Which specs are important to run Android Studio smoothly?

[flo.walther90]

I am trying to understand on which parts I can save money if I only want to use my laptop for Android programming (and use the Android Studio emulator).

I could already figure out that an SSD and good RAM are mandatory. What about the CPU? Can Android Studio / Gradle leverage quad-core in a way that it makes it better than dual-core? Are there any benefits over picking i7 or i5 over i3? What about GPU? Does that matter at all?
And should I use Linux over Windows?

Maybe someone can shed some light on this because it's very difficult to find some explanations rather than "more is better".

 

[rgd1101]

more is better. what budget?

 

[volkgren]

You can find the minimum specs on the android studio download page. https://developer.android.com/studio/#Requirements

If you are looking to save money, I'm sure an i3 would run it just fine. The i3 has 4 threads and minus the HQ and 8th-gen mobile CPUs, a lot of i5 and i7 in laptops are also dual-cores with hyper-threading.

There doesn't appear to be any graphical requirements except for screen resolution.

 

[flo.walther90]

Thank you for your answer! The problem is I just don't understand how CPU cores relate to Android Studio performance! It seems that Android Studio and Gradle can't utilize multiple cores.