I have found two laptops that currently are on sale and in my budget. They are very similar, with the main difference being the CPU.
HP Beats 15-p071nr Signature Edition Laptop which has a Amd A8 5545m and AMD Radeon HD 8510G with shared graphics memory ($499 after promotions)
vs
Toshiba Satellite S55t-B5152 Signature Edition Laptop which has an Intel Core i5-5200U and Intel HD Graphics 5500 with shared graphics memory ($479 after promotions)
Besides the usual web browsing, watching movies, listening to music, word processing (no big spreadsheets), I would be also use the laptop for:
Occasional Audio recording and light editing - nothing too crazy, I have a powerful desktop at home for heavy editing and recording. I work mostly in live sound so I will also often be using it to play music and sound fx cues, which means it has to be a solid reliable machine with minimal lag.
Occasional gaming - prob mostly RTS like Age of Wonders 3, SCII, but possibly some more intensive stuff. Nothing too crazy though, I'll stick to using my desktop to play Shadow of Mordor with the graphics settings maxed out lol
HP with the Amd A8 5545m has 8GB of RAM vs the Toshiba Intel Core i5-5200U with 4 GB
HP has a bigger HDD which is good for recording audio
HP has backlit keyboard which is good for using it during a show when the lights are out
HP has an optical drive which is also good for shows (people often hand me CDs)
So for all those reasons I've leaning towards the HP, but I haven't been able to pull the trigger because I'm worried about the CPU. The optical drive and backlit keyboard are not dealbreakers (external cd drives and clip on lights are cheap). I also can upgrade the RAM on the toshiba, while I don't know how to upgrade the CPU on the HP, so maybe the toshiba will not become obsolete so soon?
Should I be worried about the Amd A8 5545m?
How much better is the Intel Core i5-5200U?
Some help would be much appreciated!
HP Beats 15-p071nr Signature Edition Laptop which has a Amd A8 5545m and AMD Radeon HD 8510G with shared graphics memory ($499 after promotions)
vs
Toshiba Satellite S55t-B5152 Signature Edition Laptop which has an Intel Core i5-5200U and Intel HD Graphics 5500 with shared graphics memory ($479 after promotions)
Besides the usual web browsing, watching movies, listening to music, word processing (no big spreadsheets), I would be also use the laptop for:
Occasional Audio recording and light editing - nothing too crazy, I have a powerful desktop at home for heavy editing and recording. I work mostly in live sound so I will also often be using it to play music and sound fx cues, which means it has to be a solid reliable machine with minimal lag.
Occasional gaming - prob mostly RTS like Age of Wonders 3, SCII, but possibly some more intensive stuff. Nothing too crazy though, I'll stick to using my desktop to play Shadow of Mordor with the graphics settings maxed out lol
HP with the Amd A8 5545m has 8GB of RAM vs the Toshiba Intel Core i5-5200U with 4 GB
HP has a bigger HDD which is good for recording audio
HP has backlit keyboard which is good for using it during a show when the lights are out
HP has an optical drive which is also good for shows (people often hand me CDs)
So for all those reasons I've leaning towards the HP, but I haven't been able to pull the trigger because I'm worried about the CPU. The optical drive and backlit keyboard are not dealbreakers (external cd drives and clip on lights are cheap). I also can upgrade the RAM on the toshiba, while I don't know how to upgrade the CPU on the HP, so maybe the toshiba will not become obsolete so soon?
Should I be worried about the Amd A8 5545m?
How much better is the Intel Core i5-5200U?
Some help would be much appreciated!
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