Hello one and all, I'm not a big poster on the forums these days, sadly real life has taken over and means I have little time for such things. I do however post periodically to ask a question or offer an answer, this is one of these occasions (specifically the former.) TL : DR: need new laptop, i3 with dedicated graphics card or i5 with onboard gfx? MY story goes: I bought, some while ago, a laptop. (I want a laptop, I know they are less good for the money etc... I need it for what it is going to be doing..) It was a 2nd gen i5 with a specification as one might expect, 4 or 6 gig of ram (I forget) etc.etc... I never really had any complaints with the device, except it sometimes lagged a wee bit when playing certain games (such as minecraft) I assume this was down to a combination of things.. It ended up going back to Amazon due to a mechanical fault. I am now looking to replace this as they did not have the same model available to do so... I have selected the brand of machine, and to a large point the model, however I have two options open to me at this point. there are two broadly similar machines at exactly the same price. One of them is an i5 2430M using the on-chip GFX, the other is an i3 2330M with a 1GB AMD 6370 included in the machine. Getting to my actual question: In real terms will the i3 run faster because the graphics have been taken away from the processor so it doesn't have to dedicate internal cycles to dealing with the display. OR will the i5 run better than the i3 because it is a more competent processor, regardless of the fact that a chunk of its cycles have been dedicated to the displaying of the gfx.. Can anybody offer any benchmarks for these setups? also laptops as below: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005TPRVQM/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=computers&psc=1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005TPRVZ8/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=computers&psc=1
Not sure how much of an impact the lack of dedicated graphics will have on the i5 due to the chip itself having dedicated silicon to running the graphics, which would lie not being used on the i3. The AMD 6370 isn't much better than the intel 3000 see http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html for a comparison. I'd go for the i5, it should be better from the little reading I've just done.
Indeed Craig, I think its probably a close call, The i5 CLEARLY out ranks the i3 BUT, its always running the gfx all the time, added to that the extra ram on the i3... its a toughie @ KwanMan: thank you for that insightful theory. on a more relevant note... do you have any thoughts either way with these laptops?
THE DIRTY TRUTH OF YOUR PREDICAMENT These laptops are nearly identical, their processors and graphics capabilities are so similar, they are barely a distinguishing feature of the devices. Difference between your processors: i3/i5 more cores hyperthreading NOPE, they have a .2GHz frequency difference and the i5 has 3/6 turbo stepping that is it. i5 - http://ark.intel.com/products/53450 i3 - http://ark.intel.com/products/53434 So what about the performance difference in the graphics, well the AMD card has dedicated memory (which your stuck with but will probably be quicker) but both systems have an intel HD3000 gfx core, the i5 chip has a 9% higher max frequency, both the AMD card and the intel chipset have more or less the same performance according to toms hardwares GFX charts which rate all HD63xxM cards equally with HD3000 sets. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fastest-graphics-card-radeon-geforce,3067-7.html So given that they perform more or less identically, what else do we have Same price (No shock there) The i3 system has an uneven memory stick balance in a dual channel system, you'd want to bin that and get your own, the i5 system actually has matching sticks, but they could definately be bigger, again probably bin them and buy new ones. the i3 system has a bigger hard drive, which in the current market is worth a bit, and has a blu ray player. So you can get .2GHz more with turbo step, or a blue ray player and 250GB more disk space, its a little bit on the fence, but id seriously consider getting 8GB of matched memory sticks for which ever one you do buy. Some games also provide no compatability for intel so that's another thing to be aware of.
In essence we are saying that (as i thought) the systems are fairly evenly matched, and the difference in power of the gfx is barely notable. Its basically a ' does the small increase in CPU outweigh the small decrease in GFX/RAM' hmmmm. more thinking i feel..
Honesty, they're so similar you might as well flip a coin or something, I think it really comes down to; do you want it to be more future proof, and will use it mainly for every day stuff, or do you just wanna watch movies on it and download stuff till the hard drives full. I really wouldn't think it over too hard, your just comparing near identical systems, I'm sure if you looked you could find even more identical laptops to compare for about the same price
Fair point, I'm just one for squeezing the last few % out of what I can where possible. Thank you for your helpful comment though, its certainly given me stuff to think about. Also, i'm not one for downloading till the HDD is full on a laptop (that is what my server is for )
