http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Sony_VAIO_F13_Core_i7_Laptop_VPCF13M0EB/version.asp?PID=1711
Processor Clock Speed
1730 MHz
To me that seems a bit low? The laptop will be used for the odd game.
To put some numbers on this (which isn't always the best thing to do, but I'll do it anyway
)
The first is a core i3-380M running at 2.53GHz, the second an i7-740QM at 1.73GHz.
The i3 has 2 cores with hyperthreading (which means each core can run 2 things at once) for a total of 4 threads at 2.53GHz.
The i7 has 4 cores with hyperthreading for a total of 8 threads at 1.73GHz.
Doing some totally bogus (but illustrative) maths, that means the i3 has a "power" of 4 x 2.53 or about 10, the i7 has a "power" of 8 x 1.73 or about 14, so even though the processor is clocked lower, there is 40% more processing power available (actually, there will be more as the i7 has a bigger cache which helps it go a tad faster again for most things).
The story doesn't end there. If the i7 isn't using all its cores, it can use turbo to overclock cores. It does this so that whilst idling, it isn't pulling lots of power. The 740QM has turbo ratios of 1/1/6/9 which means this is the overclock depending on whether 4/3/2/1 core(s) are run. Let's take the equivalent of the i3 with 2 cores running flat out. We can add 6 x 133MHz to the 2 core clock speed giving 2 cores operating at 2.53GHz which is the same as the i3. Even better, when only a single core is flat out (e.g. mp3 encoding), the adder is 9 x 133 which means you have a single core at 2.93GHz which is faster than the i3 on a single cored app.
