I7-4800MQ vs i7-4900MQ - please help me make up my mind

[shamo9]

I'm finalising my build for a Vortex IV and weighing up whether to put the extra money toward the 4900MQ. I've looked at comparisons between them and they appear to offer similar performance: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4900MQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4800MQ. Has anyone encountered them before and willing to help me decide? I'm at the top end of my budget so I wouldn't want to spend more unless its really value for money. The laptop is gonna be primarily used for video editing for the next 3 years so I want to make sure I get the best compromise between performance and value.

As a sidenote, I was wondering whether I should stick with the Kingston HyperX 3k or go with the slightly more expensive Intel 550 SSD. I'm told Intel SSD's are a bit more reliable and faster. I'll be using the SSD as my primary HDD for the OS and major software, with the second one a 750GB Scorpio for all the heavylifting of files.

Basically, am I really going to notice a bump in performance from the Intel SSD and i7-4900MQ over the Kingston Hyperx 3k SSD and the i7-4800MQ?

 

[mantadog]

Intel is more reliable and is a bit faster in some aspects so if that is important to you vs the extra cost then go for it. I would go for the intel no question, they are a quality product and I would pay for it if it were my build.

On the CPU side I would say no, the 17-4900QM is not worth the money. It amounts to £150 for an extra 3.7% performance boost which is just not worth it. I mean if it took 4 hours to render a video file on the 4900qm it would take about 7 minutes longer on a 4800qm. Extend that to 24 hours and we are talking 45 minutes faster so really you can probably live without it.

 

[shamo9]

Cheers for the advice. You seem to be quite familiar with the demands of video editing? Do you think 16GB should be enough for the RAM hungry After Effects CS6? I'm told 22-24GB is the sweet spot for After Effects, with 12GB being the minimum. I don't use it that much though so I think I'll see how I get on with 16GB. It's quite annoying that PC Specialist don't offer 24GB as well as 16GB and 32Gb because that would be perfect. Going from 16GB to 32GB is quite the jump in price.

 

[mantadog]

I don't really do video editing, apart from the odd light job, so I would hardly call myself an expert. How much RAM you will need depends on the type of work you are doing, as with everything in computers it is never as simple as "oh yes you use Photoshop, you will need xGB of RAM" Normally I would say 16GB of RAM is plenty even for some fairly serious video work, but if you work with complicated projects and need more RAM for whatever reason because your on a laptop it is harder to upgrade. If you were in the market for a desktop, I would just suggest trying 16GB of RAM and see how you go because it would be much easier to upgrade yourself if needed.

What I would advise is looking for people who do similar work to you and see how much they require, if it's north of 16GB then you could always call PCS directly and see if they can help you out with making it up to the 20-24GB of RAM you need, sometimes they can help if you ask them directly. I know people get crazy rigs built from time to time, the configurator lets you have only 4 HDD's but I seen a post a while back while we were discussing a new case about a guy getting like 8 HDD's or something like that, so it can be done.

 

[dogbot]

If you have a real need for speed, you will get a desktop. Having said that, the power consumption requirements of processors have reduced to the extent that a laptop can now have a processing power approaching that of a desktop without heating problems. First configure the laptop fairly comfortably within your price range, not forgetting the small things like silver warranty and carrybag (if needed). There might be other considerations such as a 2.5" USB external drive for backup or storing finished projects. Now that you have spent a small fortune on some ill conceived idea that it is going to turn you into a top hollywood film producer you can either call it a day or spend even more money for very little return.

There is a line above which the price of a processor or graphics card increases out of proportion to the increase in performance. Only you can define that line. Your cpuboss link refers to passmark scores for comparison so here are the scores used http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html They are average scores from everyone who takes the test and gives the relative performance between processors. However, that is not the end of the story. Click on one of the list of processors and scroll down to the last 5 test results. That will give some indication (but not much) of the spread of results. Usually there is some poor sod who bought a cheap and badly designed laptop whose performance has suffered thus dragging down the averages. For example, the average for my i7-3740QM is (currently) 8577. My test result was 9204. Yes, a good result but the same trend is true for other processors. I leave you to work out which one to get.

An SSD is only beneficial when the data access rate needs to be greater than can be supplied by an HDD. This only occurs on booting, when Windows configures itself and loads some programs and processes to memory. It also happens when loading large programs such as a video editing program. At all other times the data access is small and not significant within the context of editing where all the disc access will be to the data drives. I do have an SSD but mainly because they are a convenient size for just the OS and programs and for backing up as a disc image. I have also used a 750 Gb SSHD hybrid which, for all practical purposes boots the same as an SSD.