Which is better for gaming? i5 4200M + GT 740M or i5 4200U + GT 840M

Will be getting a new laptop and confused between these two configurations. Both have 4gb system RAM and 1366*768 resolution. 4200M has higher clock speed than 4200U while 840M is faster than 740M. I'm not much into gaming but eager to try 2013/2014 games in medium to high settings as applicable.

Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. Have a nice day.

 

Both are equally bad since both GPUs use GDDR3. That being said, the machine with the i5-4200U will have less heat issues. If you are serious about GPU performance, look in to a machine that has GDDR5.

 

The 4200M and 740M should be a bit better combination. Both are pretty poor in terms of performance.

If you want "acceptable" performance, you will need at least a 750M with a 1366x768p screen.

 

You will want an "M" CPU and minimum 750m or better with GDDR5 vRAM if you want a decent gaming experience. Depends on games. Some games require more CPU power, in that case you'll want the 'M' CPU, but other games are primarily GPU hungry so you'll want the 840m over the 740m. The 840m is about 25-30% faster in general than the 740m, but the "U" CPU may bog down the system.

 

If you had to choose between those 2, I would go with the 4200m + 740m. It's easier to deal with a GPU bottleneck (lower resolution, graphic settings etc) than a CPU bottleneck.

 

If anything, you shouldn't be getting a sub-par 768p display... I'd focus on getting something better like a 1080p display before asking about the CPU/GPU.

That said, you'd want a full-voltage CPU for gaming (not the -U).

That all said, the HP Envy 15z can offer a 1080p display, A10 CPU, and the Radeon 8570M for under $700.

 

Person asking 840M vs 740M has a $700 budget, max. Recommending GDDR5 and such is a waste.

Take the 840M.

 

Quite a tough decision indeed, but most games are GPU bound nowadays so my vote goes to the GT 840M.

My reasoning is that it appears that the i5-4200U scores a passmark of 3300, which is not too far below the 3804 of the i5-3210M; the same CPU in my Samsung laptop. We must not forget the Turbo Boost, which allows the i5-4200U to boost to 2.3GHz with 2 cores active. The i5-4200M boosts to 3.0GHz in the same scenario. The difference at stock clocks (1.6GHz vs 2.5GHz - where the U has 64% the clockspeed of the M) is reduced when Turbo is active (2.3GHz vs 3.0GHz - where the U has 76.6% the clockspeed of the M). The GT 650M (DDR3) in my Samsung is the primary bottleneck in the system by quite margin. The GT 740M is roughly on par with the GT 650M, if not slightly below. Hence, why I recommend the much stronger GT 840M (~30% more than GK107 GT 740M) matched with the i5-4200U. I personally think it offers a better balance for most modern games than the i5-4200M and GT 740M combo.

Plus, there is a GK208 version of the GT 740M which is inferior to the GK107 version by a fair margin. You should check whether the laptop has the superior GK107 version or the lesser GK208 version.

 

Totally agree in this case.

 

Great suggestion: ENVY 15z-j100 Notebook - Best Value | HP® Official Store

$630 + tax, probably can get an extra $10-40 off and free shipping if you scour for coupns. That's a good balance of CPU and GPU and overall a nice laptop.

Here you go $25 more off with coupon code: PC599Q2

AMD A10-5750m, Radeon 8750m 2GB GPU, 8GB DDR3 RAM (2 DIMMS), 1TB 5400RPM HDD, 1366x768 LCD, 1.18in thick, 4.8lbs.

$604.99 (+tax if applicable) with free shipping. Well rounded laptop.

 

Yes, that is great combination, both slow as hell . You know that two Intel ULV Cores faster than 4 of the AMD? and which matter for games, one and two cores performance, where the i5 ULV at least doubles the AMD's CPU performance. I have significantly more powerful GPU than 840M with I5 ULV and still perfectly enough even for very CPU bound games like GTA 4!

