Intel Core i7-4960HQ vs. 4850HQ (Haswell) [on hold]
- by Timothy R. Butler
I'm looking at the new MacBook Pros and trying to decide between the Core i7-4960HQ (2.6 GHz) and i7-4850 (2.3 GHz). I've found some synthetic benchmarks comparing them, but I haven't found a lot of data, so I'd appreciate any pointers to good comparisons for the Haswell family (especially these two processors).
My cursory analysis seems to suggest there isn't a huge gain from the extra 300 MHz. I'd like to determine not only whether this is generally true, but also to figure out if the gains that are made in performance come at too high of cost. Is the 2.6 going to be pushing the limits of what can fit in a thin laptop without overheating? I've looked at some of Intel's documentation, but have not been able to determine what the normal and maximum operating temperature differences are for the models. In the past, there have been times that Intel's fastest models in a given range ran especially hot and/or consumed significantly more power compared to slightly slower models. Do those concerns factor into the current generation?
