i7-3632QM (with Intel HD 4000) VS A10 -5757M (with Radeon HD 8735M)

[beowulfen]

Hi, I'm looking to buy a laptop which will be used mainly for office work so... internet, paperwork, picture and some video edition, video playback and no games.

I found these 2:

730$ - ThinkPad E531 6885CFU
cpu - i7-3632QM (2.2GHz)
gpu - Intel HD Graphics 4000
ram - 4GB DDR3
hdd - 500GB 7200rpm

550$ - Acer Aspire V5 - V5-552G-X412 (I know...bloatware)
cpu - A10-5757M (2.5GHz)
gpu - Radeon HD 8750M
ram - 8GB DDR3
hdd - 500GB 5400rpm

But really the question I'm asking is is the combination of a faster CPU and HDD worth the 180$ price difference for my use or is having more RAM and a mid-range GPU going to serve me better in the long run...especially knowing that you can get a decent SSD for a 180$?

Also since this is basically going to be a "mobile" desktop it really doesn't matter if it isn't light or if the battery lasts only 3 hours.

 

[jaguarskx]

The main question is how much performance do you want when editing videos since that seems to be the most CPU intensive task you have listed. Both can handle it, however, the Core i7 can be much faster at it than the A10. Other than video editing everything else is pretty basic stuff so a quad core CPU is not absolutely necessary.

I encode videos on my laptop which has a dual core Sandy Bridge Core i5-2410m and I find the performance to be adequate enough. Although I have to admit the next laptop I buy will very likely have a quad core CPU which allows for better encoding times and very heavy multitasking. For example, I could set two core to encode a movie and set two for the game I want to play while encoding the movie. While I do use Excel quite a bit, it is not a CPU hog.

A SSD only improves the read / write speeds which improves loading / booting and saving / shutdown speeds. It will make your laptop feel more responsive, but it has no effect on processing power.

I actually find that the 1366x768 screen on my Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 to be very limiting when it comes to multitasking / productivity since I generally switch back and forth between programs / windows because the resolution is really too low to have multiple windows open at the same time, plus I can only see so much of a spreadsheet in Excel without having to scroll around. However, looking for a laptop with a higher resolution screen will increase the price.

 

[jaguarskx]

Unless video editing is very important and you want to best performance to cut down on the amount of time it takes to edit, then go with the Acer to save a bit of cash.