New gig laptop...Intel I7 or I9?

[Corky]

Several threads on this:

Mini PCs, NUCs Update

OK, I took the plunge and built a little “live cube” based on the ASRock Deskmini 310 and a Core i5 9600 (6 cores). Runs super-quietly and doesn’t seem to break a sweat on my Cantabile songs. Just did a little simple comparison with my current live laptop - added 10 instances of Valhalla Room (default preset) to an empty Cantabile song. My live laptop (quad-core i7, older generation mobile CPU) runs at about 49% time load, while the little cube runs the same at ca. 29%. No overclocking involved…

Beginners Question - What HW do I need?

Modern i5 processors are fairly zippy and efficient. I do not know much about the i3 (I assume you mean the current Core i3 CPU), but here is a CPU comparison article from last year that might shed some light on the matter for you:

Personally, my son recently sent a refurb HP EliteBook 840 G2 14" Laptop, Intel i5 5300U 2.3GHz, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 1TB SSD Hard Drive, Win 10 Pro. It is blazing!! Never thought I would run Omnisphere/Keyscape at less than 20% CPU load. The i5 is amazing. Best part is he paid less than $400 US for it.