Got access to a Core i7 notebook (Clarksfield) today, a Dell XPS Studio 16 with Win7. It's one of the first notebooks available on the open market to feature a core i7. This thing has quad 1.7ghz processors that run at 2.8ghz in dual-core mode, and 3.0ghz in single-core mode, through "Turbo Boost". It's got 1mb of L2 cache and 8mb of L3 cache. 4gb ram.
I benchmarked this thing using pcsx2 (build 2184 w/new GUI) against a different Studio XPS 16 with the same configuration except the older rig has Vista and a 2.66 c2d processor. Same drivers, video card, DirectX, the works. The result?
The new core i7 is MUCH slower than my old c2d notebook, in pretty much ALL games (Tekken 4, GTA3, Lego SW, etc. etc. you name it -I've tried many). In most cases it's a difference of 10-20fps slower. I'm getting similar slowness with Dolphin. On my c2d notebook most games play just fine at 50-60fps.
What's even more weird is this new rig totally smokes the c2d when it comes to benchmarks like Cinebench, which test single CPU and multi-CPU performance. I've run these benchmarks myself. Even Demul (another emulator) is faster with the Core i7.
I spent most of the day on the phone wrestling with Dell techs that barely knew what I was talking about and I finally gave up. I've disabled Speedstep in the BIOS - no difference. And there's no other BIOS options for things like HyperThreading. CPU-Z shows that the CPU frequency is all over the map, even when only running pcsx2 with nothing else - it jumps from 1.7ghz to 2.2ghz to 3ghz and down to 1.5 ghz.
I'm totally baffled. Unless anyone (Jake?) has any other ideas I'm just going to send this thing back as a piece of junk. The lesson should be that core i7 is great as long as you don't use emulators. Otherwise stay as far away as possible, and hold on to your c2d for as long as you can.
If anyone else has a notebook core i7, it would be interesting to hear your experiences as well.
I benchmarked this thing using pcsx2 (build 2184 w/new GUI) against a different Studio XPS 16 with the same configuration except the older rig has Vista and a 2.66 c2d processor. Same drivers, video card, DirectX, the works. The result?
The new core i7 is MUCH slower than my old c2d notebook, in pretty much ALL games (Tekken 4, GTA3, Lego SW, etc. etc. you name it -I've tried many). In most cases it's a difference of 10-20fps slower. I'm getting similar slowness with Dolphin. On my c2d notebook most games play just fine at 50-60fps.
What's even more weird is this new rig totally smokes the c2d when it comes to benchmarks like Cinebench, which test single CPU and multi-CPU performance. I've run these benchmarks myself. Even Demul (another emulator) is faster with the Core i7.
I spent most of the day on the phone wrestling with Dell techs that barely knew what I was talking about and I finally gave up. I've disabled Speedstep in the BIOS - no difference. And there's no other BIOS options for things like HyperThreading. CPU-Z shows that the CPU frequency is all over the map, even when only running pcsx2 with nothing else - it jumps from 1.7ghz to 2.2ghz to 3ghz and down to 1.5 ghz.
I'm totally baffled. Unless anyone (Jake?) has any other ideas I'm just going to send this thing back as a piece of junk. The lesson should be that core i7 is great as long as you don't use emulators. Otherwise stay as far away as possible, and hold on to your c2d for as long as you can.
If anyone else has a notebook core i7, it would be interesting to hear your experiences as well.
