About GPU and CPU comparison in laptops.

[eyephy]

Hello, I got some tricky questions, ran through a lot of forums, threads and reviews, but I simply can't find enough information about some mobile gpu card models.

First to start with some basic info:
I'm looking to upgrade my laptop - get a new one, but i'm also on a tight budget and i've hit the breaks at a few models with I5-7300HQ, i7-7700HQ, gtx 1050 or gtx 1050 TI.

What i'm using it for? Mostly work - online browsing/marketing (about 20 browser tabs) with the occasion situation of a few photo edits via photoshop or some online editor. In my free time - gaming, mostly eSports, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 3, WoW Legion, Starcraft 2 with the exception of Pro Evo Soccer and Fifa franchise.
A must requirement is for the device to be able to handle 2 screens - gaming + watching a movie/browsing.

Now to my questions, to which I probably know the answers, but there may be someone out there with a different angle view/knowledge.

1. Would i5-7300HQ be enough for the use that I require + the games that i'm playing? And can any of the listed games utilize the maximum 4 cores of the i5 or even the 8 threads of the i7-7700HQ?

2. This is the tricky question, I've seen 4 types of the gtx 1050 -> gtx 1050 2gb, gtx 1050 4gb, gtx 1050 TI 2gb, gtx 1050 TI 4gb. I know the TI version has more cuba cores and higher frequency, but I'm wondering will the gtx 1050 2gb be enough to support 2 screens and the games I'm playing? Does more vram make difference in my case? How close do gtx 1050 4gb come to gtx 1050 TI 2gb?

3. Which combinations of cpu and gpu would last further in time? The i5 with TI 2gb version or the i7 with the 1050 4gb version. Or perhaps the i5/i7 with the 1050 2gb version? Does bottlenecking or throttling occur in any of the combinations?

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

[jaguarskx]

#1 - The i5-7300HQ is generally enough for playing game. There are actually not very many games at all that can make use of Hyper Threading (HT) which the i7-7700HQ has. Overwatch can make use of HT, and I believe Rainbow 6 can as well... that about the extent of it that I am aware of.

#2 - Between the GTX 1050 4GB and GTX 1050 Ti 2GB, I would opt for the GTX 1050 Ti. While it is a pretty powerful GPU, I do not believe it is powerful enough to play a lot of games on ultra settings where having more VRAM would be beneficial. I generally recommend at least a GTX 1060 to people who are interest in playing games on ultra settings with very good performance. Even the GTX 1080 cannot play all game on ultra settings and still get very good performance.

#3 - If you are simply playing games and doing "average" daily tasks, then I recommend the i5-7300HQ and GTX 1050 Ti. If you were into doing a lot of video editing or anything that can really take advantage of HT, then the i7-7700GQ and GTX 1050 Ti would be a better combo.

Note you should be aware that over the years video encoding formats have advanced a lot. The result are videos that have high visual quality with relatively small file sizes. This basically means modern videos can require a bit of GPU processing power to decode so that the video can be displayed. Be aware that depending on how the video was encoded (specifically which video codec was used) you may experience a noticeable decrease in game performance while watching a video.