Desktop i3 vs Mobile i7

ramcom

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I'm having trouble deciding between an all in one pc or building my own pc. The model I want is a HP ENVY beats with i7-4785T but I am told that a desktop i3 will be faster than this? is this true?
 
Solution
That i7 is not a mobile chip. It's based directly off of the 4770. It's just an ultra low watt model. Officially, the i7 4785t would "trade blows" with an i3 4150 for example. The i3 has the superior single thread performance, and the i7 would perform better in heavily threaded tasks and extreme multitasking. That i7 would perform similarly to a FX8350 if you want to compare that to an i3. Of course the i7 uses like 20% of the power of the FX.

Like others have said, I would stay away from the All-in-ones.

ramcom

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So are you comparing the CPU to laptop level in terms of performance or? I want the all-in-one for style and just general high performance
 

slyu9213

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What is the computer for? Gaming, Design, Rendering, General PC, etc? Honestly there isn't a large different between a mobile i7 and a desktop i7 now (as long as they are at the same clock/speed) so I don't think a Desktop i3 will really beat the i7-4785T in the All-in-One. Which i3 are you talking about?

The i7 4785T is a 2.2GHz Quad-Core w/ Hyper Threading that will boost up to 3.2GHz. My guess is it will probably be able to boost up to 2.8/2.9GHz on all 4-cores, basically making it a 2.8/2.9GHz Haswell i7. I feel like when you use programs that uses more than two cores the i7 4785T will be much better.

This all depends on what kind of i3 you get. The i7-4785T will most likely run at 3.1-3.2GHz on two cores so it can be a 3.1-3.2GHz i3 or a 2.8-2.9GHz i7. The i7-4785T also has 8MB of Cache instead of 4MB on the i3. Not sure how much of performance difference that will make.
 

ramcom

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Its for design and general PC use and I was talking about i3-4370 I think its the highest clocked i3. If this i7 was in a desktop would it perform well with a high end GPU too, I want this all in one to handle a lot of programs running at the same time as I don't like to close any programs.
 

ramcom

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I have a 1TB SSD I bought last year, so I'll be popping that in too, plus I think 8GB is enough
 

slyu9213

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The things that sometimes are impossible to upgrade in an All-in-One are the video card and processor. Processors are upgradeable in some All-in-One but it depends on if the CPU is soldered on, same with the video card. RAM is more likely upgradeable unless the All-In-One is very thin.

I don't see a major problem with the i7-4785T. It's basically a CPU you will find in Macbook Pros and other gaming/performance laptops. They often are paired with decent mobile video cards.

If this were my situation I would rather build my own PC. The All-In-One PC sounds good but it's not when you deeply think about it. The only pro is that all the components are in one box along with the screen but they are more likely to have heating issues. I would rather build an i3 system and have the ability to upgrade your CPU to an i5 or i7 later. You can get a stylish monitor and then non stylish parts for your actual computer as you can hide your tower behind the desk where you wont see it.
 

CTurbo

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That i7 is not a mobile chip. It's based directly off of the 4770. It's just an ultra low watt model. Officially, the i7 4785t would "trade blows" with an i3 4150 for example. The i3 has the superior single thread performance, and the i7 would perform better in heavily threaded tasks and extreme multitasking. That i7 would perform similarly to a FX8350 if you want to compare that to an i3. Of course the i7 uses like 20% of the power of the FX.

Like others have said, I would stay away from the All-in-ones.
 
Solution
The i7 4785T has a passmark performance rating of 7541 and a tray price of $303.
The i7-4790K has a rating of 11289 and a similar price.

If you are gaming, that requires a good graphics card. Such chips in a small format such as a laptop or all in one are hard to cool and are more limited in performance than a discrete graphics card.

The key to having many apps open is sufficient ram.
16gb is a good idea. Some apps like photoshop can use ram as workspace to improve performance.
I doubt that more would be needed, but it can be had with more $ and some other configuration considerations.
Intel does not depend on fast ram, more ram trumps faster ram.

There are some nice small cases out there for ITX sized motherboards.
With a 1tb ssd, you may not need more storage.
Look at the lian li PC-Q02 case if your parts will fit.
It is a tiny gem. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112370

Here is a photo

It is the small box on the left, smaller than the speaker.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fextreme.pcgameshardware.de%2Fattachments%2F634405d1363293433-putzig-der-kleine-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fextreme.pcgameshardware.de%2Fcasemods%2F265878-putzig-der-kleine.html&h=539&w=719&tbnid=88XhmgNQGGoIZM%3A&zoom=1&docid=viYrfdAcPsl6jM&ei=SDV_VJ2IOMWXNsyVg-AM&tbm=isch&ved=0CCoQMygMMAw&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=2242&page=1&start=0&ndsp=20