Is there any necessity of getting i7-4702MQ over i7-4510U?

xzahn

Estimable
Sep 3, 2014
12
0
4,560
I need a laptop mainly for software developing usage. Using newest IDE's like VS, Eclipse, NetBeans, etc. I also intend to use software like Photoshop (nothing professional, just web page designs, etc.), Reason and some CAD like software as a hobby.

Acer Aspire V5-573G (i7-4510U, IPS, 850GT, sick design, lightweight)
Lenovo ThinkPad E540 (i7-4702MQ, 740GT, ?supposedly better battery?, DVD)

In the brackets are the differences in the models. They both have ~250SSD + 1TB HDD. I will be using Win 7 Ultimate + Linux Mint. And yes, I'll be gaming on it, but nothing heavy of course. For that kind of money I want to be able to kill some time, when I'm bored, with pleasure. The quad core 4702 is benchmarked as almost two times more efficient than 4510 which is dual core. Although I don't really need the 850GT, the design of the V5 is lot better than the E540's. Also I don't want to buy something I won't need even though is better. I know 4510 is a good 4th generation cpu which is actually a bit better than my PC's Phenom X4 9850B with whom I haven't had any problems. I want to know whether I'll have any problems with 4510 being dual core and do I really need the 4702 for the activities I mentioned above. Also which configuration (cpu + vga) will perform better in gaming?
 

turkey3_scratch

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Herald
Jul 15, 2014
571
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5,210
The i7-4702MQ is much better than the i7-4510U for many reasons. For one thing, it has 4 cores instead of 2 which is a major benefit. Also, all the "U" processors have much lower frequencies and are therefore less powerful, which would not be good for Photoshop.
 

xzahn

Estimable
Sep 3, 2014
12
0
4,560


I know that 4702 is a lot more powerfull than 4510 on paper. What I'm asking is do I need that much processing power for what I'm going to use it. The 4510 is benchmarked above the Phenom X4 9850B I have in my PC. I haven't had any problems with photoshop. Runs like a charm. Is it because its a quad core?

=2248&cmp[]=1574&cmp[]=1939]http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2248&cmp[]=1574&cmp[]=1939 - Bench 1 / Bench 2
I know the math, I need real-life benchmark.