Thinkpad T460 vs Thinkpad T540p

[Beginner]

Hello,

Please bear with my english.
I am planning to buy thinkpad either T460 or T540P and my budget is around $1100. I will be using this laptop for computing on large data sets ( for data science).

T540P is around $1100 from amazon.com and it is i7, 16gb ram and an SSD.
T460 is around $1200 from lenovo.com and it's configuration is i7, 12gb RAM and 500 GB(7200 RPM) HDD.

Please suggest me which one I should go for?

If the answer is T460 then is it better to buy i7, 12gb or i5,24gb? Kindly suggest me. Thanks in advance.

[brchan]

T540P is available with a much faster quad core cpu than the T460 which only has dual core as an option. However, you may get similar high end performance to the T540P and pay less if you get a W541 or even W530 with upper end cpu.