I3-330M vs i5-520M?

[trieser]

Hello, I'm new here, so if this in the wrong board, please excuse me.

So next year I'm going to college, for chemical engineering specifically. I'm buying a new laptop, and I was wondering, Is there a huge difference between the i3-330M and i5-520M? I already know that the i3 lacks the "turbo mode" (which doesn't really seem impressive/necessary,) and has a slower speed, but for someone who is using the laptop mainly for:

*Web Browsing
*Word Processing
*Engineering programs like MATLAB and AUTOCAD (I think)
*Webcamming
*The Occaisonal Starcraft II match

Is the i3-330M acceptable? Or is the i5-520 definitely worth the extra hundred bucks?

Thank you.

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
For those tasks you will be fine with an i3 330M,unless you do lots of CAD'ng(heavy usage)which benefits from extra 300MHz.
And for Starcraft,it mostly depends on the VGA that you are using

 

[trieser]

Maziar, thank you for the quick reply, and for the clear, simple answer.

 

[trieser]

Best answer selected by trieser.

 

[Maziar]

You are welcome