i5 vs i7 for Photoshop

Hey,

I am planning to get myself a Dell Precision M6500 and was wondering which one, i5 or i7 will perform better in Photoshop? Couldn't find any benches about it .

 

Well, that depends on which i5 and which i7, although obviously in general an i7 would perform better than an i5.

 

Mind you it also depends on your uses. Photoshop is a very varied application whose uses can tax many parts of your system so depending on what you do the i7>i5 might not be as noticeable an upgrade over other things such as HDD or RAM boosts.

 

One Inte® Core™ I5-520M(2.4GHZ,3MB,Dual Core,35W) Memory runs at 1066MHz [Included in Price]

One Intel® Core™ i5-540M(2.53GHz,3MB,Dual Core,35W) Memory runs at 1066MHz [add £87.00 or £3/month-1]

One Intel® Core™ i7-620M(2.66GHz,4MB,Dual Core,35W) Memory runs at 1066MHz [add £178.00 or £7/month-1]


I want to pick one of these, need to cut costs a bit for a better display

I am focusing on web designing but I plan to make some posters etc so, extremely hi-res images.

 

PS works with quad core but unless your working with very large images doing things like running lots of filters and things it should not make too much of a difference.

If you are though the i7 will really help.


Edit: all those you listed are dual core just a bit faster than one another and not much faster by any means. I would just get the one at the best price point.

 

Exactly. Since all three of those CPUs are dual cores, with clock speed being the only real difference between them, I would stick with the base i5-520M unless the i5-540M was less than a $50 upgrade from the 520M. The performance difference is very negligible.

 

Agreed on the above, the real world performance differences between those CPUs doesn't warrant their price increase so I'd stick with the 520. You'd have to move to the 720 to really see some difference.

 

How about those Sandy Bridges, (I believe they will appear in M6500 quickly) any point in waiting for them? Any significant difference, other than just more powerful integrated GPU?

 

Sandy Bridge will be more powerful, though comparing similar models, the difference won't be much.

 

No contest. i5 520M is the pick of the bunch because those upgrade prices are kind of insane and unreasonable. The difference between all 3 is not big and 178 quid will buy you alot of happy elsewhere.

 

i7-740qm... that's way better...

 

i7 wins hands down.