Would I benifit from i5 or i3?

Hi guys, going to buy the Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G but the the perfect price I've found it only has the i3 processor. I only really use my laptop for internet browsing, downloading movies, streaming, itunes and occasionally adobe apps like photoshop and dreamweaver. Will an i3 be enough or would I notice a difference in speed with an i5?

 

For general purposes you will not notice the difference between the two cpu's, however, Dreamweaver and Photoshop would benefit from the i5, although, they will run fine with the i3 as well.

It's your call.

 

What is the price difference?

I find an i5 based system is hotter, lounder but definitely faster in LR3.2 and PS CS5.

If this is personal use - stick with the i3.

If this is for business or money making pursuits (PS & DW), then the i5 is justified (as long as it is one of the i5's that can overclock...).

Cheers!

 

The short answer: the i3 is sufficient.

For any of the applications you mentioned, the CPU is unlikely to represent the bottleneck. An SSD presents itself as a far more worthwhile upgrade, since it will vastly improve loading times of applications, such as iTunes or any Adobe product, while improving general performance of the operating system (which many refer to as "snappiness").

Other than a clock increase, the i5 only really gets you TurboBoost, which is an interesting feature, but it highly thermal dependent, and will only provide a tangible benefit when the CPU is the limiting factor in an application. Even in Photoshop, where it has the potential to offer some benefits, GPU acceleration (if applicable) greatly mitigates any circumstance where the a faster CPU would be advantageous (e.g. rendering effects).

My suggestion: save the money, and if you like, buy an SSD or a Momentus XT down the road. For your purposes, it's a far better investment.

 

Thank you very much for your replies you 3. I believe the laptop can be upgraded from 4GB to 8GB so if I really want to increase loading times I guess I could do that. I want this laptop to last me a while so at the moment it is just personal use but I fear in the future I may need to use applications that require fast processors. It's a shame that you can't change the i3 to i5 in the same laptop later down the road.

 

So long as the CPU is not soldered to the board, you should still have the ability to swap out processors. However, I would like to point out that the realizable performance advantage would be insignificant, even for CPU-intensive tasks (unless a 5 to 10% improvement is absolutely essential for time-limiting applications). Unlike the Core 2 Duo generation, where a few iterations materialized over the years, and later models introduced a more attractive performance increase, Arrandale will have no expandability, and motherboards will be incompatible with next generation Sandy Bridge CPUs. As a result, upgrades are much more limited, and in my opinion financially unjustified later in your computer's life.

If you need a computer now, then Arrandale is a great performer, but if you feel that having greater performance down the road could be an essential, perhaps waiting for Sandy Bridge is a worthwhile consideration.

 

If you want to improve loading times, a SSD would be where you should invest your money into, not into more than 4GB memory. You can change from i3 to i5 or even i7 in the future (as long as it's the same socket).

 

What is an SSD?

 

It is a Sold State Disk. Its really fast and takes the place of your standard mechanical hard drive.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-ssd.htm

http://compreviews.about.com/od/storage/a/SSD.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

 

personally , i would get the i5 if its less than $75... it should be an improvement over the i3 for sure.. SSD is a great upgrade but its expensive and with less space..

 

There is about $450 difference between the i3 and i5.

 

Could you please post a link to this?

 

i3 - £730 including P&P from Canada - ACER ASPIRE 8943G 18.4'' LAPTOP I3-350M/4GB/500GB/W7HP on eBay (end time 12-Sep-10 09:32:07 BST)

i5 - £1099 including P&P - Acer Aspire 8943G, 18.4inch HD LCD Notebook, Intel Core i5-450M processor, 4GB, 500GB, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650, Blu-Ray, Windows 7 Home Premium: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

The gap... £369. Which is $569 so it's even more than I thought. Finding an i5 8943G for less than £900 is proving near impossible.

 

That's from 2 different re-sellers, from the same seller, it should be less than $125 difference.

 

Upgrading RAM does not increase your computing power. Only a CPU can decrease the time spent on a specific task.

Upgrading the RAM will allow you to run many more programs concurrently - which can increase your overall productivity - but remember that each program will not run as fast as when it is the only program running.

For around $100 (I might even say almost double that too), I would go with the i5, since you want to keep this system for as long as possible.

Good luck.

 

Just a small correction, for the sake of accuracy:

An SSD is a "solid state drive". Since the storage is comprised of flash memory, and there is no physical platter, to refer to the device as a disk is a bit of a misnomer. Strictly speaking, an SSD should always be referred to as a drive rather than a disk, though the distinction is mostly academic.

 

Neither seller sells both.

 

Have you found out the amount of tax you may have to pay if you buy from Canada? That may be the reason for the price difference.

 

Only extra money I would have to pay is border control which is around £90. Anyways, I've found a good deal which gets me the i5 8943G at £825 ($1,274).

 

The i5 is advised over the i3. The increase in performance and longevity of the system is worth the extra cash.

 

if you are buying in UK, you can take a look here:
Laptops | Laptop. Buy cheap laptops, notebooks and netbooks from Laptops Direct

Although, filling out the FAQ would be advisable.

 

Thanks but it's cheaper elsewhere like pc world