4th Gen Intel Core i7-4700MQ / i7-4700HQ Haswell Specs and Benchmark

The Intel Core i7-4700MQ and i7-4700HQ are higher-end quad-core laptop processors from the latest 4th Generation Core family codenamed Haswell. With the clock speed of 2.4 by default and up to 3.4 GHz in TurboBoost mode, 6MB of cache, and the Intel HD 4600 integrated graphics, they’re not the fastest notebook-use Haswells. But computing speed-wise, they’re way ahead of the widely adopted i5-4200U and i7-4500U dual-core Haswell chips. The i7-4700MQ and i7-4700HQ are therefore made for high-performance entertainment and gaming laptops. As the main downside, they consume much more power than the “U”-series Haswell chips for thin and light laptops: 47W versus 15W.

The main difference between the i7-4700MQ and i7-4700HQ themselves is the physical size of the chips – 37.5mm x 37.5mm x 4.7mm versus 37.5mm x 32mm x 1.6mm. The main advantage of the “HQ” part is the much lower height of the chip, tailor made for use in notebooks where space inside the chassis and overall chassis height is a matter of concern. Another difference, but a minor one, is the clock speed of the HD 4600 IGP. On the MQ model it runs at between 400MHz and 1.15GHz, while the HQ runs at between 400MHz and 1.2GHz.

Since all important specs are the same, both chips deliver the same or very similar benchmark results and performance. According to PassMark’s database of user-generated CPU benchmark results, there’s some difference between the two, but that’s most likely due to differences between the tested systems.

As you can see, the i7-4700 series is slightly faster than the comparable i7-3610QM “Ivy Bridge” and a full class ahead of the standard-voltage i5 and ultra-low voltage i7 and i5, used in non-gaming machines. Normally, the tested CPUs fell behind the i7-4800 series, which are a step up in the Haswell hierarchy, not to mention the 4900 models.

Regarding the integrated graphics performance, the Intel HD 4600 delivers big improvement over the HD 4000-series on the previous “Ivy Bridge” 3rd Generation Core. However, performance of the IGP on the i7-4700 is not too important in the real world, since the CPU is usually paired with dedicated video cards in laptops containing it. Nevertheless, you there’s a plenty of HD 4600 gameplay videos on YouTube, showing that it can be used for newer games on lower settings.