i5 vs. i7 on a laptop

bbsmitz

Hey All,

So I'm looking for a laptop for my girlfriend, in the 500-700 price range, and the choice kinda comes down to getting her a laptop with more ram and storage and an i5, or a less ram and storage (4GB RAM, 500GB drive), and an i7 quad. She wants to be using it for the next 4 years or so, but only for pretty mundane tasks; internet, movies etc. she's not a gamer. She is a physicist however so she may be using Mathematica a bit.

Anyways, so I was wondering if there was a consensus on whether to get the better processsor, or more RAM and a bigger HD....

Thanks in advance.

-BB

yosef019 · 12-05-2012, 12:10 | posts: 1,297 | Location: Israel - Haifa

take quad core and buy second stik of ram (another 4 gb) =fast pc with alot ram

lucidus · 12-05-2012, 12:18 | posts: 3,254 | Location: UAE

Go with the former.

Parabola · 12-05-2012, 18:32 | posts: 282 | Location: Northern India

IDK what Mathematica, is, but it looks like a CPU intensive application. I'll go for the i7 if i were you. 4gigs is more than enough for internet, movies etc. Find out the exact model number of the CPUs of the laptops you're looking and, and then just compare the benchmarks if possible. If the i5 isn't a lot slower than the i7, go for it.

DerSchniffles · 12-14-2012, 08:02 | posts: 757 | Location: Washington

you can always add more ram later, just make sure you know how much the max memory it can take is.