$400-$550 laptop for minecraft

Ace331FTW

Honorable
Aug 23, 2013
3
0
10,510
My little brother wants to play Minecraft constantly above 30 fps and maybe do a little recording, sometimes some light mods like Pixelmon. Should I go with:
i3 w/ dedicated GPU
i5 w/ HD 4600
AMD A8 or A10
My old laptop had an AMD E-450 which has an ok GPU but terrible CPU power, making it even worse than my mom's sandy bridge i3 w/ HD 3000 at Minecraft. Now I don't know if GPU or CPU is more important.
 
Solution


Oh dear, my bad! The A8 solution (and hence the Acer laptop) is actually faster than the dual graphics' solution that I found. (And also won't suffer from micro stuttering).

Ace331FTW

Honorable
Aug 23, 2013
3
0
10,510

Thanks. How much do you think the extra disrcete card will help the APU though? Will Minecraft even benefit from it? If not then I could probably just get the $429 one without it, right?
 

Kai Dowin

Honorable
Jan 16, 2014
26
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10,610


Oh dear, my bad! The A8 solution (and hence the Acer laptop) is actually faster than the dual graphics' solution that I found. (And also won't suffer from micro stuttering).
 
Solution
If your little brother is a student (which I am pretty sure he is), then you might want to check out the ThinkPad E545 from Lenovo's "student's" site which offers a little bit of a discount. The base price is $474, but upgrading it to the A10-5750m with the Radeon HD 8650g integrated graphics core works out to $541 before tax.

The HD 8650g is basically the most powerful integrated GPU you can get. It is over $100 more than the Acer so keep that in mind, however, this is the cheapest price you will see for a new laptop with an A10-5750m APU. Since this is a ThinkPad series laptop that name also adds in a bit of a price premium.

http://shop.lenovo.com/usstudents/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/e-series/e545/

It would assume upon checkout you or your parents will need to provide some type of proof that you are a student.