$400-$550 laptop for minecraft

[Ace331FTW]

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.

 

[Kai Dowin]

If you could go a little up your budget, look this Acer. It would do the trick nicely:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314240

Keep in mind that there are other options.

 

[Ace331FTW]

If you could go a little up your budget, look this Acer. It would do the trick nicely:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314240

Keep in mind that there are other options.

Sorry, can't do that. Even $550 is a stretch. Would these be good instead?
Acer Aspire V5 w/ A8-5557http://
Lenovo G500 w/ Core i5-3230mhttp://
Lenovo G505s w/ A8-5550mhttp://

 

[Kai Dowin]

Here's a better option that fall within your desired price range.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312830

 

[Ace331FTW]

Here's a better option that fall within your desired price range.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312830

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?

 

[jaguarskx]

Based on some research, AMD's dual graphics will only work with DX11 games. Playing DX10 and below games will automatically default to just the integrated graphics core.

I think Minecraft is a DX11 game, but you need to check on that.

 

[Kai Dowin]

Here's a better option that fall within your desired price range.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312830

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?

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).

 

[jaguarskx]

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.

 

[star293]

get a laptop with a very good cpu.