, a turbo boost of 3.6 Ghz and 4 mb intel smart cache while the I7-3720qm has a 2.6 Ghz clock speed, the same turbo boost of 3.6 Ghz and 6 mb intel smart cache. Another slight difference is on the power consumption of 35w for the 3520 and 45w for the other.

So I would like to know if I'm better with a faster dual core or the two processor will mostly work on the turbo boost speed of 3.6 so I won't see any difference? Does the cache memory can make a difference. Am I better with the dual core so I can have more battery life?

Thank you

Patrick

 

[JMirisola]

Patrick,
If I were you, I'd jump over to the SolidWorks forums and search out Charles Culp's many posts. You may find the info you need there. If not, post the question and I'm sure Charles will be all over it.
One thing, while SolidWorks doesn't take advantage of multi-cores, Simulation and rendering do. Food for thought.

Jeff Mirisola
Director of Engineering
M9 Defense
My Blog

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

I read somewhere that opening drawings also uses multiple cores. Multiple cores will also allow other programs/utilities to run without affecting SW.

Are either of those CPU's overclockable?

 

[PatCouture]

Thank you guys!

I already posted a long question about this and other stuff I was wondering over on the solid works forums so I'll wait and see what I get. I'm tempted to go with the quad core since it's supposed to be the best of the two for general purpose. But I'm still confuse if SolidWorks has different use for those cores. I don't do any simulation or almost any and no render so...

After following those good post from Charles Culp for a while now the first answer to this that I expect would be to go with a desktop, then I'm pretty sure he will suggest the Quad core...

They are for mobile workstation so I never heard anything about being able to overclock a laptop.

Patrick