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Need to help on laptop choices - i5 vs i7
Both of these laptops are the same price so let me know what ya think please,
i5 laptop - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230089
i7 laptop - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215106
i5 is better in every category cept the processor. So wondering how much better the i7 is and how much it would help the graphics card out. Thanks in advance.
Comments
What do you intend to use the laptop for?
For starters, you should realize that a GeForce GT 540M isn't much faster than Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. That gets you all of the drawbacks of a discrete card (higher price, heavier, runs hotter, shorter battery life, etc.), without the markedly increased performance that can outweigh those factors for people who need good graphical performance.
If those are really the only two that you're willing to consider, then some points that you may or may not have caught:
Core i5 versus i7 isn't the main processor difference. Dual core versus quad core is what you should be thinking. The Asus laptop uses a dual core processor, while the Acer one has a quad core. On a per core basis, the processors are roughly equivalent, but the Acer laptop has more cores.
The Asus laptop mismatches the memory channels, so the Acer one will likely you better memory bandwidth, in spite of the memory being clocked slower. On the other hand, the Asus laptop doesn't have a fast enough processor for this to be terribly important.
Don't just look at the hard drive capacity. The big difference between their hard drives is that the Asus has a 7200 RPM hard drive, while the Acer has a 5400 RPM one. That will make the Asus laptop much snappier and more responsive. While 7200 RPM laptop hard drives aren't terribly fast, they're a lot less slow than 5400 RPM hard drives.
The Acer laptop has discrete switchable graphics. (Nvidia's marketing name for this is "Optimus".) That means that when you're not doing anything graphically intensive, it will shut down the video card and use the Intel integrated graphics instead. That can give you driver issues if the video card won't kick in when it should, or does when it shouldn't. It also cuts your graphical performance when the video card is on by several percentage points. If the Intel integrated graphics randomly fail at something where the discrete card doesn't kick in, then you'll have to wait for an Intel driver fix, and that will likely never come.
Conversely, the Asus laptop doesn't say anything about discrete switchable graphics, so I'm guessing that it doesn't do it. If it does, then it will have the same graphical drawbacks as the Acer. If it doesn't, then it will leave the discrete video card running all of the time. This means high idle power consumption and short battery life. If you're never going to run the laptop on the battery, then that may not matter to you, but don't expect to get four hours on the battery if the video card is on the whole time.
There are trade-offs to discrete switchable graphics, with problems either way. Using integrated graphics avoids both sets of problems, but traditionally at the cost of much lower graphical performance. Llano's Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics avoids that problem, at least as compared to a GeForce GT 540M. Integrated graphics still aren't viable for high end graphical performance, but the laptops you're looking at can't remotely be called high end graphical performance.
Will be using the laptop for watching movies and gaming. Trying to be kinda on a budget of around 700 so i know i won't be playing any recent graphics heavy titles, which im fine with. Is the integrated graphics you spoke of the Intel HD 3000? That is the only integrated graphics i have been able to see on laptops ive been looking at.
If you know a place to get a real decent laptop that can handle current titles, albeit not at max setting, let me know. Been shopping around and for 700-750ish those were about the best i could find.
Was also taking into consideration all the reviews the ASUS got. From what everyone said it was handling the gaming aspect fairly well. Guessing the lower resolution of the 15.6" was helping that out as well.
Intel integrated graphics are junk, by any metric. The integrated graphics that are functional for gaming purposes are with AMD's Llano APUs. A8-anything is the top bin, quad core parts, with Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. A6-anything is some intermediate bin, quad core parts, with Radeon HD 6520G integrated graphics. That's basically the same as 6620G, except that they disable 1/5 of the graphics part. A4-anything is low bin, dual core parts, with Radeon HD 6480G integrated graphics. That's also the same chip as the A8 bins, except that they disable two of the processor cores and 2/5 of the graphics. An MX at the end of the processor name (e.g., A8-3510MX) means a 45 W part and higher clock speeds, while just an M means a 35 W part and lower clock speeds.
