Laptop to beat Mac Book Pro

[adamb1897]

I am looking for a windows laptop that is a lot cheaper than the mac because they are overpriced and to get a decent one would cost a fortune. I know it is easy to find a windows laptop that will be ten times faster than a mac, but the challenge is to find a laptop that is as light, battery efficient and as thin as a mac book pro. I am looking at this mac: http/store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MGX92LL/A&step=config# but with the better cpu, memory and SSD. The total cost of that is $2,700. I don't have that much money, so I need it to cost about $1,500-$1,600, but be faster or just as fast. I need at least 1 TB of HDD and 126 GB of SSD which means I don't care about having 1 TB of SSD like this mac has, just as long as I have 1 TB of space and some SSD for faster starting. The laptop needs to have a 13inch screen and the specs of the mac are here: http/www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/
Basically the laptop needs to be able to beat or be equal to the mac for around $1,000 less. Good Luck.

 

[velo3100]

I need to know what you will be doing with it as the new generation of cpus have come out that is more power efficient but are generally less powerful than the previous one.

 

[adamb1897]

I need to know what you will be doing with it as the new generation of cpus have come out that is more power efficient but are generally less powerful than the previous one.

I will be using it for gaming and for general purposes like word processing and web browsing. It does not have to be able to run games at high settings, just as long as it still looks good and runs at around 40-45fps. But I would also like the screen to have a similar resolution to the mac.

 

[jaguarskx]

I am looking for a windows laptop that is a lot cheaper than the mac because they are overpriced and to get a decent one would cost a fortune ... the challenge is to find a laptop that is as light, battery efficient and as thin as a mac book pro ... Basically the laptop needs to be able to beat or be equal to the mac for around $1,000 less. Good Luck.

Good luck to you. I cannot think of a $1,000 Windows based laptop that would be thin, light and as powerful as a $2,700 Mac laptop.

Yes, MacBook Pros are expensive. But Apple does not charge a 170% premium over a Windows based laptop.

 

[adamb1897]

I am looking for a windows laptop that is a lot cheaper than the mac because they are overpriced and to get a decent one would cost a fortune ... the challenge is to find a laptop that is as light, battery efficient and as thin as a mac book pro ... Basically the laptop needs to be able to beat or be equal to the mac for around $1,000 less. Good Luck.

Good luck to you. I cannot think of a $1,000 Windows based laptop that would be thin, light and as powerful as a $2,700 Mac laptop.

Yes, MacBook Pros are expensive. But Apple does not charge a 170% premium over a Windows based laptop.

The computer can cost up to $1,700. That is only $1,000 less, which, I think, is about how overpriced macs are. If I will need more money, than tell me how much more money and if it is too much money, then I will have to get a worse computer.

 

[jaguarskx]

The computer can cost up to $1,700. That is only $1,000 less, which, I think, is about how overpriced macs are. If I will need more money, than tell me how much more money and if it is too much money, then I will have to get a worse computer.

Sorry about that, I mis-read the last sentence as I was juggling a couple of things. I will have to re-evaluate.

Off the top of my head there is the 14" ThinkPad Yoga 14 which has a Core i5-4210u CPU and a nVidia GT 840m with a 1080p IPS screen and a 500GB HDD (I think) for $1,099. Lenovo does not offer any options, there is only one configuration. You can however replace the HDD with a SSD on your own, but there is no way to have both a HDD and a SSD in that laptop.

 

[DougleBi]

The venom black book could be something for you to look at. It starts at $1400 and goes all the way to a $2200 version.

 

[adamb1897]

The venom black book could be something for you to look at. It starts at $1400 and goes all the way to a $2200 version.

The venom blackbook 14 zero uses the same integrated Intel iris graphics that the mac uses, but for $1,700 it has 8GB of memory instead of 16GB like the mac. It would cost another $200 to get 16GB memory. Is it worth the extra money and without an actual graphics card will this be able to play new games at around 40-45fps on meduim settings?

 

[adamb1897]

The computer can cost up to $1,700. That is only $1,000 less, which, I think, is about how overpriced macs are. If I will need more money, than tell me how much more money and if it is too much money, then I will have to get a worse computer.

Sorry about that, I mis-read the last sentence as I was juggling a couple of things. I will have to re-evaluate.

