I5 vs I7 for Music Video Editing - Sony Vegas

I'm looking at this one: i5-3210M Processor (2.5 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3.1 GHz). It says to add an i7 its 150$ more is it worth it?

Due to the i7's hyper threading, and Vegas being able t us it. Yes. You will see better performance from the i7 than the i5. Is the performance worth the $150? It depends on you, and your budget.

My budget can hold it. But i would rather use the 150 for a monitor. So the i5 is fine for Vegas to render videos under 20mins? Also. Previewing on my current Laptop I had to set it to DRAFT quality. Can I preview it on Good with an i5.

This topic has been moved from the section CPU & Components to section Laptops & Notebooks by Mousemonkey

Here's where it gets confusing. Laptop CPU's are very different to desktop CPU's. For instance, i5's on desktops have 4 physical cores, while i7's have 4 physical + 4 Hyperthreaded core's (simplification, I know).

On Laptops, an i5 is a dual core with hyperthreading.
http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/processor-com...

An i7 is either a dual or quad core with Hyperthreading depending on which one you get.
http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/processor-com...
http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/processor-com...

Unless you need the portability of a laptop, I would get a desktop to be honest. Its simpler and easier to get the performance you need, at a respectable price.

If both are dual core but have around the same clock speeds, your performance difference will be about the same as what these 2 have in multi-threaded applications:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/404?vs=289

However, the difference b/w a dual core HT and quad core will be similar to:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/363?vs=289

But the difference b/w a dual core athlon and a dual core i5 would be like:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/190?vs=289

Which would be around 36%.

So i think you'd still need a quad core, => i7.

i know i used a core i3 in place of an i5 but that was because of the core counts.

Which laptop are you using and which do you plan to buy? maybe you can find them in anand tech's mobile benchmarks.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Mobile/137

For example of a mobile Athlon II and mobile core i7:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/336?vs=384

Yeah he's right really. I was going to suggest this but since you were particular on a laptop, i didn't bring it up.

It'll be much cheaper to build a desktop that'll do your work for you. Also, does Sony Vegas support hardware acceleration? Like CUDA or OpenCL? Or even QuickSync? You'd benefit greatly by adding a GPU if it does.