i5 to i7 upgrade worth it?

I've been thinking about getting a Malibal Lotus P151HM1, but I'm debating on if I need to make the upgrade from the i5 standard with that model to the lower end i7 2670 CPU. Essentially, I would only be using this for multimedia like movies and TV shows, as well as gaming on things like League of Legends and similar games. As well, I'll be using it for school work when needed. All that considered, would it be worth it for me to even make that upgrade? One benefit is that I could support a greater amount of RAM, but then the question becomes do I need a greater amount of RAM.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be open to them. Nothing worse than buyer's remorse.

 

I would upgrade only if you like to be able to run lots of programs at once. I have a i7-2760QM and in terms of power it's got way to much for video gaming or most other tasks, but I love it because I can run all my normal programs and open up a video game and have my cpu be running at 65C. So having all that head room is nice for a multi-tasker like me. If you're willing to only have one CPU intensive application open at a time then I would say get the i5. I believe it's supposed to only support 8gb's of ram, but I think people have shown that to not be true, either way 8gb's is more than enough for any one task.

 

I highly doubt a normal user would really feel the difference specially on watching movies/tv shows.

gaming however depends on the game if it's cpu centric then a faster processor would definitely benefit you, of course the GPU will be your primary bottleneck.


8GB of ram would be way more than enough as well so even if the i5 doesn't support higher than 8 (which i believe it does), the benefits is useless unless you have tasks that needs more than 8 (virtual machines, photoshop, ramdisk etc...)

 

Well, the room to muli-task is important for me so considering that I think I might, but I have no intentions right now on using virtual machines or photoshop, so nothing highly demanding that would require more then 8gb of ram. So perhaps I'll try to save some money in my budget by getting less ram.

Thanks for the help

 

From the type of work you're describing it sounds like i5 vs i7 won't make any difference for you in terms of computing power. This type of work won't stress the CPU. As far as maximum ram capacity - the limiting factor will be the # of slots on your motherboard, not the CPU.

 

You can multi task, you just can't be crazy with multi tasking. I'm talking about having chrome (4-6 tabs open), steam, email client, and an IM client open and then deciding to play a steam game. That's a situation where the i5 might suffer.

Though, I just tried the situation I posed above with my CPU (i7-2760QM) and it sits at about 8% cpu usage, so you may have no problems multi-tasking. But, I am using 3gig's of ram, so that's another thing to think about when multi-tasking.

Good luck!

 

When we say i7 for multitasking, we mean heavy multitasking or running some pretty intensive stuff and using a couple of programs at the same time.

 

So in a case where I'm running LoL, chrome with 4-6 tabs, have MSN or skype on, and say another program like Microsoft Word, an i5 would be capable of handling that without being too stressed? My current laptop literally cannot run LoL effectively, let alone with ANYTHING else running in the background. So I just want to make sure I'm getting plenty enough power for what I need. I have near a $2000 budget so it's not going to break the bank for me to upgrade from the i7 to i5, but it can never hurt to save some money as well.

Would you say that an SSD would have more of an effect than the i7 would? Or would the SSD only help with startup times in a case like this?

 

SSD would have way more of an effect than the cpu bump for you.

And my puny i5 in my Air is currently running steam, photoshop, about 3 pages of chrome filled with tabs, steam, linkinus (irc), adium, textmate, a win 7 vm, unison, and word, and my cpu is idling at roughly 25% right now, with 24 of those percents being unison downloading/extracting stuff. For all but the most intensive stuff, the difference between the i5 and i7 in this case is moot.

 

I know you logically don't need it...but for the price difference (what? $70? 80?), i'd definitely get the entry level quad i7. (For your purposes, you don't need to go higher than the 2670)

The i5 will do the job, however, windows likes to run 3 cores at 30% instead of one core @ 100%...and if you're gonna spend $2K, $70 is nothing. It would be different if you said you had $800 to spend

 

That, given your budget, you might as well go for the i7.