i7-7500U w/ 940MX (2GB Dedicated) & 16GB RAM vs i7-7700HQ w/ 1050 (4GB Dedicated) & 16GB RAM

jon_uc2022

Prominent
Jun 28, 2017
6
0
520
So I will be an electrical engineering (maybe switch to aerospace) student in the fall, and I was wondering how important the number of cores and amount of dedicated vRAM was for modeling and simulation software.

I'd love to get the HP Spectre x360 15t because it comes with Windows ink that I'd love for notetaking, but if it won't cut it I will go with the HP OMEN 15t.

I don't plan on doing super heavy gaming, but I'm open to recommendations.

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
even though u are not on the heavy side of gaming but u cant ignore that i7-7700hq is way more powerful than the 7500u.the 7700hq is a true quadcore processor with 4 cores and 6 threads while the 7500u is just a low voltage dual core cpu with 2 cores and 2 threads.already a win there for the 7700hq.and the gtx 1050 will crush the 940mx even if the 940mx had more ram just because the 1050 have wayyyy more processing power and cuda core.if both are up for the same price i would close my eyes and pick the i7-7700hq + gtx 1050.modeling and simulation software would be a cake walk for the 7700hq.
even though u are not on the heavy side of gaming but u cant ignore that i7-7700hq is way more powerful than the 7500u.the 7700hq is a true quadcore processor with 4 cores and 6 threads while the 7500u is just a low voltage dual core cpu with 2 cores and 2 threads.already a win there for the 7700hq.and the gtx 1050 will crush the 940mx even if the 940mx had more ram just because the 1050 have wayyyy more processing power and cuda core.if both are up for the same price i would close my eyes and pick the i7-7700hq + gtx 1050.modeling and simulation software would be a cake walk for the 7700hq.
 
Solution

JazzPianist

Prominent
Jun 21, 2017
2
0
510
I own both i7-7700HQ and i-7500u. I am a computer software engineer. i7-7700HQ is way more powerful than i7-7500u.

HP Envy 17" UHD (4K) touch panel 16GB RAM 512GB SSD
HP OMEN 17" UHD 16GB RAM 256GB SSD

I have just upgraded RAM from 12GB to 16GB on OMEN. So both PCs are pretty much same configurations. There are minor differences; i7-7500u supports up to DDR4-2133 where i7-7700HQ supports up to DDR4-2400. OMEN came with PCIe M2 SSD which is way faster than SATA M2 SSD. i7-7500u is 1/3 of power consumption of i7-7700HQ, that means you can run longer with battery.
If you want to take your PC to the StarBucks, they have power outlet everywhere around the tables. So the power consumption shouldn't be an issue.

If I just run one application, both PCs give you pretty much same horse powers. I use mainly Microsoft Visual Studio compiler and VMWare. But if you want to run multiple applications (that would be typical), i7-7500u gets really sluggish. If you want to use simulation software, virtual machine, CAD, MatLab or such, I suggest you should go with i7-7700HQ.
 


if its going for the same price it would be really odd to skip the 7700hq + the gtx 1050.the gpu itself would help in the long run.unless he want to more battery life or if the undervolt cpu unit is way cheaper i dont see a reason to skip the more powerful unit.