Need Advice on Radeon 8670m vs GT 740m vs Radeon 8750m

[adel219]

I'm planning to buy a new laptop with modest gaming capabilities because of my tight budget, I have 5 options with nearly the same prices:

1- Dell Inspiron 15r 5537 - cpu i5 4200u - Radeon 8670m 2GDDR3 - ram 4GB - 500GB HDD - No OS - price ~ 600$.

2- HP Pavailion 15 - cpu i5 4200u - nvidia 740m 2GB - ram 4GB - 500GB HDD - No OS - price ~ 620$.

3- Same as option 2 but with 4500u core i7 - 8GB ram - 1TB HDD - price ~ 830$.

4- Acer Aspire E1-572G - cpu i5 4200u - Radeon 8670m with 1GB(don't know how possible) - ram 4GB - 500GB HDD - No OS - price ~ 550$.

5- Same as option 4 but with Radeon 8750m 2GB - 6GB ram - 1TB HDD - Genuine Windows 8 64bit - price ~ 740$.

All the laptops screen is 15.6" 1366*768, please note that the first thing I want to do after buying one of the options is to replace the HDD with 2.5" 9.5mm thick 128GB Plextor SSD 510MB/210MB R/W - price 140$.

The Dell is available with Radeon 8850m or 8750m but unfortunately not in my country.

Another thing to note, HP is the hardest to open to replace the HDD and a 9.5mm drive may not work with it as described with notebookcheck site, while the other laptops HDD is accessible with small simple maintenance cover and a 7mm or 9.5mm drive is no problem.

I prefer buying the Dell because of easy maintenacne, impressive battery and the plastic and aluminum looks.

How the 8670m 2GB will perform, can I run Battlefield 4 with 720p low settings with at least 20 frame per second, can it give me the same frames with Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag or Tomb Raider 2013 ????

How much gain in frames the other graphics give ?

Please help me because the option I take will stay with me for the next 4 years.

Thanks

 

[RaiCoss]

5

 

[adel219]

5

Do you own the 5 option how does it perform in 2013 games(Battlefield 4, assassins creed black flag)

 

[RaiCoss]

No I don't own it, but that graphics chip is slightly more powerful than the rest.

On a side note, AC Black Flag is known to have issues with laptop GPUs, and Ubisoft don't support laptops anyway. So you'd get no technical support help. Stupid I know, but that's how it is.

 

[Ra_V_en]

GT 740M
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-740M.89900.0.html

HD 8750
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8750M.87147.0.html

From the scores it seems GT740 is about 10-15% faster.
Whats most important that all of those games will work with both GPU's on LOW.

So from me option 2 with but with 8GB RAM (BF4 will drain it very fast, trust me).
Don't buy i7 and 1TB drive, its not worth +200$ especially i7 is not a quad core, so the difference vs i5 is almost none, ask for more RAM or find out can you extend it yourself (free RAM slot).

The other issue is overheating, look closely how all of those laptops are build and search on the web about the temperatures... as far as i know 15" models have very poor cooling and even if you will get those 50 fps for 10mins, after that CPU and GPU will limit itself so it will be a fail.
From personal experience: laptop cooler can help a bit but only if the case of the laptop is properly designed, if its badly designed and the cooling unit (radiator+fan) is not effective enough the only solution is a freezer

 

[RaiCoss]

Um, actually from those benchmarks the 8750M is slightly faster in the gaming benchmark scores.. :3

 

[adel219]

GT 740M
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-740M.89900.0.html

HD 8750
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8750M.87147.0.html

From the scores it seems GT740 is about 10-15% faster.
Whats most important that all of those games will work with both GPU's on LOW.

So from me option 2 with but with 8GB RAM (BF4 will drain it very fast, trust me).
Don't buy i7 and 1TB drive, its not worth +200$ especially i7 is not a quad core, so the difference vs i5 is almost none, ask for more RAM or find out can you extend it yourself (free RAM slot).

The other issue is overheating, look closely how all of those laptops are build and search on the web about the temperatures... as far as i know 15" models have very poor cooling and even if you will get those 50 fps for 10mins, after that CPU and GPU will limit itself so it will be a fail.
From personal experience: laptop cooler can help a bit but only if the case of the laptop is properly designed, if its badly designed and the cooling unit (radiator+fan) is not effective enough the only solution is a freezer

What about SSD upgrade to the HP it's important to me, upgrading hp to SSD is difficult and it may damage the laptop, while the Dell is the easiest in this matter.

I know that upgrading to ssd will boost the performance significantly but what about gaming performance.

If I take the Dell and upgrade the ram to 8GB and SSD with the Radeon 8670m 2GB and don't forget the 4th gen i5, will I get at least 20 frames with the lowest settings available in Battlefield 4 and I don't mind 800*600 resolution
because if it worked I'd play it for an hour maximum.

 

[RaiCoss]

Some games benefit from SSDs (Total War for instance on the Campaign Map. SSDs remove a lot of the stutter), but most games will just load faster.

What's your overall budget for a laptop?

