i5 6300HQ or i7 6700HQ for VMWARE?

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Switchfoot221

Switchfoot221

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Dec 25, 2014
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Hello,

I'm going to college in September to study IT. We were told that we will need a laptop with some relatively beefy specs (preferably 4 core, 12-16GB RAM, SSD), and that we would be running virtual machines using VMWARE, and that we'll likely be running multiple workstations alongside a server at the same time. Now I'm not that experienced when it comes to laptops, but at the moment I'm conflicted. My question is if an i5 6300HQ CPU would be good enough to run multiple workstations and a server, or if I'll be needing an i7 6700HQ. Obviously I know the i7 will perform better, but would it be a necessity?

I'm looking at a couple laptops right now, the HP Omen 15-ax010nd and the Lenovo Ideapad Y700-15ISK.

The specs of these laptops are as follows:

HP Omen:
i5 6300HQ
2x4GB DDR4 RAM @ 2133mhz (2 slots)
128 GB M2 Sata SSD and a 1TB 7200RPM HDD
GTX 960m

Lenovo:
i7 6700HQ
1x8GB DDR4 RAM @ 2133mhz (2 slots)
128GB SSD (Not M2 I think) and a 1TB 5400RPM HDD
GTX 960m

Both have RAM that is upgrade able. No matter which laptop I'll buy I'll make sure to put 16GB of RAM in there. So no worries there.

I kind of really like the way the HP looks in terms of aesthetics, but obviously specs always come first. Both are around the same price. The only reason I'm really conflicted is because I prefer the way the HP looks by a lot, and because of the M2 Sata SSD and 7200RPM HDD.

Thank you in advance
 
Solution
azaran
You'll want the i7. Both have 4 cores, but the i7 is going to be able to make use of its multithreading with the VMs. Having dealt with VMs on both i5's and i7's, I would never intentionally do it on an i5 ever again. On top of that, the i7 is overall a faster CPU with a higher base clock rate and higher turbo clock rate.

The drives for the Lenovo aren't as fast as the HP, which is a bummer, but really I'd recommend picking up a 500GB SSD to replace out the 128GB and run your VM's on that. The I/O speed on it makes a world of difference. Then just use the 1TB for the none speed related data storage (Movies, documents, etc).
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azaran

azaran

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Feb 17, 2010
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You'll want the i7. Both have 4 cores, but the i7 is going to be able to make use of its multithreading with the VMs. Having dealt with VMs on both i5's and i7's, I would never intentionally do it on an i5 ever again. On top of that, the i7 is overall a faster CPU with a higher base clock rate and higher turbo clock rate.

The drives for the Lenovo aren't as fast as the HP, which is a bummer, but really I'd recommend picking up a 500GB SSD to replace out the 128GB and run your VM's on that. The I/O speed on it makes a world of difference. Then just use the 1TB for the none speed related data storage (Movies, documents, etc).
 
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Solution
Switchfoot221

Switchfoot221

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Dec 25, 2014
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I think I'll go for the Lenovo. After all, I can always upgrade the RAM/SSD/HDD, I can't upgrade the CPU. So probably a better choice. Thanks!
 
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azaran

azaran

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Feb 17, 2010
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Some CPU's you can upgrade, but you'd have to check the socket type to make sure. I just did that in my Dell a while back and upgrade from an i5 to an i7. Couldn't hut to check but... eh really if you can have it right off and not have to worry about, do it. Its rarely worth swapping them out. I did it mostly to see if I could extend my laptops life with a now $150 part. Would have been MUCH more when I got the laptop.
 
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