740qm vs 820qm ENVy 17 ?

Hi, I know that someone might want to move this to another thread but I have a specific question: I can pick between two envy 17 notebooks I will not point out the similarities just the differences:

Envy 17 #1
i7-740QM
Windows 7 ULTIMATE

Envy 17 #2
i7-820QM
Windows 7 Home Premium

Which one should i get? #2 is $20 more expensive , my problem is that I want win 7 ultimate or pro and I don't want to upgrade that later, but I am willing to change the cpu later with a 840qm or 920qm maybe even a 940qm. So my question is is there a big difference between the two cpus and is it worth it to get the first one because of the windows and maybe get a 920qm later?

 

If you have a need for Ultimate or Pro, perhaps it's a better deal for you.

If I understand correctly, the main difference between Home Premium vs. Pro and Ultimate is that they have certain corporate features and allow up to 192GB RAM while Home Premium only allows up to 16GB RAM. Since the Envy 17 only has 2 DIMM slots, I don't think the RAM cap would be a factor.

In most cases I would go with the i7-740 or i5 preferably, because the battery life will be longer, unless you will run applications that can benefit greatly from the quad core processor.

 

i'd take the more powerful cpu any day. but i would take most powerful i5 over them just to have switchable graphics and more battery life as pointed earlier..

 

The Envy 17 does not have switchable graphics.

The difference between the 740 and 820 is the L3 cache size. The 740QM has 6MB cache and the 820QM has 8MB cache. For a $20 difference, go for the 820QM. The 8MB cache does make a difference of 5-15% depending on what you are doing. In normal use, the difference is about 5%. For $20, it is worth it.

 

Thanks for all the answers, I wanted the 820q + ultimate and now I found a 840q cpu that is real cheap so I am going to get the 740q with the ultimate and sell the cpu and get the 840q. Thanks guys