Gaming Upgrade from Surface Pro 1

[Ray_2_]

First time poster here!

I have owned a surface pro 1 for about 2 years now. I have been happy with gaming on low levels but am looking for an upgrade now. I am just starting my research and have a couple questions.

Will purchasing a gaming laptop in the 500$ range with discrete graphics prove to be a noticable upgrade over the Pro 1?

Where would I go to find CPU benchmarks to compare my current surface to newer generations of i5/i7 prcoessors?

Thanks in advance!

 

[TechyInAZ]

$500 isn't going to get you really anywhere, $700 is the minimum for a good used gaming notebook. $900 for a good new gaming notebook.

For CPU benchmarks, check out: http/www.cpubenchmark.net/

 

[jaguarskx]

The 1st generation Surface Pro uses a 3rd generation Ivy Bridge Core i5 CPU which has an integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics core. Intel has generally increased their iGPU performance by a bit over 15% on average with each new generation. A 5th gen Core CPU would have the Intel HD 5500 graphics core so there would be roughly a little more than 32% more powerful than the Intel HD 4000. Not sure about 6th gen Skylake integrated GPUs yet. Yeah, you can notice a difference, integrated graphics are still weak compared to dedicated GPUs.

For $500 you can buy the following Acer laptop with Core i5-5200u and a nVidia 940m. It is a lot better than the Intel HD 5500, but it is weak compared to something like the nVidia GTX 960m which many people would say is the least powerful GPU a laptop should have to be considered a "gaming laptop".

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315131&cm_re=acer_940m-_-34-315-131-_-Product