AMD Phenom II X3P820 or i5-430?

I'm in the market for a Toshiba L650 with either the AMD Phenom II X3 P820 or Intel i5-430 processor, same price and similar spec (graphic card, HD, RAM etc). Both around £650.

Which one would you buy and why?

I don't play games. Not even solitaire. I use Office quite heavily (Excel, Project,Visio), surf the net (Chrome), iTunes, photos. I don't program, don't use any hardcore specific software.

On another note, a local shop is selling a similar spec'd laptop (Toshiba L650 12Q with i5 and shared graphic card IntelHD graphic for £489. Perhaps I should just buy this one? Would I notice any difference running Windows 7?

 

Your needs seem to light that you won't notice much of a difference with any of those CPUs. Uh... I think the Phenom should run cooler, all things being equal, than the Intel, but let someone else confirm that.

In my opinion, go for the cheapest option. In all honesty, you could get away with a lower-end Core 2 Duo, much less a triple-core Phenom or a hyperthreaded, turboboosting i5. So yeah, go for cheapest option and invest that cash towards a modest SSD, which will really speed up performance.

 

Thanks for your kind reply. Given that I don't play games, do you think I would notice any difference in daily Windows 7 usage with the Intel HD graphic card? The £489 price tag is quite attractive!

 

There is no contest here at all -- the i5-430M is a much better processor regardless of what applications you use it for. It's single threaded performance (the vast majority of everyday tasks) is better by around a factor of 2 and its multi-threaded performance is better by 25-50% depending on the application.

If you don't play games and you don't use any specific GPU-accelerated software, IntelHD is more than enough for you. It can easily handle Windows 7 and the hardware acceleration in default Windows applications.

 

Thanks for the kind reply.

I use fairly modest business applications such as:

- Excel
- Word
- Powerpoint
- Outlook
- Visio
- Project
- Citrix

I also use iTunes, some mp3/Lame decoding, light video conversion (from DVD to ipod) and lots of surfing. Nothing else. On the £489 Toshiba I would get an extra year of warranty for free (total of 2).

I think I'll get the £489 then

 

For your needs, I should think the L650 12Q should be plenty. Intel HD graphics are great for everything but gaming.

 

It's not so much of a question whether the i5 will be faster or not--it definitely is--but rather if he will really notice the difference. You can have one car clearly outspeeding another, yet when you're driving in some 35mph speed zone you won't be able to tell the difference between the two.

So, if he's not bottlenecked by the CPU, I say save the money and go for whatever is the cheapest. If the cheapest option is the i5, even better.


As for the GPU question, Althernai already got it. Intel HD will punt around whatever non-game tasks you throw at it, and heck, it can probably play some older games to boot.

 

Althernai, tHE j0KER, Forge,

Many thanks for the useful tips!