For Programming, Intel Core CPU Base Frequency Vs Turbo-Boosted

1

Hello, all.

I am new to programming, and I also need to learn about computer hardware.

I read the following article on this website:

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-choose-a-laptop-for-programming-a9e36f8b4cfe/

I have a question that concerns the following recommendation from that article: “In general, a nice Intel core i5 or i7 processor with a frequency of 3GHz or more should suffice for most people.”

The recommendation for a frequency of 3GHz or more, with respect to Intel Core processors, is the base frequency to be considered or the turbo-boosted frequency?

Some follow-up questions, because I am new to programming and am at the first step, executing Hello World, does the recommendation for a frequency of 3GHz or more apply to me? Or could I settle for a lower processing speed?

Do the other recommendations apply to me as well, such as for RAM, storage and storage kind (HDD vs SSD), etc.?

At these very early stages of learning how to program, I don’t want to spend more than $500 on a laptop if I don’t have to.

2

Welcome, Mr_Westwood.

This was probably referring to the base frequency, but the only way to be sure is to ask the author.

For Hello World programs…you could do this with a Rasberry Pi, 1GHz CPU. However, the idea is that you would move past Hello World stuff quite quickly, and would not want to have to purchase a new machine after 1-2 months.

Personally, I use an i7-6500U @ 2.5GHz with 8GB of DDR3 RAM. With this laptop, I run Solidworks, MATLAB, WSL2, and frequently serve the freeCodeCamp platform for testing.

Now, this does stretch my laptop, as well as my patience, because something like serving the fCC platform takes up to 20min for the server to start up, and a clean install takes over 30min. Then there are Solidworks simulations that take hours for simple geometries to complete.

So, it is not ideal, and does reduce my productivity quite a bit, but it has not crashed on my in over 5 years.

Back in the day, I paid around 280 Pound Sterling for the thing, and cannot see myself upgrading for another year at least.

Now, something I have tried as best I can from using is Visual Studio. I tried to open and edit a few projects on it, about a year ago, but there was no way I could work in that environment.

So, maybe other could provide more specific info, if you describe your desired programming path? Eg. Web development is relatively in-intensive.

Hope this helps.