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    Vaio Pro 13 for Visual Studio 2012 usage?

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by oxf77, Aug 4, 2013.

  1. oxf77

    oxf77 Notebook Consultant

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    Im thinking of buying a Pro 13 mainly because of its light weight (I will install Windows 7 on the machine). My worries are that the i5 4200U Haswell chip isn't powerful enough and im worried getting the i7 will eat in to the battery life. However, according to wikipedia:

    Haswell (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    The power usage is the same for both chips- 15W? So battery life would be the same?

    So two questions:

    -Do you think I would need the i7 if the i5 isn't enough for Visual Studio?
    -If I need the i7, how much would battery life decrease?

    This would be my first Sony purchase- I am currently a Lenovo x-series user so any advice would be most welcome!

    Thanks in advance

    EDIT: Just checked and I run my i7 620M processor in my x201 @ 1.2GHz and it still runs VS2012 fine....
     
    oxf77, Aug 4, 2013
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  2. anytimer

    anytimer Notebook Virtuoso

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    Visual Studio is quite low on the list of demanding apps that need lots of resources. Unless you're into stuff that involves 3D rendering in realtime you should be fine with the Pro.
     
    anytimer, Aug 4, 2013
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  3. oxf77

    oxf77 Notebook Consultant

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    Thanks for replying

    What differences are there between the i5 and the i7- performance and battery drain? Am I right in thinking they use the same amount of battery because the nominal TDP is the same for both according to Wikipedia?
     
    oxf77, Aug 4, 2013
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  4. zakeen

    zakeen Notebook Enthusiast

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    I dont know if you can compare Visual Studio to Cubify Invent(Its a 3D Cad program for 3D printing). I have been using that on my i7 and there is no problem it can handle it. I have not noticed the battery. To be honest its good enough for me and I dont time my usage.
     
    zakeen, Aug 4, 2013
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  5. oxf77

    oxf77 Notebook Consultant

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    Could you comment on this fan issue? I have read there seems to be a problem with noisy fans?
     
    oxf77, Aug 4, 2013
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  6. richp582

    richp582 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Just wanted to chime in, I've been using mine for Windows Phone 8 Development (Visual Studio 2012 Update 3) Running Hyper-V Windows Phone 8 environments and it's been flawless!

    I have the 13" i5 w/ 4gb and 128 SSD.
     
    richp582, Aug 5, 2013
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  7. EiSl

    EiSl Notebook Consultant

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    I think having enough memory is maybe more important (more influence) than the CPU.
    I'm also using Visual Studio (2010) and I've a i5 (Ivy) and it runs fine. For some big (C++) projects, I'm using a RAM-disk as intermediate. Thats the reason I've 12GB internally (also because I use VMware Workstation)
     
    EiSl, Aug 9, 2013
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