Need help choosing between 2 notebooks

maaymaay

Honorable
Dec 4, 2013
6
0
10,510
Hi all, I did some thorough research and at the end I'm looking at these two notebooks (they have the same price):

Acer Aspire V3-551G-10468G50Makk:
CPU AMD A10-4600m
Dedicated Radeon HD 7670m 2GB
6GB RAM
750GB HDD
15,6" with max 1366x768

HP Pavilion 17-e049wm:
CPU AMD A10-5750m Richland
Onboard Radeon HD 8650g
8GB RAM
750GB HDD
17,3" with max 1600x900

I will be using the laptop mainly for light gaming (such as League of Legends and Call of Duty 4, maybe some Skyrim) and web browsing. Which one would be the best? Afaik the Richland APU is newer but in the CPU Benchmarks it is only slightly above the 4600m. The 8650g while being onboard is still above the 7670m or the 7660g+7670m dual graphics in benchmarks. Also, higher resolution on the HP means more gpu load, which im not sure the how well that would work with the integrated graphics. Thoughts? Thank you in advance!
 
Solution

SF95070

Honorable
Dec 30, 2013
6
0
10,510
This is really an apples and oranges comparison and based on your stated requirements, either machine would probably meet your needs.

A 17 inch machine feels a LOT heavier than a 15, so a first question would be how much does portability matter to you?

Higher resolution screen generally looks better than lower res and 17 inch screens are visually nice, so HP wins on that point.

Having dedicated video memory usually gives a big performance boost over shared ram, so Acer wins on that point.

You didn't mention whether battery life is a criteria, but I suspect that the Acer would give a bit better life based on the m version of the GPU.

If you want to play Skyrim at any settings above minimum, you probably will notice a difference with the dedicated video RAM as Skyrim really needs graphics performance. I am able to play Skyrim pretty much maxed out on the Envy with an i7 and NVidia 650M with 2GB of dedicated RAM. The 650 isn't the hottest GPU, but with the dedicated RAM it seems to be cutting it playing Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas. It also handles editing AVCHD video pretty well..

While I chose a 17 inch HP Envy dv7 and love it, I suspect that either of these machines would meet your needs based on your specifying light gaming and web browsing.
 

jaggedIT

Estimable
Feb 17, 2014
4
0
4,520


First the GPU's:

The acer has a absolutely crappy GPU with a score of only [strike]1170[/strike] might I add that most intel HD 3000 and on out preforms that gpu... terrible.

as for the HP:

I actually don't know that gpu... and strangely enough it doesn't show up on gpu benchmarks.
Well not enough to give a real world example!!!


now the CPU's:

acer: 2.3 GHz with an overall score of: [strike] 6.5[/strike] / 10

HP: 2.5GHz with an overall score of: [strike] 6.7[/strike] / 10

but my overall score for both of them are for gaming: 3.2 / 10
your max on medium setting will probably be close to only 30fps on League of Legends... and that's bad.

if you had to choose one... get the HP I suggest you look at Lenovo y510p or the fangbook hx6

u need to splurge a bit more on a laptop and get one with an intel i7 4700mq
and a minimum of NVidia GeForce GTX 750m
that's just my opinion!





 
Solution

mikamiko

Estimable
Mar 26, 2014
6
0
4,510
from my personal experience, more hp longevity
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