I have a now dated Lenovo y510p that work supplied. It has an older i7 than your new models listed, 16GB RAM and some 750m GPU. It runs my stuff fine. The ONE thing the office did last week was to swap in a SSD. Now it feel current.
Let me share how I compare CPUs. I use CPUBOSS.
And 16GB did not eliminate lags. I think it may even induce lag as cache flushing takes longer as there is more to flush.
What really helped was the SSD as to overall performance on the y510p.
-> As to the SSD dying, it looks like the deaths will be same as or lower than run of the mill HDDs.
MSI shouldn't have much to say as a lot of what you asked is comparing apples to apples. Or picking the winner in a horse race. It's a photo finish.
---> Google this to compare notebook GPUS.
Notebookcheck 960m
(same) 970m
Already aware that this is sort of apple to watermelon comparison, is the 4720HQ or 5700HQ paired with a 960M/970M a viable 'replacement' for a desktop?
Current rig has a 750 Ti, 60W card, seems equivalent to 960M, and 970M seems like a 780.
The laptop is probably going to be a MSI (this or this) because I've read it has two fans, better airflow, and ease of access. I'm not a gamer, the laptop use will be video editing/rendering and graphics (ray tracing).
CPUboss says the 5700HQ is similar to the i7 2600, but doesn't mention anything on thermal throttling. The i7 2600 is nearly 5 years old now.
Is 2MB more L3 cache really that much vs the 5700HQ being newer and more efficient?
Desktop has 8GB RAM maxed with VM software, so the laptop 16GB RAM should eliminate lag from writes to my cache drive?
The desktop had five HDD in RAID0 for large files, which has been replaced by a single 1TB SSD. Not worried about SSD dying prematurely since OCZ has been to the rescue twice before.
Shying away from 4K laptop monitor, seems like a waste in money, and battery life.
PS: Asked MSI and they didn't really answer anything, just pointed me to the specs of five laptops..

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