i5-6300HQ vs i7-7700HQ

Hello everyone. I just placed my order for a refurbished AW 13R3. When I placed the order, I overlooked the CPU on my order. (I thought I had sorted to the i7-7700HQ so I didn't double check). Unfortunately my order has an i5-6300HQ.

Is there enough difference for me to try to cancel the order and place a new order for the i7-7700HQ?

The i5 I ordered comes with 32GB Ram and the i7 I would order would have 8 or 16GB. Both systems are GTX 1060 6GB. So basically I would be dropping RAM for the higher CPU.

I would mostly play racing Sims (iRacing or rFactor 2). I'm just not up to date on how much performance gain the 7th gen i7 has over the 6th gen i5.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I would have to try to call Dell to cancel first thing in the morning to try to get cancel the order before it is fully processed if the change is advised

Thanks

 

The Ram you can always upgrade later while the CPU you can't. The i7 7th gen HQ has a four core speed of 3.4GHz, while the i5 sixth gen has a four core speed of 2.8GHZ. Also the i7 has hyper threading while the i5 doesn't. Most likely you won't notice much difference in gaming performance at first, but down the road the speed difference might make a difference.

 

Thanks for the reply. My fear is that I won't me able to cancel the order before it is processed and then I would be stuck paying a 15% restocking fee.

So the i5 is still decent? And by "down the road" I assume this is referring to future games requiring higher CPUs?

 

Personally there is no way I'd go anything less than an i7 7700HQ. This with a GTX 1060 is a really nice fit. I would worry anything less and the CPU might be a bottleneck for the GPU. A lot more games recently have started benefiting from higher CPU power (BF1, Assassin's creed etc). It's why I run my R4 at 4.3GHz for gaming now

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Thank you for the advice. I confirmed that I am able to return the i5-6300 without a restocking fee. Actually Dell claims they will try to catch it before the carrier leaves town with it.
I placed an order for an i7-7700HQ with the 1060 and 16GB RAM. And saved $6 haha. I feel better now. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me.

 

Good decision... Enjoy!

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Good move. I'd also say that down the line if you wanted to use an Alienware Graphics Amplifier to extend the life of your PC, you wouldn't want the CPU to be a bottleneck either. You can always upgrade RAM.

 

That was part of my thinking as well. The Alienware Graphics amplifier seems to be a nice future option. I received the i7 today. I'm typing on it now as we speak. The refurbished unit arrived looking in good shape. Now I'm just trying to go through everything and make sure its built well, then I'll get around to the stress testing.