I have been looking at the surface since the first surface pro, and I have really wanted one....well now i have enough saved up to get either the i5 - 8 gb of ram and 256 gb SSD or the i7 - 8 gb of ram and 256 gb SSD. I'm not sure which one to get. I will mainly be using this at work BUT I want to play Diablo 3 (hardcore) on it. My kerfuffle is I'm not sure that the i7 will be that much better because of thermal throttling. It does have 1 more mb of cache and the Intel's hd5000 integrated graphics over the i5. Please post your feelings on which one you would get, and if you think its worth getting the i7 over the i5.
I would just go i5 if your going the Surface route. I have a dell venue 8 pro and the only gripe I have is the screen size when using excel with the 12.2 inch screen should be gravy. But my main point is for what I use it for mainly just work as an inventory manager so I take pics use excel and even pull from my access database on the network. Dell Venue 8 Pro has the Bay Trail Atom CPU in it, still full windows 8.1 though. So power wise the big processor power of that i7 isn't really needed to be flat honest. Now if you wanted to use it for something else like a little editing or something then... well I dunno you'd be better off with a laptop with dedicated GPU on that front. So aside from just having a badass tablet thats cutting edge I dunno. I'd go i5 its what I want to get myself(just to have the cutting edge and the bigger screen) I been thinking of goint with that Asus transformer as well I just haven't looked into the available models.
I also own a Venue 8 Pro and I kind of find the CPU quite lacking to be honest, for anything intensive anyway.
Anyway, I would recommend the i5 as well. If you can get the i7, GET IT, if money is no object. Just make sure to the the 8GB of Ram, thats crucial, that will give you more life than anything.
Best of luck! And don't get the i3, thats still too underpowered for the price difference.
I dunno, I really want a surface Pro but I don't have the money for even the i3 at the moment, I like the pen and want to use it for illustration and stuff. Probably not worth getting the higher tier versions unless you need to benchmark, edit professional videos and play Crysis 3 or something, what are desktops for though?
As for Diablo I think you'd be fine with the i5 because it's not the most demanding game, even at the native res of the Pro 3, you could just lower the settings anyway if it's too choppy.
It's also a couple of years old anyway, so I'd assume it runs well on a brand new, x64 computer.
If the i7 were iris pro graphics, then I'd say jump on that, but the difference between the 2 is minimal enough to where I'd say it's not justifiable. For me anyway, depends on the person. I'm always one to look at performance per dollar before anything else.