Laptop vs. Laptop Discussion

[ss unknown ss]

There are 2 laptops which I am looking at for some light-medium gaming, but I am not sure to choose. They are both nice, but I need some help deciding. Links are below.

Acer: http://m.newegg.com/Product?itemNumber=N82E16834315065

MSI: http://m.newegg.com/Product?itemNumber=N82E16834152949

Is it worth the extra money to go to the MSI because of the processor and GPU?

 

[digitaldoc]

I would not go with the MSI as the CPU is Haswell for more money. The acer laptop is at least a Broadwell CPU which is a generation ahead. However, the Acer has a less powerful GPU.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5200U-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4210U

 

[jaguarskx]

I would not go with the MSI as the CPU is Haswell for more money. The acer laptop is at least a Broadwell CPU which is a generation ahead. However, the Acer has a less powerful GPU.

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5200U-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4210U

Overall, there is only a small performance difference between a 4th generation and 5th generation Intel CPU; roughly 4% on average when comparing CPUs with the same clock speed.

When choosing a game laptop, it is best to choose a laptop with the more powerful GPU and weaker CPU versus a laptop with a more powerful CPU and weaker GPU because games are primarily limited by the GPU, not the CPU.

Lastly, you are not comparing the correct CPU in the MSI laptop which has a Core i5-4210H CPU that has a max clockspeed of 3.5GHz. It does not have the Core i5-4210u CPU which has a max clockspeed of 2.7GHz.


If playing games is primary purpose of the laptop, then you want the most powerful one you can afford because you cannot upgrade the CPU and the GPU in both of those laptops. Once you feel that the performance is no longer good enough, then you need to buy a whole new laptop.

 

[jaguarskx]

If you can save up another $100 for the following Dell Inspiron 15 7559 laptop which has a quad core i5-6300HQ and the more powerful GTX 960m graphics chip. You pay more upfront, but there is a big performance difference between the GTX 960m with DDR5 VRAM and GTX 950m DDR3 VRAM. Not only is the GTX 960m itself is more powerful than the GTX 950m, DDR3 VRAM has as significant performance penalty compared to DDR5 VRAM.

Spending the extra $100 now for the Dell could mean you can postpone buying a new laptop by 2 years (or more) compared to buying the weaker MSI laptop.

There are two versions of the Dell Inspiron 7559 for $800.

With a 256GB SSD - Not much storage, but it is faster than a hard drive
http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-i7559-763BLK-Full-HD-GeForce/dp/B015PYYDMQ


With a 1TB hard drive - Lots of capacity, but slower than a SSD.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/inspiron-15-7559-laptop/pd?ref=PD_Family