Do we need an i7?

[IamTimTech]

I am trying to help my boss decide if he needs an i7 or if his i5 will continue to do just fine. He is on the 1150 socket. He is experiencing sluggishness and is going to move to an SSD OS drive and a redundant raid for storage, and I think he should get an i7 while he disagrees. He has 8GB currently and is going to move to 16GB of RAM. Here is his work load:

Quick books
Several Spread Sheets
20 Tabs Internet Explorer (on average)
20 Tabs Chrome (on everage)

After typing that out I don't feel he NEEDS an i7, but now I am just curious if anyone feels he would benefit?

 

[patrick47018]

An i7 would be nice but is likely unnecessary. The SSD and 16GB of RAM should be sufficient for what he is doing.

 

[IamTimTech]

Okie dokie, I figured. Just thought I would get others' opinions.

 

[atmos929]

It all depends on what he uses his PC for... Applications like video/image editting benefit from multi threads from the i7. Anything else is just fine on an i5 (even in gaming, for today's titles) and you won't see any big difference between i7 or i5.

 

[patrick47018]

Okie dokie, I figured. Just thought I would get others' opinions.

Good luck, I'm sure he will enjoy the SSD speed. What SSD are you getting if I may ask?

 

[IamTimTech]

Well the above listed workload is all he does, my boss isn't a gamer or video editor lol. I think the i5 will be fine.

 

[theonerm2]

Well the above listed workload is all he does, my boss isn't a gamer or video editor lol. I think the i5 will be fine.

Even the Core i5 is overkill for his workload. The sluggishness is probably coming from having tons of tabs open in his web browsers. That eats up the RAM. An SSD along with more RAM should eliminate the sluggishness.

 

[IamTimTech]

Sweet, everyone is in agreement.

 

[synphul]

Another ditto for the i5. Those are considered 'office' tasks and by comparison is a light load. Even with multiple tabs open, it's a light load. I'm wondering what kind of hard drive he has, if that isn't the reason for the sluggishness. My old c2d 8400 dual core 3ghz with 8gb ddr2 ram and 7200rpm hard drive handled over 80 tabs in chrome and well over 130 tabs at the same time in firefox just fine with 0 sluggishness. Spread sheets and quickbooks aren't very intensive either, but the additional ram may be a slight boost. The ssd may help more.

 

[IamTimTech]

I am guessing a 1TB WD Blue just like in the rest of our machines. It also doesn't help that he NEVER turns off his machine which drives me nuts. I mean NEVER.

 

[synphul]

Lol, I never turn mine off either. Unless I have to run a software update or something, my machine usually goes weeks without restarting.

 

[IamTimTech]

Okie dokie, I figured. Just thought I would get others' opinions.

Good luck, I'm sure he will enjoy the SSD speed. What SSD are you getting if I may ask?

He likes Intel a lot so he will probably get a 530 or 730. We've been really busy at the shop so his project has gone by the way side but we were actually talking about this yesterday.