t420s: i5 or i7?

[andpgud]

I am thinking about the t420s and was wondering if I should go with the i5 or the i7.
The price is not the problem here. I just want the one that will perform better.
I will be having a SSD drive and plan on going with the 16G ram.
What are your thoughts on this?

[visionviper]

I am thinking about the t420s and was wondering if I should go with the i5 or the i7.
The price is not the problem here. I just want the one that will perform better.
I will be having a SSD drive and plan on going with the 16G ram.
What are your thoughts on this?

The i7 will perform better, but unless you really need the power I would suggest just sticking with the i5.

[FunkyRes]

If you plan on running virtual machines you want the i7.
If you plan on running Linux, I believe Linux sees even better performance boost with additional cores than Windows does because more apps are properly multi-threaded.

[andpgud]

So the i7 is better

[FunkyRes]

better in the sense that it has more cores, not better in the sense that it uses more power.
If you really would benefit from more cores, get it.

[wolfman]

Hold on - am I missing something?

The T420s is NOT available with an i7 quad core processor. Both the i5 and i7 options will be dual core, hyper threaded (e.g., 4 threads) processors. If you get an i5 with the vt-x and vt-d capability, you'll be fine for running VMs. The difference between the core i5 2.5 ghz and the core i7 2.8 ghz is less that you would expect.

Passmark CPU benchmark shows a score of 3599 for the core i5 2520m (2.5ghz http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Int ... 40+2.50GHz). Compare that to the core i7 2640m (2.8ghz http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... 40+2.80GHz) which scores 4064. That's about 12.9% faster on a theoretical benchmark. A month ago when I bought my T420 (see sig below) the Core i7 2640M would've been a ~$190 or so upgrade. In my opinion, $190 for a 12.9% performance boost isn't a good investment.

I use Ubuntu linux as my OS and run multiple Ubuntu server guest VM's (for WebSphere, Process Server, etc). The Core i5 works fine for this purpose. Good luck.

[FunkyRes]

Huh, I was under the impression i7's were quad core.

http://ark.intel.com/products/53476/Int ... -2_50-GHz)

That says quad core 8 threads (that's the i7 in my T520).

[wolfman]

Yes, FunkyRes, the T520 and the W520 offer Core i7 quad core processors. Those are 15.6 inch laptops with the frame to handle the extra heat those processors throw off. The T420s, T420 and X220 offer Core i7 processors as well, but they are dual core hyper threaded models. Currently the 2.8ghz 2640m is available (http://ark.intel.com/products/53464), at launch there was a 2.7ghz 2620m model available (http://ark.intel.com/products/52231/Int ... -2_70-GHz)).

You have a very nice T520 BTW. That's the same processor that i have in my W520 from work, very nice.

[FunkyRes]

Oh, OK. I was under the impression _all_ i7 were quad core. I mis-understood Intel's naming scheme.

[andpgud]

The thing is I can go with a t420s and the cost is not a problem. I just want to be sure what to go with. Just to have it as srtong as possible

[wolfman]

The thing is I can go with a t420s and the cost is not a problem. I just want to be sure what to go with. Just to have it as srtong as possible

If cost doesn't matter, go with the i7.