Off the top of my head there is the 14" ThinkPad Yoga 14 which has a Core i5-4210u CPU and a nVidia GT 840m with a 1080p IPS screen and a 500GB HDD (I think) for $1,099. Lenovo does not offer any options, there is only one configuration. You can however replace the HDD with a SSD on your own, but there is no way to have both a HDD and a SSD in that laptop.

This computer has the i5 instead of an i7, but it does have an actual graphics card so it should outperform the mac, but how much would not having an i7 affect it?

 

[DougleBi]

The venom black book could be something for you to look at. It starts at $1400 and goes all the way to a $2200 version.

The venom blackbook 14 zero uses the same integrated Intel iris graphics that the mac uses, but for $1,700 it has 8GB of memory instead of 16GB like the mac. It would cost another $200 to get 16GB memory. Is it worth the extra money and without an actual graphics card will this be able to play new games at around 40-45fps on meduim settings?

Yes actually. According to multiple websites (http/www.techlife.net/2014/05/venom-blackbook-14-zero-review.html /http/apcmag.com/venom-blackbook-14-zero-review.htm/) It should get what you want at 720p. But if you really don't want to use integrated graphics you could upgrade to one of the higher models. But if you are looking for similar specs to the macbook, this is the way to go. Hope this helps.

 

[jaguarskx]

This computer has the i5 instead of an i7, but it does have an actual graphics card so it should outperform the mac, but how much would not having an i7 affect it?

It depends on the game. In games that are not very CPU dependent a core i5 CPU and better graphics chip would provide better performance compared to a higher clocked core i7 CPU and a weaker graphics chip / core.

In games that are very CPU depends and not overly graphics intensive, the core i7 and the weaker graphics chip will likely provide better performance. An example would be Civilization V which is a pretty CPU demanding in the later stages of the game where there are many cities and many military units. The game will need time calculate what your opponents will be doing.

As for games that more or less relies on the CPU and GPU equally, the laptop with the stronger GPU will likely perform better. If the difference in GPU performance was large, then naturally the laptop with the more powerful GPU would handle games better. However, the nVdia GT 840m is only "reasonably" more powerful than the Intel HD Iris Pro. Therefore, it would probably depend on the specific game.

 

[adamb1897]

I am leaning towards the venom black book because I am going to be doing cpu heavy tasks on it and I want the i7. However, how much faster is it compared to the mac?

 

[jaguarskx]

Considering the Venom has a quad core i7 CPU, the CPU performance would be much better than the dual core i7 CPU in the MacBook as long as whatever you do can use more than just 2 cores.

 

[adamb1897]

Update: Apple just released a new computer that is using Intel iris pro 6100 and it has 16GB of SDRAM DDR3 at 1866Mhz. It still costs $2,700 with all the options, but here are the new specs: http/www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/ If there are any major changes please tell me, and I now think the the graphics card on the mac is better than the one on the venom black book, so I am going to need a better computer to be able to beat this one for $1,700 still. I noticed that the lenovo yoga 14 is only $1,100 and does not utilize the full $1,700 budget. If you can find a better computer using the extra $600 please tell me.

 

[adamb1897]

Considering the Venom has a quad core i7 CPU, the CPU performance would be much better than the dual core i7 CPU in the MacBook as long as whatever you do can use more than just 2 cores.

Oh, then it is going to be a lot more powerful, I forgot about the number of cores that each computer has, but would it be more graphically powerful than the macbook pro?

 

[DougleBi]

Considering the Venom has a quad core i7 CPU, the CPU performance would be much better than the dual core i7 CPU in the MacBook as long as whatever you do can use more than just 2 cores.

Oh, then it is going to be a lot more powerful, I forgot about the number of cores that each computer has, but would it be more graphically powerful than the macbook pro?

Not sure as the 6100 is fairly new and not many laptops use it yet. Give it some time and maybe more will come up, but if you need the laptop now then you may be best getting a 5200.

 

[jaguarskx]

Oh, then it is going to be a lot more powerful, I forgot about the number of cores that each computer has, but would it be more graphically powerful than the macbook pro?

I would say that the Intel HD 5200 is more powerful than the Intel HD 6100 since the HD 6100 is replacing the HD 5100. The Intel HD 6200 should be more powerful than the HD 5200 though.

 

[adamb1897]

Ok, then I will buy the venom black book with 16GB of ram for $1900 because the extra ram and SSD space is worth the $200 upgrade in my opinion, thank you guys for the help.