How much better is the i5 8250u over the i5 7200u

[GlitterFart]

I bought the Dell XPS 13 back in May 2017 with the i5 7200u inside and now, only a year later, the current XPS 13 has the i5 8250u and it just seems much better than the last generation one, so I feel a bit ripped off, especially when I see laptops for like £500 that supposedly have far superior performance.

So essentially, I want to know that my purchase was not a total rip off and that the i5 7200u will be good enough for the next 3 years (for Uni) Thanks guys!

 

[volkgren]

Welcome to the club. I bought my i7-7700K in July '17 for $340. Less than 6 months later Intel released their i7-8700K for the same price and made it where it wasn't compatible with my current chipset motherboard. Intel ripped everyone off with their 7th-gen Kaby Lake CPU lineup.

 

[TJ Hooker]

New, better hardware comes out every year offering better performance per dollar. Doesn't retroactively make older purchases "rip offs".

The 8250u should be a little better in lightly threaded tasks (3.4 vs 3.1 GHz max turbo), significantly better in multi threaded tasks (double the cores/threads).

If you're just doing stuff like MS office, taking notes, internet browsing etc. then yes your current CPU should be more than capable for years to come.

 

[WildCard999]

It's quite better in multi-threaded apps and multitasking due to the extra cores/threads it has over the 7200U but the 7200U should be fine for college.
http/cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7200U/m338266vsm153577

If you want to speed up your laptop a bit more without breaking the bank I'd put a SSD into it if it doesn't have one now.

 

[GlitterFart]

New, better hardware comes out every year offering better performance per dollar. Doesn't retroactively make older purchases "rip offs".

The 8250u should be a little better in lightly threaded tasks (3.4 vs 3.1 GHz max turbo), significantly better in multi threaded tasks (double the cores/threads).

If you're just doing stuff like MS office, taking notes, internet browsing etc. then yes your current CPU should be more than capable for years to come.

It does feel like a rip off when you see that the jump from the i5 6200u to the 7200u was barely anything, but the jump from 7200u to 8250u is more than twice the performance (mainly due it being a quad core cpu)

 

[TJ Hooker]

Yes, it was a larger jump than previous generations, most likely as a result of AMD finally providing some real competition.

 

[cirecomputers]

I think the comparison is a bit deceiving. Yes the i5 8250u has 4 cores vs 2 for the 7200u. BUT, the base frequency of the former is 1.6mhz vs 2.5mhz for the latter. As we've learned in real world applications, depending on who you are and what you're using your computer for.....the 2.5mhz base frequency might be preferable. I have a few laptops and for what I do, they rarely throttle up to the top speed and mostly stay at their base speed of 1.4mhz on one of them. On paper their is no comparison the 8250 wins. In real life .....maybe not.... Something to think about. Also they have the same gpu, so not a factor.........