Processor for a casual gaming laptop

Guys,

I am looking for a new laptop that will handle my work (lawyer), everyday usage and casual gaming for the next few years. I live in Europe, so mind that prices are way higher over here.

I have narrowed it down to two laptops:

Asus K55 - Core i5 4210U, 8GB, GT 840M, 540€

Dell Inspiron 15 - Core i7 4510U, 8GB, GT 840M, 670€

Can some of you CPU experts bring some light to me on the processor difference? I do not game, but my brother will and I'd like to provide him with a laptop that could support his average gaming aspirations. To be more precise, is 130€ difference (around $200) worth going for Inspiron 15?

Cheers,

MH

 

Both processors are dual core with hyperthreading (4 total threads). Both are 15 watt TDP.

The main differences I can see are the 15-20% more clock & turbo on the i7, and another MB of cache. While I bet a person would never notice the difference, I would still get the higher clocked one because you probably won't/can't upgrade the CPU. At 25% more cost that does seem expensive though. Besides the CPU does one model have something good or bad to help make the decision? Better battery, screen, drives, keyboard etc?

 

The i7 has a slightly larger cache, faster clock speed, and slightly faster internal GPU. Both are dual core with hyper threading. For the office work, you won't see a difference, gaming will probably show a slight advantage to the i7 due to it's higher clocks. Honestly if you're doing 90% office work with a rare bit of casual gaming, I would save the money and put it towards an SSD. And 15% difference in clock rate is not 15% more performance.

 

I'm in agreement that the difference between the processors will go unnoticed unless you're doing something very intensive like encoding, rendering, &c - and even then it will be a slight difference (< 20% at most). The i7 dual-cores are something of a misnomer since they're really just an i5 with an extra 1MB of cache (which contributes almost nothing to the overall performance) and a few tenths of a gigahertz extra clockspeed. $200 is an excessive amount of money for that difference IMO.

 

Dell comes with a three years warranty, while Asus offers only two. Dell also features a numeric keyboard, which I don't find to be a particular necessity. Everything else is the same. Do you think that extra warranty year on Dell makes the price difference more justified?

I am well aware that raw strength span between two processor is not very large. However, when I game, I do like it to be as fluent as possible. I am having Asus in the signature for seven years and it's been working flawlessly to this day. I'd rather pick Asus and settle it all down, but I fear that Core i5 4210 U is just too weak to handle modern games and will become a significant bottleneck compared to the rest of the configuration. That's my main concern and that's the reason I seek help from you.

 

Also do you know what memory each one has? Do they both have GDDR5 or is it DDR3?

 

If the i5-4210U can't do something well, the i7-4500U won't fare much better. Many newer games are requiring or at the very least recommending a quad-core processor. The i5/i7 dual-core should be capable of playing most, though. I recently reviewed the Lenovo IdeaPad Y40 gaming notebook with the i7-4500U - I put some comments about its overall performance on page 2.

An extra year of warranty doesn't even make up close the $200 difference. Take a look at our warranty guide for a write-up on how much a warranty is really worth.

But again it's all about the incremental differences. If this is going to be your only notebook for many years, then the $200 for the i7 and extra warranty could make sense. Value is in the eye of the buyer.

 

This should be a selling point as well a numeric keypad does come in handy when you need to do number crunching whether or not you think you need it. Warranty you need to read the "Fine" print what does the warranty cover in the 3 yr as compared to the 2 yr. Then you will know what which will work for you.

That is a misnomer CPU isn't the only reason you get lags it also depends on the GPU that is inside the laptop that is what drives the game. If the Dell is Intel HD and Asus is Nvidia GPU you can be sure the Nvidia will be like night and day in gaming even if it is causal gaming. Both CPU and GPU if they take a hit on hardware you can expect to game a hit in game play as well. So you can't have one without the other to have a decent game play. So look closer at the Dell and Asus specs don't just look at price but see the actual CPU and GPU hardware and see how they compare with each other. If one is dedicated then you should consider the dedicate one as a example Intel HD based graphics.

 

Both laptops have DDR3 memmory. Apart from CPU, warranty and the numeric keyboard, everyting else is identical. Inspiron seems to lack optical drive, but that shouldn't be much of an issue.

