Newbie to Processors: Need Help

Alright, so I'm stuck between these two models from HP

Model 1:
HP ENVY dv6t-7200 Select Edition Notebook PC | HP® Official Store

Model 2:
HP ENVY dv6t-7200 Quad Edition Notebook PC | HP® Official Store

The major difference between these models are their processors. The $700 version uses a 2cnd Generation Intel i5 processor while the $900 version uses a 3rd Generation Intel i7.
My question to you is what is the difference between these processors and which one should I choose?
My usual tasks on the computer consists of surfing the web, using Skype, listening to music, and 3D Gaming, often at the same time.
All advice, suggestions, and comments are welcome!

 

The i7 is definitely better, but the question is whether it's worth the $200 premium you'd be paying.

I'd go with the i5 since its both cheaper and will handle everything exceptionally well.

 

If you like to game , you'd want to fork out more for the GT650M. It will be plenty powerful for most contemporary games and even extremely overclockable for extra performance.
As for the CPU, its a relatively painless choice since it boils down to dualcore and quadcore.
Should you go dual core I would not bother with the Sandybridge i5 and fork out the extra $20 for Ivybridge i5, this is chump change for more stable turboboost (i.e. the ivy spends more of its time at peak speed), slightly better idle power and better performance at the same clockspeed+superior IGP performance when not using the GPU (optimus). The i5-3360m has a much faster peak clockspeed but its DEFINITELY NOT WORTH the extra $120 (83%more) considering the difference is 3.3ghz vs 2.9ghz dualcore peak speed (13% performance improvement).

There is quite a jump between the Dualcore and Quadcores. You will be forking out an extra $200 (200%) over the i5-3210m for the capability to boost your heavily threaded application performance by 50-80%. General performance should be about the same owing to similar clockspeeds. Idle power draw is actually the same between the i7 and the i5 but obviously the i7 has a higher peak power draw should you utilize its full resources.
This might sound be-laboured/cliche but if you don't do a lot of 3d rendering work or video transcoding (i.e. occasionally) then the i5-3210m is more than sufficient for your needs. Your work must be on a tight schedule or you need a high throughput to really get the most out of the quadcore since you are paying so much extra for it. You might have a slight FPS drop in select games by going with the i5 but most will end up being GPU bottlenecked. You can then pocket the $200 and get a fast 256gb SSD (e.g. Samsung 830 are real cheap atm), with this you'll have a very well rounded machine that will be a joy to use.
For people who will tell you that the quadcore is more "futureproof", there is no such thing as futureproof. You get what satisfies your needs for a reasonable cost, money is finite and future technology will always give you better performance for dollar than any "futureproof" upgrades you can get now.

 

Okay so twice the performance for ~29% more $$.

Hmmm... how long are you keeping this system for? If longer than 18 months; get the i7 (hands down).


See:
PassMark - Intel Core i5-2450M @ 2.50GHz - Price performance comparison


See:
PassMark - Intel Core i7-3630QM @ 2.40GHz - Price performance comparison


See:
ARK | Compare Intel® Products


Quick benefits of i7:

Current/latest platform.
4 Cores/8 Threads.
Higher Turbo.
Double the Cache.
Double the RAM supported (up to 32GB).
Faster RAM supported PC312800 1600MHz.
HD Graphics 4000 (twice as powerful as the i5's 3000).



Yeah; i7 all the way.

(Even though it is a 45W TDP vs. a 35W TDP - if used for the same type workload, the i7 will be more power efficient and have the better battery life. Of course, if all that power is used (sustained, over time...) then of course the i7 will burn through the battery much faster - and get much more work done too).

 

Thank you very much, I appreciate the advice!

 

Recommending quad-cores vs. dual-cores is a bit difficult, though. (And you should get a kepler/650m card). But you're not really going to need a quad-core to drive tasks like that. And you might end up with a lower power-draw at peak speed when gaming with a dual-core, with practically no difference at all in most games. So if you can use one of the later 22nm i5s, that might actually give you better battery life, as well as less heat when running full speed.

The other way to look at it is that when you have four cores, you can run the max frequency lower, and have slightly heavier tasks run with the same response, without raising the clock-speed. And that would then reduce the power-draw again.

And both of those can be true, in different circumstances. But generally speaking, you don't actually lose any thread response and so on by having a quad-core now. And the scheduler even in Windows handles threads well nowadays. So there aren't any negatives with getting a quad-core. Whether you really need it is a different question, probably. And it is possible that you might get a cooler and smoother running system with an i5 for your use.

...oh, and if you're not getting a 650m anyway - get an amd system with a dedicated extra card+apu. Put the spare money in an ssd or some ram or something - and get a cooler system with more cores and better performance in games, basically. Amd's processors also scale independently on each core, so the entire "should have a dual-core because of the power-draw on full load is too high" thing isn't so important.

 

it depends all on what you plan to do with your computer. For mulittasking quad core processors are better.

Some games out there are quite CPU intensive mostly simulation games like Flight Simulator. So the quad core will boost the preformance of those games quite a bit. But mostly with gaming the GPU is the bottleneck rather than the cpu.

My first reaction is if you got the money why not? But if it is worth that other 200$.... you could do a lot of other nice things with 200$