4820tg - i3 or i5?

I am in the market for a small, easily portable laptop that can still play games relatively well, and from what I've seen the Acer 4820tg meets my requirements perfectly.

I see two models available at Microcenter, one with an i3 and one with an i5.

i3 model
i5 model

Keeping in mind that both of these have the same graphics card, and the i3 is $100 less, which should I go for? Is the i3 still adequate for gaming, and will the GPU cease to be relevant before either of the processors are? I've also read about throttling issues with the i3, can anybody chime in about that?

 

If you are not trying to save money then go for Core i5 since it has a bit higher clock and it supports truboboost which is not available with Core i3...

If you are trying to save some money then go for Core i3...

Cheers

 

I'd argue the opposite. Unless you've a need to push the CPU frequently, the better i5 will make little difference. Typical notebook usage doesn't really push the CPU that much. When gaming the bottleneck is almost the GPU, not the CPU. I'd vote for getting the i3 and putting the savings toward a quality SSD, which is much more likely to lead to a tangible performance increase than the CPU.

 

The I3 in the 4830TG is known to throttle. It is fundamentally different from the I5 due to a Max Temp. of 90C and an IGPU bridge max. temp. ot 85C. The I5 has a max temp of 105C. If you are going to play games or otherwise use the powerful GPU that Acer put in the TimelineX models, you are going to run into those thermal barriers with the I3. Operating temps are in the 80-90C range. There is a lengthy discussion of the I3 throttling issues in the 4820TG thread. To be sure, throttling is a rare event on most units, but it has been observed in the 4820TG. I would buy the I5 model. You can't beat the price.

Bronsky