Here is New Egg's selection of Llano laptops:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006740%20600165139&IsNodeId=1&name=AMD%20A-Series
As usual, if you buy a computer prebuilt, there's nearly guaranteed to be something (and likely several things) severely wrong with the configuration that no sensible person building it himself would choose. The only sites that I'm aware of that will let you customize a Llano laptop are these:
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cdetland.to?poid=2000006043
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/series/category/notebooks/dv6zqe_series/3/computer_store
Toshiba doesn't let you adjust the processor and graphics options at all, either. Toshiba laptops also come with the rather severe defect that they completely disable video driver updates for some inscrutable reason, so you'll be stuck with beta video drivers that don't necessarily work until either you replace the laptop or Toshiba decides to offer something more recent, whichever comes first.
If you want something that will perform pretty well, then the HP laptop that I linked above will let you pick an A8-3510MX APU, a 7200 RPM hard drive, and 4 GB of system memory and stay under your $700 budget. They do 6 GB of system memory by default, but that mismatches the memory channels, which will cripple memory bandwidth and hence performance. The only reason to get 6 GB from HP (other than not knowing any better) is if you're going to pull out the 2 GB module and replace it by your own 4 GB module, which is a lot cheaper than buying two 4 GB modules from HP. Otherwise, 4 GB will get you a lot better performance than 6 GB.
Another possibility is to say that you don't have to spend the whole budget to get something that will work for gaming at moderate graphical settings. You could grab something like the left option here for $470:
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087¤t-category-id=4F3DAF14BD23937C39998EBCBEDC5FB2
It says you can customize the laptop, but Lenovo's idea of customization doesn't seem to involve actually changing any of the hardware in it.
Or there's this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834101252
Quad core processor, Radeon HD 6520G integrated graphics, a battery that lasts several hours at idle, and only $500. A 5400 RPM hard drive will be slow, however, and the memory is only clocked at 1066 MHz, which will hurt performance substantially as compared to 1333 MHz memory. Ideally, you'd want 1600 MHz memory for a Llano laptop, but no one seems to offer that, and if you get your own memory rated at 1600 MHz, it's likely that the BIOS won't let you run it that fast anyway.
So i guess it boils down to these then
Intel set http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230089
AMD set http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157877
They are both about the same price so why do i go with the AMD when all the benchmarks for the CPU and GPU are way slower then Intels? The GPUs are fairly comparable and understand an integrated will take alot less juice from the battery. The i5 CPU seems a ton faster then the AMD brand. Just looking up a comparison chart i found online for laptop cpu/gpu.
the i5 is a dual core and AMD is quad. so it depends on what application you are running for speed benchmark. quad core will be better in a multi threaded application. battery life wise, you will have AT LEAST 50% greater run time on the AMD.
If you're going to get an HP laptop, then get it directly through HP so that you can get it configured right. I gave you the link for it earlier.
Whether a Core i5-2410M or an A8-3510MX will be faster depends on the workload. Four slower cores beat two faster cores in programs that scale well to four cores. Two faster cores beat four slower cores in programs that can't take advantage of more than two cores.
A GeForce GT 540M might be 20% faster than Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. It's faster, but not dramatically so, and it's also more expensive.
There's also the issue of heat and power consumption. Under heavy loads, the processor and video card added together in the Asus system can put out maybe 60-70 W. In the Llano system, that will never go over 45 W. The Asus system will add a little more heat on top of that for the PCI Express lanes to allow the processor and video card to communicate; Llano has no need for that, as they're part of the same chip, so while it does take a little bit of power for them to communicate, that's built into the 45 W. The Asus laptop is probably better at getting heat out of the system than the HP. But not having the heat in the first place is more effective yet. Better ventilation won't extend battery life, either, which may or may not matter to you.
Now, maybe you really, truly don't care about battery life at all, but only performance. But in that case, you might want to look at these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246131
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215122
Same processor, faster video card, bigger monitor, higher monitor resolution, and cheaper, too. Likely less power consumption on the video cards, as well, though it will be close. The big drawback is that they only have 5400 RPM hard drives, though on the Acer, you could buy your own WD Scorpio Black (probably faster than what the Asus has) and still have something cheaper than the Asus.