They look pretty identical. The Xeon has a 100 MHz advantage but that won't ammount to much.

Don't have experience with that particular Xeon, but on paper those 2 chips are pretty much the same. I would bet my paycheck you would not see any significant differences with the Xeon.

Hi, Apis,

Benchmark scores between the i7-6820HQ and either of the E5 mobile Xeon chips look pretty much identical. Also, in the world of desktop CPUs, Xeons really do perform about the same clock-for-clock and core-for-core as the i7 variants. Their mobile counterparts don't seem to be any different.

What I actually recommend, then, if it won't break your bank, is to find a laptop with the i7-6820HK (if you insist on a laptop, that is). It can be overclocked, and some people have had success getting it to 4.2GHz (this will obviously depend on the cooling efficiency of the laptop you buy), and any overclock beyond the stock speed will improve performance, but with the added effect of more power consumption and heat output. If you don't know what overclocking is or how it works, let me know and I can get you some useful resources.

Overclocking a laptop? Sounds like a bonfire waiting to happen. For the cost of "heavy hitter" laptops, have you considered building a similarly equipped desktop and then for day to day tasks where you want to be mobile, a netbook or fairly equipped laptop? You can build a powerful desktop for much cheaper than a laptop and heat issues would be pretty much not a worry given proper cooling and routine cleaning of the dust.