Lenovo Y40 80 vs. Acer Aspire V7-482PG-5642: Looking for general use/moderate gaming laptop

Nachiketa Ramesh

Estimable
Apr 4, 2015
3
0
4,510
I need a laptop for general use, coding, Autodesk Maya, light video editing and a spot of gaming.

My gaming needs are as follows. The games I play the most are Assassins Creed 4, Kingdoms of Amalur, the Need for Speed series, Thief, The Witcher 2 (I haven't yet tried 3), Dirt 3 and so on. I want a laptop that will handle the sequels to these games when they come out and more, even if i have to bring the settings down to low.

So I want to know which one I should get.

In terms of specs, both come with 8 gigs of RAM, 1 Terabyte 5400 RPM drives, no optical disk drives, 14 inch screens and the usual wireless cards.

The Y40 has an Intel broadwell (5th gen) i7 5500u CPU and an AMD R9 M275 graphics chip powering a 1080p matte TN display which is apparently not very good at contrast (I think ill be OK with this), and it also lacks a backlit keyboard.

The Acer has an older Haswell i5 4200U which I was told, isn't all that slower than the formers i7, considering both are ultra low voltage processors and its paired with a NVIDIA GeForce GT750M which I was told, isn't better than the AMD everywhere, but trumps it in a lot of places and adds CUDA acceleration and better graphics switching optimus technology. In addition, the Acer may not have a full HD screen but it has a 768p touch panel of some sort which is probably better than the Lenovos in contrast and it also has a backlit keyboard unlike the Lenovo.

I don't know which one to get, the both cost around the same (700USD). I know that Lenovo is a good company by reputation, but i'm not sure about Acer there either. Im also unsure how to take all that people have told me about these.
 
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Nachiketa Ramesh

Estimable
Apr 4, 2015
3
0
4,510


Yeah you are right. The Radeon does seem more powerful. That being said, even in the quoted links, the NVIDIA seems to game better not taking mantle into consideration which is weird. Also, as far as I know Maya doesn't need much, so what do you mean when you say that Maya favours NVIDIAs? Does it crash on AMDs or simply perform slightly slower?

Also, does the touchscreen add much value to the ACER?
 
AMD simply performs a little slower in Maya, nothing really bad, just less ideal.

As far as touch screen, that's really your call. Personally, I've worked with a few touch screen laptops and other than the very first time I saw one (novelty factor, I had to) I don't think I've ever used that feature again. There are some advantages especially if not wanting to take along a mouse since it seems a little more intuitive to use than a touchpad. For me personally, no the value wouldn't be there but, your call here, not mine