Is an i7 necessary?

[kennysarmy]

Looking at my budget for next year.

 

Previously we've had two suites of i7's mainly used for the IT curriculum.

 

The i7's I've been quoted for come in at £609, and the i5's at £497 - so over two suites this is a saving of around £7,000

 

I'm putting in 16Gb RAM in these as I want them to last the full 5 year warranty.

 

Any thoughts?

[SHimmer45]

we mostly use i3 around the site if there is a bit more money to spend then i5. (with an ssd in both where possible)

on the flip side if there very little money i would be happy to use a modern pentium DC again with an ssd

i would say that for the vast majority of uses in school an i7 is going to be under used.

[localzuk]

I'd say no. i5 is more than enough. I'm even considering moving our spec down to i3 for student machines now since they've become so much better.

[Norphy]

Frankly, I'd find it pretty hard to justify putting anything other than an i3 into a standard classroom machine. The vast majority of them won't be doing anything more than Office, maybe Adobe CC or even more rarely Visual Studio. An i3 will cope with that.

[Passat1983ICTech]

hi there

 

witch I7 and witch I5 are you look at it if this was me look at what students and staff will be doing the pc's have you had a look at ict direct there are some good deals on there

[witch]

hi there

 

witch I7 and witch I5 are you look at it if this was me look at what students and staff will be doing the pc's have you had a look at ict direct there are some good deals on there

 

Did you call?

Think you might mean "which" :)

[NB9457]

From how I've seen student machines get used, definitely over kill. Although as you say the machines are due for a refresh, you could definitely squeeze another couple of years from them, even the first gen i7s are still more than capable!

[Passat1983ICTech]

it must be a mid week thing going on is it Friday yet :-)

[localzuk]

From how I've seen student machines get used, definitely over kill. Although as you say the machines are due for a refresh, you could definitely squeeze another couple of years from them, even the first gen i7s are still more than capable!

Absolutely. My technician's PC is a first gen i7, and it is still working well!

[newpersn]

Im going to say overkill with an i5. We still use 2nd gen i3 with SSD and its good enough for the kids to use.

 

Our photography/DT graphics computers have 6th Gen i5 with 16GB ram and 1TB HDD and that's fine for them. (bit over kill but wanted to make sure they last 5+ years)

[DJ-1701]

The i7's although lovely I would say are a little overkill unless they are going to play Games on them.

The i5's are nice and speedy, I do find the i3's a little on the sluggish side in Laptops, but ok in Desktops but it's better with the i5's IMHO.

At the Primary I try to get i5's with SSDs as they mostly use laptops. The i5's should be fine.

[LeMarchand]

Absolutely. My technician's PC is a first gen i7, and it is still working well!

 

*Looks at AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800/2500Mhz and weeps*

 

Im going to say overkill with an i5. We still use 2nd gen i3 with SSD and its good enough for the kids to use.

 

Our photography/DT graphics computers have 6th Gen i5 with 16GB ram and 1TB HDD and that's fine for them. (bit over kill but wanted to make sure they last 5+ years)

 

I'd agree with this, unless they're really using the machines for intensive processing, why not "just" i3? (With SSD).

[Norphy]

FWIW, my primary machine at work is a laptop with a Core i5-4278U CPU which is a dual core hyperthreaded CPU running at 2.6GHz. Really, the only difference between that CPU and its desktop i3 brethren (I'm looking at the i3-4130u) is that the mobile i5 has turboboost (It can boost up to 3.1GHz if required), the i3 is stuck at 3.4GHz and the i5 can address less RAM (The mobile CPU can use up to 16GB, the desktop one can address 32GB).

 

The mobile i5 does have a better graphics card built into it but the desktop parts both use the same one so that shouldn't be a factor.

 

In terms of cores, threads, cache and bus speed they're the same. The mobile i5 copes with the workload I put on it without breaking a sweat.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Norphy

[HTCPCP]

We tend to only buy i5s now for all machines, unless we require something for a specific purpose (e.g. we are upgrading the machines used heavily for Adobe CC to i7 and 16GB RAM, with a 240GB SSD in them). The only machines to buck the trend, are our machines, which have been i7s for the last few years, simply because we got a really good deal when buying them.

 

i3s would be fine, however how we see it, is we expect an i5 to be useable at a reasonable speed for a year or 2 longer than the i3 machine, and for the extra outlay, it makes sense.

[ITJS2015]

I5s are more than enough got get your moneys worth, i3s are okay but you have to look at your software which you are buying in the future and what you have now. Especially with Adobe being a big package I don't think it would run great on a I3 4GB Ram

 

Standard machines now are coming with 8GB ram with i5 processor so I would not be scared buying the i5s as it will be money well spent. Just make sure that you get the latest generation on the chipset as it does make a difference

[NB9457]

I5s are more than enough got get your moneys worth, i3s are okay but you have to look at your software which you are buying in the future and what you have now. Especially with Adobe being a big package I don't think it would run great on a I3 4GB Ram

 

Standard machines now are coming with 8GB ram with i5 processor so I would not be scared buying the i5s as it will be money well spent. Just make sure that you get the latest generation on the chipset as it does make a difference

Just keep in mind if you're still using Win7 and don't plan to migrate to Win10, the latest 7th Series Intel processors don't support Windows 7 or Windows 8 (8.1 is supported IIRC)

[kennysarmy]

hi there

 

witch I7 and witch I5 are you look at it if this was me look at what students and staff will be doing the pc's have you had a look at ict direct there are some good deals on there

 

The various processors are:

 

Intel Core i3-6100 Processor 3M Cache 3.70 GHz 2 Cores 4 Threads 14NM 51w

Intel Core i5-6400 Processor 6M Cache 2.70 GHz 4 Cores 4 Threads 14NM 65w

Intel Core i7-6700 Processor 8MB Cache 3.40 GHz 4 Cores 8 Threads 14NM 65w

[localzuk]

The 6400 is a very capable CPU. I'd go with that to be honest.

[Passat1983ICTech]

I would go for the I5 if it was me there not going to be doing much with this it bit over kill but if you are using adobe CS and other stuff it will work fine

[FragglePete]

i3's across the board here; however, in the computing rooms I upped the spec last year to i5's with 8Gb purely to support running Virtual Machines with Virtual PC. Elsewhere, I would still keep with i3 for day to day stuff.

 

Pete

[gshaw]

Only need i7 for video editing, games design etc. i3 or i5 (if you can afford an extra few pounds per machine) is plenty.

 

Just make sure they have SSD and not HDD, that's where the performance gain is at.

[kennysarmy]

Thanks for all the replies and input.

 

I think we'll go for i5 in place of the i7's and save some bucks.

 

Cheers

[Koldov]

*Looks at AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800/2500Mhz and weeps*

 

Feeling that! I see your 4800 and raise (lower) you...

 

 

I feel a poll coming on....

 

Good job I don't do much more than browse Edugeek on it!

[Pudding]

We mainly use 8 or 9 year old PC's with Pentium Core 2 duo processors. The newest PC's in school are 4 years old and have i3's. We have no plans to replace anything this year, next year, the year after, or indeed ever.......

 

This probably doesn't help you, but I will say that the i3's run pretty well.

[pete]

i5 and SSD if it's actually going to be doing heavy lifting.

 

i3 and SSD otherwise.

 

Even in AutoCad, Photoshop and Solidworks, the kids don't create things complex enough to tax the systems.