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i3-6320 to i5-7300U = upgrade/downgrade/sidegrade?

W

wpcoe

Senior member
I've been eyeing the new Surface Pro i5-7300U model to be my new travel computer. Then I saw a photo in another forum of a dual-monitor setup using the Surface Pro with a docking station as a desktop configuration, and it piqued my interest.

My desktop computer is i3-6320 (3.9Ghz). Would the i5-7300U (with 3.5Ghz Turbo) be as fast (or faster)? i.e. Are there sufficient architecture improvements from Skylake to Kaby Lake to make the i5-7300U not be a downgrade? Do the "U" series Kaby Lake CPUs make any compromise in performance over higher power CPUs?

If the i5-7300U wouldn't be as good/fast as the i3-6320, what about an i7-7660U with 4.0Ghz Turbo? Do the extra 500Mhz and 64MB eDRAM make the Surface Pro i7 worth a $300 premium over the i5 in the context of using it as a desktop computer?

FYI, I don't do any gaming, just office applications, web browsing, watch videos and occasionally edit photos in Photoshop. My desktop computer has no discrete video card, just the Intel 530 IGP, and that has been adequate.
 
There's pretty-much NO architectural improvements, between the CPU cores in Skylake and Kaby Lake. What changed, primarily, was the media encode / decode block. Oh, and RAM speed got a bump.
 
I think he's asking if he can use a Surface Pro Laptop to replace his desktop and not notice any degradation in performance. And the answer to that is it will work perfectly fine for what you use it for. The IGP is a bit weaker than the desktop one though but I doubt you will notice it if you're not gaming.

(the i7 model comes with the Iris Plus 640 IGP)
 
StinkyPinky said:
I think he's asking if he can use a Surface Pro Laptop to replace his desktop and not notice any degradation in performance.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I should hire you to ghost-write my posts! 🙂

Additionally, I'm trying to decide if it's worth a $300 premium to go for the i7 model. (Extra .5Ghz, Iris Plus with 64MB eDRAM and extra 1MB cache.)
StinkyPinky said:
And the answer to that is it will work perfectly fine for what you use it for. The IGP is a bit weaker than the desktop one though but I doubt you will notice it if you're not gaming.

(the i7 model comes with the Iris Plus 640 IGP)
Click to expand...

Where would the i7-7660's Iris Plus 640 graphics rank relative to the i3-6320's 530 graphics? (I'm guessing higher due to the extra EUs and the eDRAM, but not sure how much the lower bus speed matters.)

Another elephant in the room is the fact that my desktop has 16GB RAM (useful with Photoshop) and the Surface Pros that I'm considering only have 8GB. The 16GB RAM models are out of my price range. 🙁

Thanks, everybody, for all the feedback.
 
For you, you have to look at the entire package not just the CPU. So while an i7 will be superior to your desktop (slightly) in both CPU/IGPU computation, you are losing half your ram. To me that tradeoff is not worth it.
 
Yeah, I'm weighing the RAM in my decision. I find myself doing less and less Photoshop stuff these days. The rest of my apps are not that memory-intensive, so I'm trying to convince myself I'd be fine with "only" 8GB.

The cheapest Surface Pro with 16GB is $2199. Add $200 for the dock and $160 for the keyboard, and I simply can't justify $2560 (!) just to do away with my desktop computer.
 
I bought the i7-7660u model with 256GB SSD & 8GB RAM.

So far, with my 4k external monitor attached and using a wireless keyboard and mouse, the performance seems to match my desktop. I haven't done any strenuous Photoshop stuff, but everything else just zips right along. *Especially* compared to the Atom-powered Surface 3 with its eMMC "hard drive."
 
See you already purchased. I probably would have recommended the i5 over the i7. Both from the specs and from all the reviews I've read, its a pretty narrow set of tasks where the i7 beats the i5 when you are talking about the "U" cpu's. That said, you should be fine.

A couple of years ago I had a user who was mobile about 50% of the time. So I set her up with a (then current) Surface 3 with i5U. She was doing typical office tasks, i.e. MS Office, email, web browsing, some web apps etc. and the Surface 3 had all the CPU power she needed so the deciding factor was the ability to have on PC that could easily be used at her desk, or popped out of the dock to go mobile.

For others considering this configuration, the original question was comparing a desktop i3 Vs a Surface. So I think the whole discussion of CPU power was somewhat not relevant. The question is do you you need to be mobile? If so, how much of your time is spent mobile? Once you know the answers to those questions you can start thinking about performance in the context of: during that time you do go mobile, is the convenience of having a single do it all machine worth the trade offs? For most people doing the sorts of tasks I described above who also spend a lot of time mobile, the answer would be yes.

Also you have to think about costs. The surface is probably going to cost more (perhaps a lot more) than the equivalent desktop PC. We used to pay about $800 for the PC's we purchased and I think the Surface 3's with i5 were going for about $1200 at the time. But if the Surface allowed us to do away with the PC then its not a bad deal. So as far as costs go, if you want to have both a desktop and a laptop, would an el-cheapo $400 Best Buy special be good enough for your mobile needs? If so maybe it costs the same to have two? But we are still back to the question of how important the mobility piece is to you.

Finally, for an IT shop, the one device for everything idea is appealing because that's one less device that has to be secured, managed, and regularly patched.
 
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