i7-4500U 1.8 GHz Haswell for portable powerhouse?

I'm looking at a new laptop/ultrabook and the Vaio Pro with it's Intel® CoreTM i7-4500U 1.8 GHz has took my eye.

I was looking away from Ultrabooks initially as I want a portable powerhouse for a degree of music and video editing, what are these chips all about, as it's not a quad core is it?

Cheers..

 

ARK | Intel® Core

It's a dual core 15W. If your apps take advantage of 4 cores, I would recommend getting a quad core CPU. Otherwise, this chip will suffice for basic tasks.

 

Powerhouse and U-series CPU's don't share the same sentence pleasantly
A true i7 haswell quad may end up being more than 4 times as fast as that dual-core, due to more headroom (less % of total power wasted on OS tasks), much faster cores, double the number of cores etc. It will of course run much hotter, but the cooling will be designed to handle it anyway.

 

You not only need a quad core platform for your video/music editing requirements - you also need one that will support more than 16GB RAM too.

This would not be a powerhouse for video editing chores... more like a capable bachelor pad, or furnished garage...

 

Well, if a processor is scoring more than 15000 in PCmark vantage, it is more than enough powerful for (almost) anyone's needs. [ source]

 

It isn't quad core but it does have four threads. Quads have eight threads though so you are still effectively half the processing power (or a little more than half). However, if you want it to be portable enough that you need to carry it around every day and want your laptop to be lightweight, this will probably be as good as it gets.

 

I don't think "needs" work that way. Patience varies from person to person, and so on.

 

Understand this: all of the ULV CPU's are designed with frugality in mind. Remember, the ULV Haswell CPU's are only rated at 15 W, so you won't be getting a full voltage CPU. With that in mind, the Sony Vaio's are NOTORIOUS for severe CPU throttling, so you won't nearly be getting the full potential. PCmark is also NOTORIOUS for relying on the storage device, and any device with an SSD is going to score quite high. Anyway, you should also pay attention to the RAM size and ALWAYS choose dual-channel to help out the GPU.

Speaking of which, the i7 4500u can execute 4 threads, but does it far less efficiently than a "real" quad-core due to the fact that it has to utilize a single core for 2 threads. If you really want a powerhouse, go for a mainstream quad-core like the i7 4710HQ.

 

pretty slow to me, my i5 2540m feels faster. And they both have integrated video.