i5-4200m vs A10-5750m/i5-4200u - Worth £100 Upgrade?

[Matt Cooper-Kay]

Hey,

So looking for a laptop for my GF, and torn between some choices... Looking at these 3:

HP
Lenovo
Toshiba

Now there's £100 between the price of 1 or 2, and the third... Wondering if it's worth the £100 to get an M processor instead of the battery friendly U version. Not fussed about battery life, would rather something more future proof.

If it's not worth the extra 100, then would the Lenovo be better? With an A10-5750M with much higher clock and 4 cores, aswell as an SSHD, this is surelly better than the i5-4200U HP one?

Would be really grateful for any help or suggestions!

Thanks,

Matt

 

[aloof11]

Ive read bad reviews about the Lenovo G505 even though that is the best one out of the bunch (its the best all around laptop out of the 3), you can select it and hope the problems were with a select few G505 laptops (the problem is that the CPU doesnt seem to run at its full capacity even when the temperatures are low whether plugged in or not) and that it will work as it should for you.
The second choice would be the i5 M version (as you said battery life isnt very important) over the U model

 

[jaguarskx]

Apparently, there have been throttling issues with the G505s when charging the battery or simply when the laptop is plugged into the A/C outlet. The G505s actually performs best when running off the battery. That is a bizarre performance to say the least.

However, the problem seems to have been fixed with a new BIOS release. Here is the thread from Lenovo's forum about the problem. The updated BIOS is that last post in the 2nd page, but I will also post the link below:

http/forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-3000-and-Essential/G505s-a10-issue/td-p/1262753
http/support.lenovo.com/en_US/research/hints-or-tips/detail.page?DocID=HT080664


In a different thread about the issue with the G505s @ lenovo's forum users have commented that the BIOS update has in fact fixed the problem. However, I recommend you read though all the comments just to be sure. I saw one comment where an owner stated the BIOS did not fix his issue.

http/forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-3000-and-Essential/G505s-slow-CPU-speed-whilst-charging/td-p/1255661/page/7

 

[jaguarskx]

Assuming the BIOS update does work, then that makes the Lenovo G505s the best laptop for gaming purposes.

However, AMD APUs are much weaker than Intel CPUs when it comes to processing power (not graphics performance). At the same clockspeed a 4th generation Haswell CPU core would be 30% more powerful than a Richland APU core (or perhaps a little more). So a Haswell CPU core running at 2.0GHz means it is at least as powerful as a Richland APU core running at 2.6GHz. But we are comparing dual core Intel CPU to a quad core Intel APU. Which makes it a bit more complex. However....

I have seen quite a few video reviews of laptops which compared a laptop with a more powerful CPU + a weaker graphics core / chip versus a laptop with a less powerful CPU + a more powerful graphics core / chip. The laptop with the weaker CPU, but more powerful graphics core / chip provided better gaming performance.

 

[Matt Cooper-Kay]

Cheers for the reply guys... Not too fussed on her end about graphics performance as she probably won't ever play any games, nor do anything really Get intensive (and heck, I've managed to get by gaming with my i5 with HD3000 Laptop for the most part!) so Cpu is most important. By the sounds of things will the i5-4200m laptop not be any better than the AMD A10-5750M then?

 

[jaguarskx]

I suppose it depends on what she wants to do with the laptop. For general use there should not be much of a difference in performance between the i5-4200m and the A10-5750m. If she plans on doing very CPU demanding tasks like encoding video, then she would likely notice a difference, but it depends....

For CPU intensive tasks that can only use 2 cores, the i5-4200m is the better choice because as I stated before, each individual Intel CPU core is more powerful than AMD's individual CPU cores. However, if whatever she is doing can make use of 4 cores, then the A10 APU will likely provide better performance. Additionally, have more cores can help with load balancing. If she is doing a few different things at the same time like decompressing a zip file, launching FireFox, and encoding music in the background, then having more cores can make the laptop feel more fluid; meaning less chances of getting stutters because those three tasks could theoretically be handled by 3 core in the A10 APU, but for the i5 CPU one of the two cores would probably have to handle two of the task at once. Actually, perhaps Hyper Threading (Intel's term for virtual or non physical cores) could assist with the processes.

If you played games with the Intel HD 3000, then give your laptop to your GF and get the laptop with the A10 for yourself.