Processor recommendation

[embarc451]

Hello, I currently have a 4GB i5 Surface Pro 3. I do web development and use Virtual Box daily. Needless to say, it's a dog! But I've taken to the Surface so I'm looking to upgrade to the Surface Pro 4.

Definitely a minimum of 8GB of memory this time. Should I opt for the i5 or the i7? Does the Skylake feel noticeably faster over the Haswell i5 (especially given that I'll have 2x the memory and 2x the Flash storage)? Is that a meaningful upgrade?

Or should I opt for the i7? I'm not necessarily looking for the fastest option. Obviously, that's a loaded i7 with 16GB of memory. I'm looking for something that's noticeably faster than my 4GB i5, so it's a worthwhile upgrade.

I do no 3D or video work: I only have an IDE and a virtual machine running. That's it!

Thanks everyone.

 

[theveterans]

You'll benefit more from the NVMe SSD than the CPU upgrade. Then again, both upgrades should give noticeable performance. Just don't expect night and day difference.

 

[GreyFox7]

What's the size and type of your VM?
CPU, Memory, & Disk utilization stats with VM and dev environment running?
Which things are dog slow?

 

[No_ax_to_grind]

You'll benefit more from the NVMe SSD than the CPU upgrade. Then again, both upgrades should give noticeable performance. Just don't expect night and day difference.

This. I went from an SP3 i5/256/8GB to an SP3 i7/512/8gb to an SP4 i5/512/16GB with that last number being solely for my VMs. The i5/512 part being a concession to money and true need versus want. I regularly run VMware workstation VMs running Win8 Enterprise R2 with WebsFear 8.5, DB2, Tivoli and application software in a composite VM and don't start up WAS until I've started the VM. Startup on the new SSDs is fast and the VMs run very fast.