Asus is also very stylish, sleek and quality built. I have one for years and I am typing this from it. I haven't tested new Inspirons, but they always looked like a plastic consumer option. I might be biased, but when putting my money in a new laptop, everything I've learned from the eight years on this forum comes to mind.

I've seen the Lenovo Y40 review, featuring comments about Core i7 4510u. Seems it's just fine with crunching both everyday and demanding tasks. The question is, will Core i5 4210u do the same and save me 200 bucks. At this point, I don't know if I am ready to gamble.

 

Consider the fact that many laptops with these ULV CPU's severely limit the TDP to 11-12W for the 15W CPU so are likely not going to perform as advertised anyhow. For gaming, I'd at least recommend a full Watt (ie. 37W) dual core but better yet a 47W quad core. I would also consider an 850m over an 840m if only because of the 64-bit memory bus on the 840m will severely gimp performance. I know you have a budget, and I can completely understand that. But also realize that buying underpowered hardware won't make you happy either when it comes to gaming.

That being said, exactly what games do you intend to run?

 

Yeah, as above said both CPUs are not for gaming so you don't need "CPU experts" and can decide yourself.

 

To be clear, I think the question was asking about the VRAM in the GPUs, not the system RAM.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

That was the question.. I think OP needs to check this again...

 

Even the i7-4510u in question does not perform as well as a high-end laptop CPU from 6 years ago, and that is assuming that it can continuously run at full turbo speed. I suggest you look somewhere else and get a quad-core processor.

 

I can bet that the Inspiron will never reach full TurboBoost more than 10-20minutes. My bet is the Asus. The i5 cpu is "enough" for the 64bit 840m for some light games. For example my i5-3337u is enough for Titanfall (720p, high) and for The Crew (720, medium) at the moment and can run older games fine. I can nearly max out Sleeping Dogs with it... And the money diference between the two, you can upgrade to an SSD later.

 

I have poor knowledge of which kind of high CPU, neither the rest technology issues of laptop. But when I catched up a lot from these information above. Thanks a lot !

 

Dell Inspiron 15 7537 with i7-4510U and GT750M is probably a better option.... The 750M beats the 840M and is a garunteed GDDR5 card in this laptop...

 

Thanks for replays. It did help me clear my thoughts and reconsider the buying options. As for the CPU's, I say again that I am very well aware of the limitations of those. They are ULV, as the name suggests, and not suitable for demanding tasks. What I was confused about is whether they are still sufficient for my gaming intentions given the money I have in my purse. I virtually never played video games so far and found myself pretty uncertain regarding this matter. I did some extra research and read the answers provided here.

TomJGX, Dell Inspiron 7537 is 17.3". I have an offer to get it for 700e, but taking it from home to work and vice versa could be painstaking on a long term. That's why I initially refrained from considering that option.

I have one remaining question, for those patient enough to type again: what is the bottom line you wouldn't go below when buying a new laptop for multimedia and gaming purposes, in terms of hardware? What level of processor would it be, what amount of RAM and which graphics in particular?

Thanks and apologies.

 

The Inspiron 15 7537 is not 17"... Its 15.6" and my friend has one... which I recommended BTW..

The Inspiron 7737 is the 17" model...

 

Quad core, non-low voltage CPU, 8 GB memory (easy and cheaper to add more yourself later on if needed), 1-2GB VRAM gpu.

 

Thanks for your input on this matter. It helped me clarifying things out and getting to know what exactly I could expect from discussed processors.

I decided to wait for some more and pursue New Year deals which will hopefully pop out these days. Shouldn't I find suitable model for my needs, I might prolong the purchase and wait until I save enough for my preferences.

Thanks and cheers.

MH

 

Yeah, no point rushing.. Take your time if you can afford to wait..

 

A .. couple of things.

