Thinkpads Forum

I am interested in those who have compared the W510 to W520 /w equivalent i7 Quad processors.

How much faster is the second gen cpu / gpu?

While I haven't used a W520, my current W510 (I7 720qm cpu / 8gb ram / 180gb SSD / 135W adapter) feels a lot more sluggish than a Dell M4600 precision (2720QM, FirePro 1gb, 16gb Ram), even with only 4 tabs open in a browser, browsing ebay. No throttling seems to be occuring on the W510.

Is the W510 really that sluggish compared to a W520 or equivalent 2nd gen i7 Q?

Doesn't need much to see the difference: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-7 ... -i7-2720QM

I found a (the?) problem -

The W510 is not hitting turbo boost. It sits between 900Mhz-1.6Ghz on the four cores.

In contrast the M4600 hits 3.3Ghz, on one core or more, it actually reports 3.3G on four cores (but I'm sure if this is technically possible).

difference is huge.

i7 940xm performs a bit worse than i7 2630qm. 2720qm is 10-20% faster than i7 2630qm and i7 940xm is also 15% faster than 720qm.
Even a i7 2640m dual core will outperform i7 720qm in most situations.
Unless you are emotionally attached to W510, go for W520 instead