Do I need a Graphics Card?

[Ronin5]

Hi I typed this up on the Ask Question part of the site, but I cant find it posted anywhere, apologies if Im duplicating.

Basically Ive only ever had laptop's so every 4 or 5 years Ive needed to buy a new one, Im now looking to buy a Desktop instead, so that I can upgrade and extend the life of my computer a bit more rather than replace.

My current Acer Laptop uses a 3GB RAM AMD Athlon II Dual Core M300 2GHZ CPU and is 64 bit
The graphics card inside it is AI Mobility Radeon HD 4200, 1407MB Hyper Memory.

Would the i5 series be better than the above, or would a dedicated graphics card be needed?

The main things I do are watch streams, Netflix, Amazon and football games, usually, while watching a stream, I will open a second window and have a look online at various websites.
For some reason now my laptop cant really cope with that second window, but it always did struggle anyway.

Im not sure if I can get away with just buying a desktop with 8GB RAM + and an i5 CPU, or would I also need to buy a graphics card too?

I will never be gaming on it, just watching streams/multitasking not sure if it matters but I would use the desktop with a 27" monitor and HDMI connection.

Many thanks for any help forthcoming

 

[daniel_blacke]

Based on benchmark scores from Passmark the i5's integrated graphics will be significantly better with a score nearly 8x higher. For what you would like to do, depending on your monitor resolution, you should be fine with just the Intel HD 4600 integrated graphics of the i5.


http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Mobility+Radeon+HD+4200

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4600

 

[sizzling]

The iGPU is ideal for your needs, no separate gpu needed

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

If you pick up the Broadwell i5-5675C CPU, which will be released very soon, it will have Intel Iris Pro 6200 graphics. Or you can wait for Skylake and it will have better integrated graphics, DDR4 RAM, and more L3 cache.

 

[sizzling]

For his needs the 5675C will be expensive and way over the top for his needs.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

If your budget is limited, then you can get an i3-4360 CPU with Intel HD 4600.

 

[Ronin5]

This is great, thanks so much for your advice, yes I am on a budget £500 is the maximum as Ive paid £150 for a 27" monitor.
Can I take it the bigger your screen the more powerful the Graphics card needs to be, even if its just Netflix etc not gaming?

 

[sizzling]

This is great, thanks so much for your advice, yes I am on a budget £500 is the maximum as Ive paid £150 for a 27" monitor.
Can I take it the bigger your screen the more powerful the Graphics card needs to be, even if its just Netflix etc not gaming?

No, screen size makes no difference, what matters is resolution. The higher the resolution the more pixels, the more gpu power needed. A 19" 1080p monitor has the same number of pixels as a 27" 1080p monitor

 

[Ronin5]

Thanks again