1. ULV processors in terms of real life applications, and certainly for games, have the same features as the full-watt processors. They perform identically with other processors capped at the same processor speeds. So you're just looking at a more power-efficient dual-core with hyperthreading. Which is something that makes the ULV processors interesting for battery gaming, them being passable in terms of performance and thread response, but drawing much less power. Note also that the vast majority of games are not actually cpu-bound, but gpu-bound. While the ones that benchmark as cpu-bound in reality do so only when you have a gpu that vastly outperforms even the absolutely best you can get on a laptop. Multicore in gaming is certainly also a chapter of it's own on x86 architecture, since we simply do not have low enough context switches as of yet to truly see a massive leap in graphical fidelity in real-time. The very best we can hope for until Intel goes out of business is something akin to what HelloGames are doing right now with No Man's Sky, where they run small sub-divided operations that can complete independently of each other (this is incredibly difficult to get around) and produce a composite image that doesn't look like a jigsaw. In no way can the run-time effects here actually interfere with each other. And rumor has it that the game is actually playable with more fog and popping for each of the voxel clouds of course on a much lower limit than the "next gen" console hardware, and so on.

The same principle applies to DDR3L ram, by the way. The volt does not actually determine the number of operations a ram-chip can successfully complete within a division unit. Rambus, the guys who make lovely hardware that no one wants to actually buy in the end, designed ram chips many years ago that ran on lower voltage -- and because of that, coupled with some sweet, kickass engineering, therefore was able to increase the frequency of the internal memory operations, in spite of the less refined manufacturing process at the time. Resulting in a more efficient chip that ran faster and with less errors, with superior error checking. The design was then shelved for, presumably, good. As commercial applications for such a thing is non-existent.

Now, ddr3l isn't a groundbreaking design like that in any way, but instead you could with complete right say that it has similar or the same timing as the "full voltage" chips normally running on laptops (the choice of these hard-coded idiot-timings are a discussion that is a genre of it's own, but let's leave it at that), and that you do not lose actual memory operations or speed at those timings. Making you simply have the same performance at less battery draw, which again is significant for gaming on battery.

2. GDDR5 vs. DDR3 --- seriously, will you guys stop with this bs? GDDR5 is a cheaper made version of ddr3 ram. It's a budget version of ddr3. It's ddr3 with less features and a more serial-produced fixed memory interface. There's one reason only that GDDR5 exists, and it's so that manufacturers of peripheral cards can buy cheaper memory block interfaces and still take the same amount of money for the actual card. In 99% of the cases, it's a ripoff -- and especially so for laptops and concerning heat and battery life. Because the internal memory bus literally runs at twice the speed to get to the same memory bandwidth transport potential as ddr3. Thus making gddr5 modules hotter than ddr3 variants, and using more power, for doing the exactly the same amount of lifting.

The only difference is that it cost the end-point manufacturer (i.e., FOXCONN's customers) a nickel and a dime less. And that the module they're inserting into the box now is physically less wieldy than the normal "custom" made print-plate that the ddr3 version would be. The ddr3 version would also in that sense tend to have shorter shelf-life (a significant factor when considering cost at laptop manufacturers), and for us as customers that would mean the following: we get the benefit of increasingly efficient manufacturing process technology in a shorter time, the benefit of smaller and less hot components (and what that means for laptop design), at the same fricking cost we're paying at the end-point anyway.

So some of you will say, well, the gddr5 version scores better in tests. Yes, an increased internal memory bus speed and a broader bus addressing space for certain specific internal algorithms running on the actual graphics card between the gpu and the memory may make these more efficient. But when you know that these certain specific applications typically is 16xFSAA filters -- what the hell does that matter for a laptop gamer? You're never going to run that on your gaming rig anyway.

The truth is that on laptops, the benefit of switching to gddr5 ram is the manufacturer being able to save some pennies. That you are wasting and getting less than nothing in return for.

3. Graphics card performance. Going from a 840m (at the level of a 650m) to a 750m is how significant for the games you're actually playing? That's the question you need to answer. If a 650/750m performance level wasn't good enough anyway - do you really want a single gpu laptop? My personal argument, since I put together PC builds easily, is that in most cases people who buy a "high tier" gaming laptop would be more happy with a small ITX cabinet, since they'd get better performance, about the same mobility, less noise, options for better hardware, as well as better prices for better performance due to how the market works(as in it actually does work on the peripheral card front, while it doesn't work in the laptop industry).

