i7-4700MQ vs i7-4900MQ and other questions

So is it worth it getting the 4900 vs the 4700?? Also if i get the regular drive one can i then buy the caddy, remove the optical drive and install 2 ssd and raid 0 them??? (and is this even worth it ??)

 

I don't know about the 4700 vs the 4900, but I do know that if you get the version with the optical drive, yes, you can (easily) replace it with the hard drive caddy. OR you can buy 2 mSATA drives (put one in a regular SATA adapter) and do raid that way, keeping the optical drive. Crucial makes a pretty awesome mSATA drive for about $200. I got a Samsung 840 pro and a Crucial mSATA so I could keep my blu ray player, but I don't have a RAID setup (although I technically could--I have heard it doesn't work nearly as well with different drives though).

I read somewhere the 4800 has 10% more performance than the 4700, so I'm sure you can expect a similar increase from 4800 to 4900. If money is tight, that would be the last thing I upgraded as you won't see much real world improvement compared to other upgrades.

 

I agree, if you had the money to spend, just get the upgraded 1080p IPS screen and the upgraded GPU 765m. You'll like it in the long run

 

If you have deep pockets and wanted to have best configuration in a portable form factor, then go for it. If not then like others said, spend that on IPS screen/765M/SSD.
You can buy a caddy later and replace your optical drive with a hard drive easily. Keep in mind thought that the optical drive slot only support SATAII.
The primary hard drive slot and msata are SATA3.

 

Basically what im wondering is:

System A:
4700MQ
1080P
16GB of RAM
750GB DRIVE (which i will replace with my own SSD)
GTX 765M 2GB
Blu-Ray Reader
$1699 (with out any discount)

vs

System B:
4800MQ
1080P
16GB of RAM
750GB DRIVE (which i will replace with my own SSD)
GTX 765M 2GB
Blu-Ray Reader
$2049 (with out any discount)

vs

System C:
4900MQ
1080P
16GB of RAM
512 SSD
GTX 765M 2GB
Blu-Ray Reader
$2699 (with out any discount)

Is it worth it the difference in price to get a bit faster CPU?

 

Honestly if you do a lot of rendering, or heavy CPU application then maybe an upgraded CPU would help but to be honest the 4700 is already a beast of a processor. Right now in the mobile world our processors are good, it's just our GPUs that need to catch up, that and better heat management

 

From the Passmark CPU Benchmarks:

Intel Core i7-4700MQ @ 2.40GHz
Passmark CPU Mark: 7887
Rank: 76

Intel Core i7-4800MQ @ 2.70GHz
Passmark CPU Mark: 8820
Rank: 51

Intel Core i7-4900MQ @ 2.80GHz
Passmark CPU Mark: 8962
Rank: 45

I would say that the 4800 is the sweet spot - big jump in price from 4800 to 4900, but only a small performance gain.

However - it depends on what you are doing. Unless the applications you run are CPU intensive, the slowest one will give you just as good performance most of the time.

At least you have flushed out the systems otherwise, which is smart. Architecture and system design have far more impact on overall performance than just the CPU. When I build systems, I put the $$$ into faster drives, faster video, faster network connections, faster buss and improved cooling before putting extra $$$ into a faster CPU. YMMV, just my $0.02 worth......

 

Does the 4800 cause higher temps when compared to the 4700?

 

ummm dell just upgraded all their prices, now if u pick the 4800 its only $100 to go to the 4900 ummm

 

All I'm saying miguel, at the very least get the upgraded 765m GPU and the 1080 IPS monitor

 

How many people are opting for 16GB of ram and WHY?

 

I would go for 16GB ram, but I can probably goto newegg and buy RAM for cheaper. I'd use the extra RAM to run VMs

 

What are you running that comes close to utilizing 8GB of RAM? 16GB is extreme overkill.

EDIT: Ah, virtualization makes sense.

 

well personally I'll probably get 16gb RAM so I can have an 8gb RAM disk for faster loading in games.

 

I only got it because there was no 8gb option with blu ray >_>

 

Wow I just checked the new prices and they ALREADY dropped the price of my configuration by $50. Really annoying

 

System A:
4700MQ
1080P
16GB of RAM
750GB DRIVE (which i will replace with my own SSD)
GTX 765M 2GB
Blu-Ray Reader
$1699 (with out any discount)

Later for saved money you can buy 4800 and have 4700 in the pocket.

 

I have opted for 16GB. I run some software related to my work which makes use of lot of memory. I could have installed it myself, but I do not see any price variation. The memory upgrade from dell costs 100 bucks. So, I just selected that option from them.

 

That might make sense, if you can switch CPUs.....best check that, many are soldered in and can not be removed.

 

Video editing with Premier Pro CS6. When you get to the authoring stage, you can end up with Premiere Pro, Photoshop, MediaEncoder, and Encore all running at the same time. My home system with 16Gb sees memory usage pushing very close to the full 16Gb at times.

Virtualization will do something similar.

Which is why I wondered at the 16Gb limitation. Why????

 

When you say "many" you actually mean only apple macbooks and net-, ultrabooks with ultra low voltage BGAs CPUs which makes around 2-5% of ALL notebooks, are you aware of that?

 

well with that new lineup of haswell CPU's coming out we will probably see BGA CPU's on the rise. Hope it doesn't really catch on though. I really like having the ability to swap processors.

 

Some speculations about afterhasswell generations being BGA...

 

When I said "many", I was referring to Intel's intention to make Haswell processors soldered in. Have seen only one teardown of a Haswell laptop so far, don't remember the brand but it was not Apple, and it was soldered.

Perhaps generalizing this is jumping the gun, but I stand by my suggestion that it be verified that one can swap the CPU before using that assumption as part of a purchase.

Just looked for a teardown of the M14, and found a few - but I am at work, and the contents are blocked.