i7 or an i5 for my needs?

For a while I was thinking I need all the power avalible..... but now that I really think about it. Will I even need a i7?

I will be using it primairly for Photoshop cs4, video editing, browsing, notetaking and high end gaming (in that order).

I don't do any number crunching or 3d rendering will the 8 virtual cores of the i7 really benifit me? Or would a higher end i5 benifit me more.

I guess what I am asking is; is the extra power of the i7 (quads) really worth the reduced battery life and higher heat? Would it benifit me?

Thanks for your help gents.

 

I think an i5 with a good graphics card would be perfect. I don't even know if they've resolved the issue of the i7's speedstepping problem on battery yet. I know some Sony and HP models namely the Envy and DV8T Quad editions have/had this problem. I don't remember there being such problems with the i5. To me the i5 540 is the sweet spot. But since you say high end gaming, anything with a "high-end" graphics card will most likely come with an i7, if not the dual-core i7 620m.

 

No.

PhotoShop does use the quad but benefits from more RAM
Video editing could benefit from the quad, but if CUDA or ATIStream are supported better go that way
Note-taking? An Atom can handle that
High-end Gaming is the GPU.

IMHO, the quad will be worth it IF you are going to squeeze it. Otherwise, i5 is more than enough.

 

i5 for everyone but people who edit and compress video, model and render 3d.

Less sure about audio engineering.

 

i5 is already overkill for lots of people and your uses don't seem to put you in the category which would even benefit all that much from one, so go with an i5 if you have to pick between both of them.

 

I can encode 1080p to standard profile x264 at about 4fps on my i5-540M. The i5 is a very fast CPU, especially considering that it'll clock in at 10W less than the i7's (a fair bit less in real-world than the i7-620M, too). And especially since many games, even if they're multi-threaded, are still effectively limited by a single thread an i5-540 will get you much more speed at a lower price and power point than the i7-820M.

 

That's kind of what I figured. Thanks for the varification. I really appreciate it.

 

ur better off with core i7 dual core than a core i5 one.... it should be faster for ur needs...

 

Well, in this case is either i5 dual core or i7 quad core. In that case, i5 is the better option if you ask me.

 

According to this anandtech article (measurements done on Desktop i3, i5, i7) the i3 performance is eerily close to i7 for a fraction of the cost. Not sure if it holds true for mobiles, but I wouldn't pay pay an extra penny for it.

My main laptop has a T5250 Core 2 Duo (the slowest of the Santa Rosa line), and I cannot tell the difference between this and my other lappy with a T9300 (fastest of the Santa Rosa line) for any everyday tasks. I usually do office work, some development, watch video, light gaming.

 

Of course if you don't push the CPU, you won't notice a difference. For menial tasks, CPUs are more or less already as optimized as they can be. A P4 surfs the internet and does office work just fine(and don't retort, I'm writing from one right now and I'm also making VMs and it's holding out fine) At this point, making things "faster" is a software issue.

 

Exactly...higher clocks don't mean faster performance all the time. And lets face it, the amount of time one pushes the CPU to the limits is very small.

 

an i3 is more than enough, even for HD video editing. Don't get hooked on model numbers, look at the performance numbers.

For all intents and purposes, i3 and i5 cpus are identical in performance. TurboBoost is mostly a non-factor because of the mandatory downclocking that occurs after a turbo boost upclock.

Max memory is more important. A video editing station that can't support 8 Gb (if necessary) is a waste of time. Start out with 4 Gb and if necessary, spend another $150- for the second 4 Gb.

Unless you have a memory and disk subsystem that can keep an i7 feed and watered with data, you're spending a lot of money to make a lot of heat doing nothing (wait states).

 

i5 and the dual core i7 share the same socket doesn't it? Can I just swap out in a couple of years? What about the whole integrated gpu on the i5? Does it eat up resources like all integrated gpu?

 

This article may prove useful:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Processors-Arrandale.25085.0.html

 

i7 Arrandale and i5 Arrandale should be interchangeable. i7 Clarksfield and i5 Arrandale no AFAIK.

The IGP does use resources, that's why you have a 35W TDP, which is shared between CPU and IGP, giving preference to whoever needs more power.