But there are obviously uses for a laptop tethered to the power outlet, and the prices for the things are relatively speaking very good right now compared with the actual performance increase you get compared to the mid-tier "multimedia" laptops. But don't make a compromise here, because if you pick "full-watt" components, there's a completely different requirement for heat dissipation. And the multimedia laptops struggle with that, even the ones that actually work well. It takes away from the lifetime of the kit, etc.

At the same time, the power saving functionality on the newer 8--m series is very good. The dynamic clocking isn't just a gimmick, it actually works now. Making sure that if you run a game or a 3d application that doesn't need massive and constant updates, the laptop can run the clocks down and it generates less heat - while still maintaining the required performance. (edit: which in effect makes you choose between a 40w package and a 20w package, that both run equally well for your uses. What will you pick then? DIFFICULT!)

---------

So to sum up: unless you're going for significantly better components, the ULV compact variants work really well. And going by drips about ticks and tocks and all that, we're not actually going to see much improvement, if any, with the next "update" from either intel or nvidia. That this time around we're going to get two helpings in a row of "same performance, less power use", and that this is going to be sold as the next major upgrade point anyway.

Meaning that when I said two years ago that a 650m would probably last you as a passable gaming card for 1-2 years and thought I was really stretching it -- I wasn't actually stretching it enough. See, you can add expensive post-processing effects on top of the baseline. To the point where most of it has to be axed to make it run on consoles anyway, etc. Thi4ef, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed Unity being great examples. But it's not actually needed to run the game - and you have to axe the detail on any laptop setup regardless.

Meanwhile, 90% of the games in my steam-library doesn't use up all the gpu's cores at full speed. You know.. thank bob Child of Light can run with overclocked GDDR5 timings! Woohoo!

Like alluded to several times now - laptops suck in terms of peak performance and anything resembling a responsibly well set up and efficient set in terms of either bios tweaking, hardware layout, bus bandwidth in the first place (I mean, how many f***ing pce lanes did you say I "needed" you corporate a***hole drone ****er? Why the f*** is there no second sata bus point, why are contacts and functions THE MANUFACTURER PAID INTEL FOR simply cut off the motherboard you're getting. And I mean cut off physically. What the **** is up with the braindead bios-timing? Etc., etc.).

None of this lends itself to any sort of discussion in the same realm as when looking at actually optimized PC components - often even they components exist on the identical hardware platform, just scaled down as explained over - because of the way the components are timed with software and bios, and because of the laughably increased requirement for heat dissipation to avoid hardware throttling.

So think about that the next time you hear someone (at Anandtech) extol the magnificentness of the very latest and greatest their god and master provided them for free in return for a favorable review. It's not true. Ok? They're setting up a benchmarking situation that is IRRELEVANT to the context laptops operate in. And they do it knowing better. Because people like you are truly damned gullible in spite of yourselves - and let me tell you that one for free.

 

Guys,

Just to let you know. I've got myself HP ProBook 450 G1, featuring Core i5 - 4200M, 8GB, AMD Radeon HD8750M 1GB and a terabyte hard drive for roughly 600 euros (bought HDMI cable, a wireless mice and some other gadgets included). It was a holiday season, seemingly a great offer, so I decided to give it a go.

After three weeks of testing, I am quite satisfied with it. Put Windows 8.1 Enterprise so to avoid getting stuck with drivers (which HP seems to be particularly picky about), configured the dedicated GPU and got everything else in order. Works just fine, solid build, aluminium palm rest and rubber surface lid. It's got fairly fast CPU paired with middle class graphics, which seems to be flawlessly crunching Far Cry 3 and 4, as well as Rome 2: Total War and Metro 2033 and Metro 2033: Last Light. Haven't tested anything else so far, but looking forward to some casual gaming in the future.

Anyway, thanks for your time and valuable assistance. I've been part of this community for year, now first time looking for answers myself, and NBR indeed lived up to it's reputation.

Cheers,


MH

 

Looks like a great choice for your budget. I would suggest that once the warranty's over and it's getting a bit old, get a i7-4710MQ and it will be a good upgrade