i5 or i3 cost benefit

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pdinc

Limp Gawd
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Dec 19, 2006
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I have the option for getting a i3-6100U latitude for $450, or a i5-6200U for $520. Laptop will only be used for general office computing. Opinions on best option?
 
The only difference between those processors is that the i5 has turbo-boost and can OC itself to 2.8Ghz / 25w TDP if it needs to. Both are 2-cores w/hyperthreading.

If you aren't doing anything computationally intensive at all.... the i3 will work, but I'd recommend the i5, just because I like MORE POWER :3
 
iamwhoiamtoday said:
The only difference between those processors is that the i5 has turbo-boost and can OC itself to 2.8Ghz / 25w TDP if it needs to. Both are 2-cores w/hyperthreading.

If you aren't doing anything computationally intensive at all.... the i3 will work, but I'd recommend the i5, just because I like MORE POWER :3
Click to expand...

The 6200U is a 25W part unless the OEM specifies it to be a 25W part all the time. It still hits 2.8Ghz at 15W. Just as it can be set as a 7.5W part. Its nothing that will dynamically change.
 
General office computing doesn't need an i5. Spend the difference on 8 gig of ram and an ssd
 
Despite the branding, there is almost no difference between any of the U series Ultrabook chips i3, i5 or i7. The i5-6200U is just one step up from the i3-6100U. Either is fine for general office work, if you need performance the entire U series sucks.

As for which is [H]arder, all U series chips are soft. In fact I'd suggest that the only notebook CPUs that qualify as being [H]ard are the quad-core HQ series i7s.
 
Thanks for the responses, all!

Keljian said:
General office computing doesn't need an i5. Spend the difference on 8 gig of ram and an ssd
Click to expand...

This is what I ended up doing. Got the i3, upped RAM to 8GB and upgraded SSD from 128GB to 500GB.
 
I'd always rather have a lower power CPU surrounded by better ancillaries than a powerful CPU surrounded by ...crap.

I have a 2009 Dell Inspiron 13Z that has a little dual core 1.3GHz ULV Pentium. Not great you think but it has Nvidia GPU and upgraded to have a 120GB SSD and 6GB of DDR3 ram. Day to day it will still hold up to a modern $600 i5 laptop with the usual 4GB ram and 5400rpm HDD if not more so.
 
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