Powerful processor, more RAM or faster HDD - what's best?

[jchivers]

I'm interested in the Forum's opinions on the best way to spend my budget. Most of the options are pretty clear cut but I'd like to understand the relative merits of the CPU, RAM and HDD performance.

After 35 years in the workplace I'm going to be a University student for the first time and I need a laptop. The vast majority of usage will be running MS Office applications with an emphasis on Access and Excel, but I shall also be using specialised statistical software, eg GenStat and SAS, and Visual Fortran to build forecasting models. I'm told that I shall occasionally have to compose multi-media presentations but I don't know what software they will recommend for that yet.

Choosing 8Gb RAM instead of 4Gb adds between £27 and £38 to the cost (why isn't it consistent?) and specifying the 500Gb Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid instead of a 320Gb Western Digital Scorpio Black adds between £36 and £47.

So I could have an i7-2720QM with the smaller RAM and HDD for almost the same price as an i5-2540M with the extras. Which represents the better value? I have built myself a little pivot table to play around with the permutations of CPU etc but it's really hard to choose when I don't undertsand the relative benefits of the features.

So, any kind hearted gurus out there with some advice for me?

 

[Dealmaster13]

Ignore the upgrade inconsistency, although do note that you're upgrading from 2GB for a start.

The Momentus XT has an SSD used for chaching; see a partial review of it here.

The 2310M, 2410M and 2630QM are considered to be best value for money; the 2720QM follows closely. You can compare processors here. The 2630QM is generally one of the more popular purchases at PCS due to their relatively low upgrade costs. Your specialist software may or may not benefit from multiple cores provided by the 2630QM and 2720QM; they're definitely great future proofing choices at least.

 

[onlynik]

Also you shout get you office software from software4students, once you've matriculated, this will save you a budle. For the prenentations, I'd guess you'll be using Powerpoint.

What sort of budget are you working too? This will help with the choice of laptop, I'm guessing you're not going ot be gaming on it, so you won't need a huge graphics card.

 

[jchivers]

onlynik

This is the base specification I have in mind:

Chassis & Display
Enigma III 520: 15.6" Matte HD LED Backlit Widescreen (1366x768)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-2540M (2.60GHz) 3MB Cache
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
nVIDIA® GeForce® GT 520M - 1GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
320GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD3200BEKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Price: £643.00 including VAT and delivery.

My budget is £700 (with a little bit of stretchability) and the dilemma is do I spend another £96 to upgrade the CPU to an i7-2720QM (which would really be my limit - just don't tell my husband) or just £84 extra and have double the RAM and a better HDD? As you correctly surmised, gaming potential is not an issue for me but I've been advised to have a dedicated GPU rather than rely on the Intel integrated graphics for image processing and the multi-media application.

 

[onlynik]

Personally I'd take the i7 4GB ram and the 500GB momentus drive
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2630QM (2.00GHz) 6MB Cache
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)
Memory - Hard Disk
500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

along with the rest of you selections comes to £684, the reasonig is it's a lot easier to buy another 4GB RAM module if you need it than upgrade the HD.

The Seagate® Momentus® XT drive is a solid state hybrid with Seagate® Adaptive Memory™, enabling the drive to deliver SSD-like performance along with higher capacity. Designed with high-performance core components on an innovative platform, the Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive consists of a 7200-RPM hard drive with 32MB of cache, 4GB of solid state SLC NAND flash storage and Adaptive Memory technology.

Obviously if you want to drop the price a little, then a noraml 500 GB HD would be fine.

Hope this help.

 

[jchivers]

Dealmaster13

I can assure you my pricing matrix is based on 4Gb RAM.

Thanks for the YouTube video link: it was very impressive and that improved performance is exactly why I'm in a quandary. My instinct tells me that I'll benefit more from the speed advantages of the HDD than the CPU - but I simply don't know enough about this sort of thing to be sure.

 

[jchivers]

onlynik

That's just the sort of response I was hoping for, thank you very much. There are just so many possible permutations of CPU/RAM/HDD within my budget so I'm hoping to receive opinions from a wide range of Forum members.

 

[Dealmaster13]

Although you obviously don't need the graphics card, might I strongly suggest you to consider the Enigma III 540 for its much sought-after 1080p screen.

I hate to say it, but I don't believe the 520 particularly differentiates itself from other laptops on the market (which of course predominantly have a lesser 1366x768 screen resolution).

 

[jchivers]

Dealmaster13

The Enigma III 540 blows my budget: it adds over £100 to the cost of my base specification and I could only afford to have the i5-2520M CPU instead of the i5-2540M. Personally, I'm not a fan of glossy screens so the matte screen on the Enigma III 520 is actually an advantage to me because it would cost extra on the Enigma III 540 if I selected a matte screen, making it even less affordable.

 

[jchivers]

Personally I'd take the i7 4GB ram and the 500GB momentus drive
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2630QM (2.00GHz) 6MB Cache
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)
Memory - Hard Disk
500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

Well onlynik, this is the specification I have ordered today so rep for you!