Laptops for Uni

[Sam_153]

I'll be going off to uni next year so I'm looking for a good laptop that can last me up to 4 years that is not too heavy, has a solid peformance and battery life around 7+ hours as I am staying at campus away from home . I'm currently looking at Lenovo Yoga 900, HP Spectre x360 and Dell XPS 13. The yoga and spectre has i7 6500u while the xps has i76560u. Is there a great difference between intel graphics 520 and iris 540. Can the iris compete with dedicated graphics such as AMD or Nvidia? All the laptops are said to have great battery life but there are some reviews that state otherwise so it would be great if anyone using one of these computers can give a review. I may do some gaming like dota 2 so can it be done with just intel 520 graphics?I would like around 512 GB of SSD. Does 8 and 16 ram make a big difference if I am just doing extensive browsing, multimedia and light gaming? I might take a commerce major so i do not need very good graphics card. Pricing is not a big issue as my budget is $ 1700 so fell free to suggest new laptops.

 

[Johnson Mike]

Hi Sam,

There is not much difference in performance of 6500U and 6560U. Base clock frequency of both the processors are same but turbo frequency is little bit higher of 6560U. 6500U has can go up to 3.10GHz and 6560U can go up to 3.20GHz so very less difference.

Now as far as graphics are concerned Intel Iris 540 Graphics which comes integrated with Intel i7-6560U are more powerful than Intel HD Graphics 520 which comes with i7-6500U. So, while gaming you'll notice the difference between both processors and their integrated graphics. However, both the processors can handle games like Dota 2 or CS-GO pretty easily but still I prefer the laptop with 6560U processor which is Dell XPS.

You can have a look to this guide which has detailed comparison of each i7 processor model and it also has some laptop recommendations in your budget - https/laptopunderbudget.com/best-i7-laptops/

For your uses I think 8GB RAM is more than enough. You shouldn't spend your money on 16GB RAM, instead go for higher storage.

 

[jaguarskx]

The Intel HD 520 is basically equal to the nVidia 820m. The Intel HD 540 is about equal to the nVidia 930m. Click the link below to some benchmarks from Notebookcheck.net


http/tinyurl.com/ju4uh5a