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I am a web developer getting a new computer. Right now I am deciding between two laptops - one that has 32gb ram but a slower processor, and one with 16gb ram (can't be upgraded further) but a faster processor, and I want to know what is going to give the biggest productivity increase. The main purpose of upgrading RAM, in my opinion is to allow me to run more programs at once. But if the processor change is going to make a noticeably faster page load speed, that would be important to me because I have to reload the same page time after time after time since I like to test at very short intervals. To keep my question non-subjective, I want to ask what is the difference in performance in reloading and initializing a web page served from localhost using these two processors or similar. If not, I would appreciate it if someone would explain where the biggest slowdown is. Here one is nearly 25% faster according to general benchmarks.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4800MQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-2820QM
I would guess that the major blockage would be a slow hard drive for anything like this, but I think a faster processor might be significant in rendering the page, initializing AngularJS, etc. If the processor speed difference isn't going to matter much, then I'll just go with the extra RAM
Thanks for your help! If you want to downvote, please at least write a comment as to why.
Note: this is NOT a duplicate because this question refers specifically to both serving and browsing from localhost.
user3413723
Posted 2015-05-08T19:54:42.347
Reputation: 151
You are trying to compare a CPU from 2nd Generation of Intel Core processors to a 4th Generation Intel Core processor. To put it simply you cannot compare an Apple to an Orange. Since we can't tell you which one you should get, what exactly, do you want to know? – Ramhound – 2015-05-08T19:59:37.843
I was asking if the performance difference will make a web page served from localhost initialize and load noticeably faster. – user3413723 – 2015-05-08T20:04:46.233
@ramhound - for desktop processing I do not believe the generation of processor makes a huge difference to speed, although newer processors are more efficient, and there certainly have been incremental speed increases. – davidgo – 2015-05-08T20:07:09.513
@user3413723 - System memory won't load a website faster provided you have some memory still free, anything free, just lets more pages load at the sametime. I/O is going to be the biggest concern with local browsing, your unlikely to see any performance between the two processors, if the only thing you are doing is programming websites. You will see zero performance increases between 16GB and 32GB of memory. – Ramhound – 2015-05-08T20:09:46.900
I offer the speculative opinion that the processor speed would be the more important factor if your page does a *lot* of local (i.e., client-side) processing; e.g., JavaScript. – Scott – 2015-05-11T02:12:58.227
1You'd be better off with a solid state drive than a new processor if you wanted to optimize local services. Unless they rely heavily on video / other media ...
Really it's one of those things where the quality and amount of software involved is the bottleneck. You can throw an i7 59xx and a GTX Titan X at Second Life, Minecraft, DayZ, ARMA 2, etc and they will still run like hot garbage. – Arthur Kay – 2015-05-15T04:46:22.260