i5 vs i7

I've been reading up on i5 vs i7 and trying to find Lightroom and PhotoShop benchmarks. From what I've seen, clock for clock there is little difference. Does anyone know of a thorough comparison or have any personal experience?

I think that sending the $100 difference (3570k vs 3770k) on an SSD for the Lightroom catalog would likely give a bigger performance boost.

Since both are quad core and photoshop/lightroom doesnt really benefit from hyperthreading you wont see much of a difference between the i5 and i7. If you work on video you might see a slight increase due to the cache on the processor. Get the i5, lots of ram and a fast hard drive.

i5 is great for photography, i7 is better for things like video rendering. I got the i7 because the difference in price wasn't significant to me, and it's faster in some situations.

In terms of ROI, your lenses are your best investment, then your 5D3 body, then your PC.
The $100 difference between CPU's in all honesty is not worth worrying about, nor the $100 that you would spend on an SSD. Easy to say, but just spend the $$ and enjoy the performance.

PC technology today is unbelievably cheap for the value delivered. $100 for a MoBo, S200 for a CPU, $!80 for 32GB RAM, $100 for an SSD. Killer performance for the $$ spent. The SSD is by far the best "virtual" performance per $$ you will see.

For Lightrooom performance, put the Catalog on the SSD and make sure that you read this article, and especially take note about the Camera Raw Cache.

Again, since the price is not that much different, I got the i7 for gaming. I'm not a big gamer, but the ones I do play I want to work without stuttering or pausing, so I went for the best. Also a good graphics card instead of integrated graphics. 6gb of ram is plenty for LR4 and PSE, but more never hurts. I didn't opt for the SSD just because of the added cost. $400 to add a 250gb just didn't seem to be a necessity for me. A 7200 rpm hard disk will do all I ask of it, and the 17" Asus laptop I bought has space for an SSD to be added in the future if the need should arise. If you are using any peripherals get it with USB3 ports.

martino wrote in post #14962380
In terms of ROI, your lenses are your best investment, then PC technology today is unbelievably cheap for the value delivered. $100 for a MoBo, S200 for a CPU, $!80 for 32GB RAM, $100 for an SSD. Killer performance for the $$ spent. The SSD is by far the best "virtual" performance per $$ you will see.

For Lightrooom performance, put the Catalog on the SSD and make sure that you read this article, and especially take note about the Camera Raw Cache.

Not sure where you are getting an SSD for $100. It was a $400 addition with my Asus laptop and only added 250gb.

Preeb wrote in post #14963501
Not sure where you are getting an SSD for $100.

There are many great SSD deals in play right now. I personally would only look at the top tier manufactures and stay away from the second tier.

Well. let's see ....

Samsung 830 128GB for $99 at Amazon

Sandisk Extreme 128GB for $97 at Amazon

One Day Sale on the Sandisk Extreme 240GB for $155 (with promo code EMCYTZT2188 ) at Newegg

martino wrote in post #14963765
There are many great SSD deals in play right now. I personally would only look at the top tier manufactures and stay away from the second tier.

Well. let's see ....

Samsung 830 128GB for $99 at Amazon

Sandisk Extreme 128GB for $97 at Amazon

One Day Sale on the Sandisk Extreme 240GB for $155 (with promo code EMCYTZT2188 ) at Newegg

That's only in play if you build your own machine. I don't have the luxury of doing so (don't really know how to do it anyway). I either buy a laptop in the States and bring it back in my carry-on, or I pay a small fortune in import duty to have a case and components shipped here, and then I have nobody to fall back on when I screw something up. I choose the former.

Thanks for the replies - I'll probably just go with the i7. Compared to the rest of my gear, $100 isn't much!