Can benchmarks of laptop versus desktop cpu guide my choice of laptop?

[Bruno Vincent]

Will the performance of a laptop with cpu benchmark similar to it's desktop counterpart be about the same?

I'm thinking of getting a laptop with an i5 8250u and according to benchmarks the performance of it's cpu is nearly the same as with the i5 7500 desktop counterpart:


http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i5_7500-669-vs-intel_core_i5_8250u-772

Will these 2 machines will have similar performance given they have the same amount of RAM and same or no graphic card?

However from this bench, the i5 7500 seems to be 26% faster? :

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7500/m338266vs3648

I'm going out of my mind now...I don't game, just want something fast enough for work!

 

[Obakasama]

Depends what you mean by 'similar'. Direct spec comparison: https://ark.intel.com/compare/124967,97123
There's some distrust of synthetic benchmarks because they're very specific in what they test.

The simplest thing to do in my opinion is see if there are benchmarks for the applications you use as they would be more indicative of performance. The question is what sort of work do you do which requires you to look at CPU performance?

 

[dudeman509]

The 4-core i5u processors will be plenty fast enough for most things you'd do with a laptop. They have low base speeds, but turbo up to pretty respectable speeds when under load.

We use 2-core i7u's at work, and most people are fine with the power for general office tasks, web browsing, and productivity apps. For those that aren't, they have 4-core i7 laptops.

 

[Bruno Vincent]

Depends what you mean by 'similar'. Direct spec comparison: https://ark.intel.com/compare/124967,97123
There's some distrust of synthetic benchmarks because they're very specific in what they test.

The simplest thing to do in my opinion is see if there are benchmarks for the applications you use as they would be more indicative of performance. The question is what sort of work do you do which requires you to look at CPU performance?

Kind of work I do is web design, sometimes Adobe illustrator and large files, but rarely, also use Drupal Dev Desktop and my run a virtual host in the future.

I already bought and built an i5 8400 with 16 gigs or RAM and to be honest...my 2010 or so laptop b950 with 6 gigs or RAM and SSD performs nearly the same as the desktop, although the desktop can open 300 tabs with Adobe open and the same time and silly stuff like that, actually I had to push it real hard to get to 16 gigs or RAM!

So I'm just wondering if an i5 8250u with SSD would be a good compromise, wondering if the performance would be equivalent to a desktop i5 7400 or i5 7500 or so, I could live with that, no gaming ever.

 

[Bruno Vincent]

PS. I have OCD, really...;( And all these choices are really messing with my head...2 months of agony with 10 000 options now...overwhelmed!

And to make things even more confusing, the benchmarks call results like battleship, UFO, my laptop is a raft they say, and desktop a destroyer or something...but I don;t see near that difference!

 

[Obakasama]

Userbenchmark, like a lot of benchmarks I'm aware of, are really more gaming orientated. The facts show the potential maximum performance for things of a particular nature (at least it's how I consider them). Those labels are more gaming orientated too as far as I'm concerned. And sometimes benchmarks are academic. There's a difference in test conditions and on paper, but actual usage doesn't necessarily reflect it (the differences being minimal to our perception).

You only take a long time to consider the purchase you want to make because you want to make the right decision for you; nothing wrong with that. (I spent months planning out my recent upgrade.)

The desktop is probably better for multitasking than a laptop. Though one comparison you could consider making, dependent on workload, is the old laptop and the proposed new one. Or at least their respective CPUs. Seems like Adobe will be the most resource intensive application, not familiar with the others.

I find the additional RAM is fairly crucial so the software doesn't run out of RAM and crashes.