Which to keep?

[swages9885]

I have 2 laptops, never used, and going to sell one. Which should I keep? HP 17-g132cy or HP 17-x023cy? AMD quad core A6-6310 vs Intel Pentium N3710, I TB hard drive on both, 6144 vs 4096 ram. I only use it for email, Facebook, taxes, photos, etc. No games or major music storage. I know these aren't the newest of versions but work just fine for my purposes. Any advice is appreciated! SW

 

[profoundnoah]

I'd keep the A6. Quad-cores are generally a bit better for multi-tasking, not to mention the extra RAM is always a plus.

 

[kanewolf]

I would go with the Intel, because it probably will have better battery life than the AMD. I would upgrade the disk to an SSD and be sure you have 8GB RAM. Those are the things that will make the laptop "feel" faster.

 

[cryoburner]

From a performance standpoint, it looks like the AMD A6 system (the 17-g132cy) should be a bit faster. The Pentium N3710 is actually a quad-core as well, but the A6-6310 is still slightly faster. It's not really a huge difference, but the A6 might be around 10% faster in terms of CPU performance, and around 25% faster in terms of graphics performance (though graphics performance matters more for things like games).

Plus, that AMD system has a much more usable amount of RAM. 6GB should be plenty for most of today's common desktop tasks, while 4GB might be cutting things a bit close, and performance could bog down if you have multiple applications open at a time that can't all fit into memory at once. You could likely upgrade the RAM, but the AMD system has a more capable amount already.

As for battery power, it is possible that the Intel system may last a little longer on a charge, due to its more energy-efficient CPU, which has a 6 watt TDP vs 15 watts for the AMD processor. However, there's more than just the processor contributing to power use, and I suspect that the large 17.3 inch screens on these systems will have more of an impact on battery run-time than the processor. So, I don't think that battery life will actually be all that much different between the two. If you are primarily using the system at home, then battery life might not not be of critical importance anyway, since you can always plug it in to charge whenever you need to.

 

[swages9885]

I'd keep the A6. Quad-cores are generally a bit better for multi-tasking, not to mention the extra RAM is always a plus.

 

[swages9885]

Thank you!