i5 vs i3 (same specs, just price difference)

[Disflamer]

Hello people, I need your quick help. I've decided to buy a Lenovo ideapad 510, but the problem is, that one of them has an i3-6100u and the other has i5-6200u. Everything else is the same:

15,6 in, IPS FHD
4GB ram
Geforce 940MX
1TB hard drive

The i5 costs 140$ more. Is it worth it? Will I be able to tell the difference between turbo boost and no turbo boost? Also I want to mention, that I will be doing all kinds of stuff with the laptop. I will be doing some programming, few hours of Photoshop every week, of course some gaming. I don't know if I should go with i5 and then save up for an SSD and 4 GB more ram, or should I just go with an i3 ( I should be able to buy an SSD and 4GB ram for less than a 140$, i guess).

 

[scuzzycard]

The difference between those 2 CPUs is very small and you'd probably never notice it. Not only is the difference between the 2 CPUs around 10% at most, but your gaming performance is going to be mainly GPU-bound with a 940mx.

 

[Disflamer]

The difference between those 2 CPUs is very small and you'd probably never notice it. Not only is the difference between the 2 CPUs around 10% at most, but your gaming performance is going to be mainly GPU-bound with a 940mx.

Leaving gaming aside, do you think Photoshop or Sony vegas performace would still be almost the same?

 

[joex444]

The CPUs *seem* identical except that the i5-6200U has turbo boost up to 2.8GHz while the i3-6100U is stuck at 2.3GHz maximum all the time. Both, of course, downclock when idle.

This means that for situations where you are idle and then decide to do something, the i5 will do it at 2.8GHz (+20%) while the i3 will do it at 2.3GHz. So in real-world applications, short requests for CPU performance are handled at a 20% speed advantage on the i5. When you launch an intense long-term task, anything that takes over a minute of 100% CPU, the i5 will not sustain that turbo boost because the cooling can't exactly handle that. So you'll see a small amount of time at +20% and then they're even. For most users, they fall into the "bursty" load category so for most users the i5-6200U will seem faster.

With programming, if you're using a compiled language this would reduce compilation times so long as you're not making large programs. With photoshop, odds are you only do intensive things in stages with down time in between so this ends up being bursty, whereas a full render is very much a long-term intense task. With gaming, that's a long-term thing and they'll perform the same (OTOH, the 940 is limiting what performance you get anyways).

Now you make an interesting point: i5-6200U with 4GB + HDD vs i3-6100U with 8GB + SSD. I'd probably opt for the i3 here if I had to pick one. The i5 *is* faster in real-world applications despite seeming similar on paper, but I don't think it's $140 better.

 

[Disflamer]

The CPUs *seem* identical except that the i5-6200U has turbo boost up to 2.8GHz while the i3-6100U is stuck at 2.3GHz maximum all the time. Both, of course, downclock when idle.

This means that for situations where you are idle and then decide to do something, the i5 will do it at 2.8GHz (+20%) while the i3 will do it at 2.3GHz. So in real-world applications, short requests for CPU performance are handled at a 20% speed advantage on the i5. When you launch an intense long-term task, anything that takes over a minute of 100% CPU, the i5 will not sustain that turbo boost because the cooling can't exactly handle that. So you'll see a small amount of time at +20% and then they're even. For most users, they fall into the "bursty" load category so for most users the i5-6200U will seem faster.

With programming, if you're using a compiled language this would reduce compilation times so long as you're not making large programs. With photoshop, odds are you only do intensive things in stages with down time in between so this ends up being bursty, whereas a full render is very much a long-term intense task. With gaming, that's a long-term thing and they'll perform the same (OTOH, the 940 is limiting what performance you get anyways).

Now you make an interesting point: i5-6200U with 4GB + HDD vs i3-6100U with 8GB + SSD. I'd probably opt for the i3 here if I had to pick one. The i5 *is* faster in real-world applications despite seeming similar on paper, but I don't think it's $140 better.

You've made a very good point about i5 not sustaining long enough because of the heat. And thanks for explaining every single scenario and how each cpu might affect it. I guess I'll go with i3, which should be better bang for the buck value.

 

[genthug]

For most laptops, they are actually able to sustain the higher clock. As long as you aren't suffocating the machine, it should be able to clock itself up no problem. The CPUs in laptops don't throttle until the 100-110C mark.

As for the i5 being only 10% better than the i3, I wouldn't exactly say that... hyperthreading doesn't nearly make up for an entire physical core, the i5 will undoubtedly be far and away faster than the i3 having both a higher clock and twice the core count.

As for which you should get, I'd agree with joex, where you'll end up getting 8GB and an SSD with the i3, I'd go with the i3.

 

[scuzzycard]

@genthug they're both actually 2C/4T chips - any mobile CPU that ends in "u" is a dual-core, even i7. The difference is the i5's 2.8GHz turbo speed. Benchmarks put the i5 about 10-11% ahead, which is I presume represents the average of the fluctuations in the clock speed with the i5's turbo.

 

[genthug]

Really? Huh. That's good to know, then. Thanks for the correction.

 

[orlbuckeye]

The Surface Book has the i5 6300U processor in the entry level SB.