 

You do realize that the A10 found in that notebook is roughly equivalent to a full-voltage i3, right? That's not bad at all, and is certainly enough to run GTA IV. Which, funny enough, I can run just fine on my desktop's FX-6300 stock (not apples to apples, but the cores aren't too different between the two).

Even though the 8570M is a little on the weak side, remember that this notebook can offer 1080p within OP's budget, which more than males up for the GPU's performance when it comes to overall usage. Game settings can be lowered if needed, but if you buy a garbage 768p display, you're stuck with that POS for the life of the notebook...

 

I know very well what is A10 35W APU cable for, I have tested and owned several. As I wrote above the gaming (per core) performance is not comparable with an i5 ULV.

 

True, though it's still good enough to play most games well-enough. Even World of Tanks, which is a CPU-dependent, single-core game, can be played at high settings at ~60fps on such hardware (though my FX-6300 is paired with a Radeon R9 280x, which helps somewhat).

Point is, despite synthetic benchmarks pegging the single-core performance of APUs at lower scores, they run just fine given the requirements. And honestly, given a $700 budget, none of the choices presented are spectacular. I'm just trying to suggest something that has acceptable overall performance, gaming and non-gaming. 768p isn't acceptable in anything bigger than a tablet/netbook, in my book, and OP will sooner notice the difference between 768p and 1080p than the benchmark scores between the three CPUs mentioned.

 

Asus ASUSPRO B551L: Back to business

 

I know this is older but a slight up clocked A8 Llano APU could compete with an i5-2520m in multi-threaded benchmarks (look in spoiler tag at link): http://forum.notebookreview.com/har.../652836-intel-beat-out-amd-4.html#post8401304

The latest A10-5750m is capable to beat an Intel dual core i3 'M' CPU. There is no way an Intel 'U' CPU can compete with a 35W AMD CPU.

In any case, if gaming a primary use for the laptop I'd save up a bit and buy a better laptop. You can probably snag a Lenovo Y410p with 755m and quad core Intel CPU for < $800.

 

That is pretty outdated test and running a Llano at 2.4GHz means that is avarage 10-15% faster than A10-5750M. Here is a more recent test, which include an i5 ULV (an Ivy Bridge) and more 35W AMD APUs. Do not count the overclocked ones, because only ES ones are capable;

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So an Ivy Bridge ULV at least avarage 7,5% faster than A10-5750M (even faster because in newer beta version Handbrake I5 ULV working 2minute faster than AMD A10-5750M), than a 4th gen ULV another 10% faster than Ivy ULV. So now we talk about 20%+ difference! Addition to that all these benchmarks are utilized all available CPU cores, so think how big is per core performance difference which important for games! Meanwhile if someone say an Intel ULV is not enough for a 840M, that is pretty damn wrong!

 

I'll get my A10-5750m and pit it against my i5-4200U and i5-4200m and see what results I get.

 

Yes, go ahead . In which laptop you have i5-4200U?

 

I'm sure he has a million laptops stockpiled by this point.

Sidenote: I've noticed that both HTWingNut and I have the LG G2. Neat.

 

Considering his budget, I think the OP should go used/refurbished on eBay. There's gotta be a better deal on there.

 

Thank you guys for your replies. I found a laptop with configuration i5 4210U + GT 840M. Will be getting it. And yes since I'm not a hardcore gamer and budget is an added incentive I won't go for GDDR5 graphics memory.

Anyways thanks everyone for your kind suggestions. Have a nice day.

PS- I know it doesn't matter for a 1366*768 resolution but I forgot to mention the i5 4200M + GT 740M comes with 1gb graphics memory as opposed to the other configurations where the same is 2gb.

 

That is wise decision, both super efficient! You definitely do not need to worry about heat and fan noise .

 

The important thing is that can the laptop handle the i5 4200M's thermal output and power consumption?

There are a handful of laptop models that have powerful hardware configs, and the manufacturer intentionally throttles them because the cooling assembly and/or the VRMs are unable to handle the hardware config.