Overheating

[summertime_21]

What is going to have more overheating problems: An A10-4600m with integrated graphics or an A10-4600m with a Radoen HD 7670m graphics card? Playing BF3 and Skyrim

 

[C12Friedman]

Hopefully neither, if the laptop is designed well and it is kept on a flat hard surface (for adequate airflow to vents) or better still, a cooling pad.
If the question is which will produce more heat and therefore the potential to overheat more than the other, the answer would be the one with the dedicated graphics will produce more heat when gaming.

 

[summertime_21]

Thank you. Do you by chance know which would be better for gaming: an i5-2450m with a Geforce GT 630m or an A10-4600m with a Radeon HD 7670m. And likewise is there a major heat output difference?

 

[mousseng]

[strike]If you're playing Skyrim and BF3, I'd put the i5-based laptop ahead. The 7670m is only slightly better than the 630m, however both of those games also rely heavily on the CPU. The i5-2450m is quite a bit more powerful than the A10.[/strike]
I was mistaken - the A10 is actually a more powerful processor overall than the i5. In that case, with a slight graphics lead and a bit more of a processing lead, I'd say the A10-based laptop is the better laptop. Remember folks, do your homework before you say something stupid. Tom's has a good article comparing the A10-4600m and i5-2450m; ignore the gaming benchmarks though, those are for integrated graphics. Additionally, Passmark (if you choose to give them much heed) have the A10-4600m ranked much higher than the i5-2450m.

There really won't be much heat difference - both will get hot gaming unless you give the laptop some good ventilation.

 

[summertime_21]

thank you all for your input. much appreciated

 

[summertime_21]

I have a question. Outside of gaming the link you posted seemed to show the i5 benchmark better on nearly every test. Why did you change your answer and say that the A10 was superior?

 

[mousseng]

Because I was looking at the specific synthetic benchmarks that I thought would most reflect gaming performance and general laptop use - namely, the PC Mark benches (which favor Intel according to the article) and the 3 tests under Content Creation (as well as the compression tests, which yes the A10 lacks in). In those tests, where the A10 isn't better or similarly performing, it's not too terribly far behind (usually).

Feel free to make a final decision including those other tests - don't let me stop you. I'm just evaluating it based on my experiences (which are different than yours, no doubt). Synthetic benchmarks are never the best indicator of real performance, either (and Sandra seems notorious for being innacurate; it feels like that's mentioned every time it's used) - so take those with a grain of salt.

If you feel the i5 would better suit your needs, or if others come in here and say I'm an idiot and the i5's better, then go for it. Your best bet with advice from others (like myself) is to not trust it, research, and come to your own conclusion. You'll be much more confident about your decision in the end, since it was you that made it.

 

[summertime_21]

That was actually a very convincing answer. I appreciate all your time but one more thing: if I were to opt for the i5-3210m ivy bridge processor with the GT 630m. Would the A10 even be close?

 

[mousseng]

Hmm. There's not very many benchmarks at all on the 3210m - however, the 3210m is clocked the same as the 2450m. By virtue of their architectures, I would imagine the 3210m is only 5 to 10% faster than the 2450m; what benchmarks are available seem to be pointing to exactly that. This is what I'm looking at, if you scroll down you can expand a comparison chart beneath each graph.

If I had to take a guess at how it'd fare against the A10, I'd say it's definitely more enticing now to go with Intel - the performance gaps aren't as large for the A10, typical single-threaded processes (like unpacking RAR files) would be even quicker, etc.

If there's a price premium over the 2450m, unless it's something tiny like $10 to $20, I wouldn't go for it. But keep in mind, all this here is theoretical now (about the 3210m).

 

[C12Friedman]

That was actually a very convincing answer. I appreciate all your time but one more thing: if I were to opt for the i5-3210m ivy bridge processor with the GT 630m. Would the A10 even be close?

I personally would opt for the A10 with the Radeon HD7670m, you get dual graphics capabilities (the APU and GPU integrate together), I think it would be better over all. I don't think the A10 APU could stand alone vs i5 with 630m though.

 

[summertime_21]

The 3210m is $20 more than the 2450m this is why I ask and it has HD 4000 which is much better than HD 3000. Seemed worth asking.

So is that the difference between AMD and Intel/NVIDIA dedicated graphics? Intel is switchable while AMD is crossfire?

With switchable; is it that the HD 4000 will take care of browsing, video streaming, and light games. But when I turn on heavier games then the GT 630M kicks in? Which seems very good on battery life.

And with Dual GPU how does that work exactly and how can I make my battery life last longer when I'm not gaming. Can I turn off the 7670m and just use the 7660g?

 

[erunion]

Because I was looking at the specific synthetic benchmarks that I thought would most reflect gaming performance and general laptop use - namely, the PC Mark benches (which favor Intel according to the article) and the 3 tests under Content Creation (as well as the compression tests, which yes the A10 lacks in). In those tests, where the A10 isn't better or similarly performing, it's not too terribly far behind (usually).

I agree that those tests are the most representative of gaming performance, but I don't see how you can call the results similar. 25% difference in photoshop.

 

[summertime_21]

I take it you would rather have an i5-3210m with GT 630m over an A10 with 7670m?

 

[erunion]

Maybe. What laptops are you looking at?

 

[summertime_21]

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
3rd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3210M (2.5 GHz, 3MB L3 Cache)
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GT 630M Graphics with 1GB of dedicated video memory
FREE Upgrade to 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Microsoft(R) Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word/Excel(R) only, No PowerPoint(R)/Outlook(R)
FREE Upgrade to 640GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
NO mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache
No additional security software
6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery - Up to 6.0 hours of battery life +++
15.6-inch diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit Display (1366x768)
SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
HP TrueVision HD Webcam
802.11b/g/n WLAN
Backlit Keyboard
HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

or

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
AMD Quad-Core A10-4600M Accelerated Processor (3.2GHz/2.3GHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7670M Graphics
FREE Upgrade to 6GB 1600MHz DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Microsoft(R) Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word/Excel(R) only, No PowerPoint(R)/Outlook(R)
FREE Upgrade to 640GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
No additional security software
6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
15.6-inch diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit Display (1366x768)
SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
HP TrueVision Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone + HP SimplePass Fingerprint Reader
802.11b/g/n WLAN
Backlit Keyboard
HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

 

[summertime_21]

The i5 is $24 more not including tax so very negligible

 

[erunion]

I don't keep up with laptops, but The 7670 seems to be a slightly better GPU.

http://techknowlogist.blogspot.com/2012/05/nvidia-630m-vs-540m-vs-ati-6770m-vs.html

 

[mousseng]

I agree that those tests are the most representative of gaming performance, but I don't see how you can call the results similar. 25% difference in photoshop.

I did say they were similar, but I also said where they weren't similar, the A10 wasn't too terribly far behind. I figure for general usage, someone's probably not going to be applying several filters to a rather large image at once, so I'd consider that 25% to be not so significant. I figure if you are going to be dealing with workloads like that on a regular basis, you're probably going to want to spend a little more money on a desktop or i7-based laptop.

I would agree that the 7670m does have a slight edge over the 630m - so if you're getting this primarily to play games on, then it's probably the way to go. Not to mention the AMD's dual-graphics (like C12 mentioned before) will also give it an extra boost over the i5/630m in terms of gaming performance.

 

[summertime_21]

Ive heard Optimus is a better graphics switcher and is more effective than AMD's. Is that true? Is dual graphics a different type of thing than Optimus? Is it that Optimis uses one GPU at a time while AMD has the capability to use both at the same time?

 

[summertime_21]

Best answer selected by Summertime_21.