i7 Quadcore Mobile Pricing & Passmark comparison

Photo credit – Ezio

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Excell Spreadsheet
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Prices here reflect USD & based upon eBay sellers in America that ship to America. For those reading outside the USA, America stands for United States of America, and should never stand for any nation that isn’t America. AMERICA! FUCK YEA!

Its 2019, we can’t upgrade processors on laptops anymores, but we can buy old laptops and upgrade them! Working at an eWaste business, we had come across many desktops and laptops that were in terrible condition. About 90% of these machines would still have their CPUs inside. No matter how well spec’d the computer was, if it looked damaged or like shit, it wasn’t even worth selling whole. At some point the only valuable object was the CPU, as shipping costs would plunder the profits of complete units. So selling a pulled CPU has its incentives; cheap to ship, high profit margins, simple to list, reliable, & plenty demand.

On laptop & desktop pricing I typically have a suggested low workign condition price, median good deal average & highest bid recommendation based upon sold listings. However on CPUs, perhaps even RAM, this isn’t the same. There are bots and scripts for buying these listings, moreso than laptops. If you would sell a CPU with Buy it Now or Best Offer, chances are you will get an offer within minutes, or of it being sold. You might get a message about them buying these in bulk or any inventory, especially so if you decide to auction off a CPU. If you want wait in an auction, you can and get it at a low price if it hasn’t been bot bidded, you might be able to get an offer at lower price if the bot offers don’t get accepted. For this I have just found a low price and the market average… I did add in the low average of a laptop with that CPU. At times the laptop costs only $30 more than the CPU by itself and you can potentially make money parting it out, or for your own spare parts for your laptop if its the same.

Understanding the Price guide

The list starts off with the ‘best’ dualcore i5 and i7, then followed by the quadcore and then the extreme quadcores are last. No soldered CPUs are in this list.

• CPU name should be obvious but hey ill break it down
• i7 – processor type/class
• i7-2xxx – the two represent the generation this is, so in this case 2nd gen which is Sandy Bridge family. For all these CPUs they all have the same gen/family unlike later Intel CPUs.
• i7-x8xx – If it has an 8 as the 2nd number, it means it has 8MB of L3 cache. If it has a 6 or 7, that means it has 6MB cache.
• QM/XM – Quadcore Mobile or Extreme Mobile
• S-Spec – Some CPUs come with PGA or BGA, as the latter is soldered. The S-Spec differentiates the two, as its more like a catalog number for the processor, so this alphanumeric string can verify if its the right CPU.
• GHz – Base clock of the processor, what all cores run on.
• Turbo – The max clock of one or more core can run.
• Market – The low average price you can buy the CPU
• Pass mark – the benchmark score utilizing passmark’s testing using all cores. The higher the better.
• Single core – Passmark score with just a single core. This is handy if you utilize a program where it does most of its computing on one core, or is limited to one core.
• Price ratio – Passmark score divided by market price, the higher the better. Single core not listed but will be noted below the table. 🙂

If you looked at the spreadsheet I have additional information not in this page due to size constrictions and it looking like vomit. Maybe I’ll make a HTML page one day if its needed (no one comments uwu). Anywho info like L3 cache, max RAM, lowest price, cheap laptop price, and engineering sample name/price are in there. For some reason ES CPUs cost more, this isn’t the case when it comes to desktops & servers.

1st Gen Core – Arrandale & Clarksfield

These CPUs are the oldest, and have the lowest base clocks… but if you’re on a budget, these CPUs inside a HP 8740W or Dell M6400 can kick fairly good with an upgraded GPU. Just consider the i5-3210m can beat up to an i7-920XM, additionally single core performance on the i7-940XM maxes out at 1093. As a reminder, all quad core processors do not come with integrated graphics, so if no dGPU, no display.

• i7-740QM is the best price/performance then follows the i7-720QM
• i7-840QM is probably the best CPU to get on a budget.
• i7-830QM is probably the best CPU to bid/offer to lowball.
• i7-940XM is way overpriced for what it does, I did find laptops with i7-920XM to have a higher starting low price than the 940XM.
• This is the only time the top dualcore i5 and i7 have a higher single core passmark score against the XM CPUs and even have a better turbo boost.
• i7-640M is oddly expensive compared to other dualcores, it’s the third most expensive CPU on this list.
• TDPs – 35W DC, 45W QC, 55W XM

2nd Gen Core – Sandy Bridge

Upgrade your Lenovo T420 to quadcore, particularly by buying one from a Dell E6420, which for a while kept on overheating… Anyways Sandy does basic computing needs for 2019 and honestly probably will be still used up to 2025…? Prices of laptops seem to be not that different from Sandy and Ivy Bridge, but Sandy is cheaper to upgrade to quadcore.

• i7-2630QM is the best price/performance QC CPU, then the i7-2760QM and i7-2720QM follows
• i7-2760QM is probably the best one to buy here.
• i7-2820QM and i7-2920XM are about the same, I’d recommend the former but then again its just $20 more for an XM.
• i7-2960XM is most expensive, but for some odd reason the i7-2670QM has a price bump than the other higher clocked CPUs.
• TDP – 35W DC, 45W QM, 55W XM

3rd Gen Core – Ivy Bridge

• i7-3630QM is the best price/performance ratio, it is the cheapest quadcore on this list & it does better than the Sandy Bridge XM CPUs minus
• i7-3720QM is the next best with a fair performance boost, third would be the i7-3820QM.
• i7-3612QM is absurdly expensive and the performance isn’t much, same with i7-3840QM being a bad upgrade IMO.
• Tough to say what I’d prefer the i7-3630QM is probably the best deal to get out of these. If needing something more, then the i7-3820QM or i7-2720QM would be the next picks, depends if I want to toss out $23 for an extra 2MB L3 Cache
• TDP – 35W DC, i7-3612QM & i7-3632QM, 45W other QM’s, 55W XM.

4th Gen Core – Haswell (Haslel)

Haswell is a bittersweet time, as manufacturers were finally tossing more IPS displays to non workstations, while changing design and build quality to thinner, more Ultrabook types. Lenovo redesigning ThinkPads proved to be a bad idea, bringing back the ‘p’ but no baseline performance standards like prior legendary ‘p’ ThinkPads. Dell releasing the E6440 & E6540 alongside the 3000, 5000, 7000 ultrabooks that ended the E6000 line. HP too decided to redesign their Elitebooks and introduced the Zbook line, both to be a thinner business laptop. The ultrabook push also got rid of a lot of laptops that had socketed processors, which limits us from buying a laptop that we can upgrade at surplus discount prices.

• what the fuck these are called MQ instead of QM… because they added HQ CPUs I guess instead of, QH? Kek
• i7-4800MQ is the best price/performance ratio and has 8MB L3 cache!
• i7-4710MQ is next best and then i7-4810MQ follows,
• i7-4940MX is the worst price/performance CPU on this entire post, even the other MX is a hard sell.
• The two best Crystalwell CPUs are commonly found on MacBook Pros lol, which have low starting price of $700 if you want to beat an i7-4940MX in benchmarks.
• TDP – 37W DC, i7-4702MQ, i7-4712MQ, 47W other MQ’s, 57W XM

So that about covers it… Not sure what else to say, if you come across a lot of laptops and are thinking of fixing them up… if they don’t already have a battery, HDD & charger with them, you might be better off knocking out CPUs than individually photographing each laptop.

I spent way too many days looking at all of these prices and now it is time to start selling off my W520 and W530.