Anyone happier after switching to i5 from i7?

[kristalsoldier]

Trying to remember everything, been messing with it quite a bit. The battery thread is on this site.
Installed Battery Bar Pro to use the discharge rate as a reference point, at idle with screen brightness set to 25%, discharge rate is 1832 to 2090 mw, that is about as low as I can get, this is with wifi and Bluetooth on with surface pro mouse active, surface type keyboard attached. also about the same with airplane mode on.
Onedrive paused.
Stopped indexing, disabled windows search service
Disabled start-up tasks that I don't use
Turn off notifications
Optimize drive
Run CCleaner
Run Powercfg options, look for problems

If I think of something else, I will add.

Wow! That's a lot of stuff that you turn off!!!

 

[JH99]

You won't notice any discernible difference in everyday use between the i5 and i7.
But the battery life is deceiving, I ran CPU and GPU benchmark testing with i5 and i7 side by side and the i5 used more battery for the same test and ran hotter at the same time than the i7.
I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't have both machines sitting in front of me. Yes, I spent hours on it but I wanted to know.

 

[kristalsoldier]

You won't notice any discernible difference in everyday use between the i5 and i7.
But the battery life is deceiving, I ran CPU and GPU benchmark testing with i5 and i7 side by side and the i5 used more battery for the same test and ran hotter at the same time than the i7.
I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't have both machines sitting in front of me. Yes, I spent hours on it but I wanted to know.

How is that possible? Rather, why is this the case?

 

[JH99]

Takes less time to run the same CPU operation on the i7, plus i5 has to work harder, more heat.
GPU is a big heat generator, i5 works harder on same graphic operation, graphic intensive operations generate more heat than CPU calls in my testing. i7 handles graphics more efficiently.
I understand this is counter-intuitive but I ran the two machines side by side -- same tests, monitoring temps and battery discharge, same setup on both.
In my opinion, the average user will not notice any difference so one might want to spend less on the i5.

Also, you need to make sure you have a good i7, my first i7 ran hotter and had shorter battery life.

 

[malberttoo]

Takes less time to run the same CPU operation on the i7, plus i5 has to work harder, more heat.
GPU is a big heat generator, i5 works harder on same graphic operation, graphic intensive operations generate more heat than CPU calls in my testing. i7 handles graphics more efficiently.
I understand this is counter-intuitive but I ran the two machines side by side, same test, monitoring temps and battery discharge, same setup on both.
In my opinion, the average user will not notice any difference so one might want to spend less on the i5.

Also, you need to make sure you have a good i7, my first i7 ran hotter and had shorter battery life.

Interesting insight, thanks.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Takes less time to run the same CPU operation on the i7, plus i5 has to work harder, more heat.
GPU is a big heat generator, i5 works harder on same graphic operation, graphic intensive operations generate more heat than CPU calls in my testing. i7 handles graphics more efficiently.
I understand this is counter-intuitive but I ran the two machines side by side -- same tests, monitoring temps and battery discharge, same setup on both.
In my opinion, the average user will not notice any difference so one might want to spend less on the i5.

Also, you need to make sure you have a good i7, my first i7 ran hotter and had shorter battery life.

Thanks for the explanation. It is indeed counter-intuitive.

 

[FlySwatter]

I think the majority opinion is that the I5/8GB is the biggest bang for your buck, and I agree with this. If you can comfortably afford an I7, and just want one (like me), then go that route (as I did). As has been stated above, there is a GPU advantage with the I7, and future updates could always (conceivably) increase the performance gap between the I5 and I7 versions of the SP3. For most folks, I would recommend the I5/8GB.

 

[dman27]

Had the I5 and upgraded to I7. Everything seems snappier on the I7 model.

 

[benjitek]

...the i5 might run cooler...

Probably i5 is a safer bet, the overheating issues are apparently real. By the time you're ready for another upgrade, things will have cooled-off ;-)

 

[Len J]

I wanted 512gb of storage.

Len

 

[kristalsoldier]

I think the majority opinion is that the I5/8GB is the biggest bang for your buck, and I agree with this. If you can comfortably afford an I7, and just want one (like me), then go that route (as I did). As has been stated above, there is a GPU advantage with the I7, and future updates could always (conceivably) increase the performance gap between the I5 and I7 versions of the SP3. For most folks, I would recommend the I5/8GB.

For me, the i5/ 4GB option is probably the best in terms of bang-for-the-buck. I think there is a difference between an "intensive" user and a "power" user. And, each type of user assesses the question of bang-for-the-buck differently. The former uses the machine for long hours, but does not max out the specs. The latter does both. For the latter, the i5/8GB is the best bet which is also why often - going by some of the threads here - you will find i5/ 8GB users thinking about the i7 version and folk who have bought the i7 version speculating about moving one step down to the i5/ 8GB version. But the larger number of users are "intensive" users and not "power" users. And, I think MS knows this - in fact, I would speculate that this has been - if you think about it - the nature of users of the Windows OS traditionally.

 

[FlySwatter]

For me, the i5/ 4GB option is probably the best in terms of bang-for-the-buck. I think there is a difference between an "intensive" user and a "power" user. And, each type of user assesses the question of bang-for-the-buck differently. The former uses the machine for long hours, but does not max out the specs. The latter does both. For the latter, the i5/8GB is the best bet which is also why often - going by some of the threads here - you will find i5/ 8GB users thinking about the i7 version and folk who have bought the i7 version speculating about moving one step down to the i5/ 8GB version. But the larger number of users are "intensive" users and not "power" users. And, I think MS knows this - in fact, I would speculate that this has been - if you think about it - the nature of users of the Windows OS traditionally.

I think when comparing the two I5 models you are getting into the "splitting hairs" department. $300 to double both RAM and SSD is a good deal and well worth the investment, IMO, and therefore meets my personal "bang for the buck" threshold", plus giving you future proofing for both memory and storage. On this point, it's just a difference of opinion, with neither of us being wrong.