 

[Ra_V_en]

Um, actually from those benchmarks the 8750M is slightly faster in the gaming benchmark scores.. :3

Laptop GPU comparisons are far from being fair since there is no way to compare head to head those cards.
From the games he was asking TR 2013 was the only having both, and on this one there was 81vs90fps avg, thats why I've put that assumption.
"The performance of the Radeon HD 8750M is similar to the Nvidia GeForce GT 640M."
GT 740M > GT 640M due to clocks speeds, the rest is the same since its the same architecture.

The only sure thing is that 8670m is the slowest of them all, so we have 2, 3 or 5 options left.

As I've said before its not a race about the GPU power but about the cooling efficiency... in a long run it will be more important.

EDIT: Where do they say it will be problematic to put an SSD, it seems like standard size to me:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Pavilion-15-e052sg-Notebook.101151.0.html

 

[RaiCoss]

Um, actually from those benchmarks the 8750M is slightly faster in the gaming benchmark scores.. :3

Laptop GPU comparisons are far from being fair since there is no way to compare head to head those cards.
From the games he was asking TR 2013 was the only having both, and on this one there was 81vs90fps avg, thats why I've put that assumption.
"The performance of the Radeon HD 8750M is similar to the Nvidia GeForce GT 640M."
GT 740M > GT 640M due to clocks speeds, the rest is the same since its the same architecture.

The only sure thing is that 8670m is the slowest of them all, so we have 2, 3 or 5 options left.

As I've said before its not a race about the GPU power but about the cooling efficiency... in a long run it will be more important.

There are 2 versions of the 740M too. Which does that laptop have?

 

[adel219]

There are 2 versions of the 740M too. Which does that laptop have?

I couldn't figure out the version of the 740m, that is another reason why I'm hesitated about the HP.

 

[Ra_V_en]

Ok seems this talk is going nowhere:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Pavilion-15-e052sg-Notebook.101151.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-E1-572G-54204G75Mnkk-Notebook.99958.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Inspiron-15R-5537-Notebook.98850.0.html

Look on temperature tab and take out the conclusions.

I'm still pointing to that HP and way NO for Acer.

 

[adel219]

EDIT: Where do they say it will be problematic to put an SSD, it seems like standard size to me:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Pavilion-15-e052sg-Notebook.101151.0.html

I'm talking about this Pavilion 15, check out the maintenance section where they mentioned this issue.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Pavilion-15-n005sg-Notebook.105200.0.html

And take a look how slim it is I'm sure it has cooling problems too.

while the Dell in here has similar config to the one in my country:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Inspiron-15R-5537-Notebook.98850.0.html

The Inspiron has a better build quality than the Pavailion.

The thing I want to understand, will the Dell be able to at least run Battlefield 4 with its 2GB dedicated graphics.

 

[RaiCoss]

Does it have to be a laptop?

 

[Ra_V_en]

EDIT: Where do they say it will be problematic to put an SSD, it seems like standard size to me:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Pavilion-15-e052sg-Notebook.101151.0.html

I'm talking about this Pavilion 15, check out the maintenance section where they mentioned this issue.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Pavilion-15-n005sg-Notebook.105200.0.html

And take a look how slim it is I'm sure it has cooling problems too.

while the Dell in here has similar config to the one in my country:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Inspiron-15R-5537-Notebook.98850.0.html

The Inspiron has a better build quality than the Pavailion.

The thing I want to understand, will the Dell be able to at least run Battlefield 4 with its 2GB dedicated graphics.

As stated before I'd personally choose that HP, but its not me buying it. I'm only saying BIG NO for Acer, I have one actually and I know temps of CPU+GPU will kill the fun... and it seems they didn't make any progress in that aspect for few years as the tests shows.

So we have DELL vs HP battle, pick one that suits you more... both are so close in power/price/quality it actually doesn't matter which one it will be. Since you want that SSD changed and keep the warranty untouched, DELL is the only left.
Those GPU's are quite the same level, all are low end and almost any new desktop GPU would kill them, so there is no point for further discussion from my side.
All will keep up with the games you have asked at decent/playable level... forget about multiplayer and stable 60fps... but it will be working

The only thing: aim for at least 6-8GB ram if you really want to avoid fps spikes in BF4, on my home PC when i had 4GB there was a random drops and freezes, at 8GB all went away.

 

[adel219]

Does it have to be a laptop?

Absolutely a laptop, because I'm a student and I take it to college with me every day.

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I don't mind having a machine that is capable of playing some recent games
if I have this option, my budget is about 700$, here are the specs of my current laptop:

LG R580
cpu Core 2 Duo T6500
4GB DDR2 Ram
Geforce 105m 1GB
500GB HDD

I wanted to put SSD drive in it before but it's 4 year old and its not worth it(slow cpu and sata2).

So it's important to me to put SSD in the new one, to feel much much more total boost but it seems the
hp doesn't support that.

Because of the battery running times of the Dell I prefer it more than the HP and the overall build quality.

If the Radeon 8670m runs Battlefield 3 at 20 frames(hopped it could run the 4th edition) I'd go for it, because Battlefield 3 is my favorite game.

 

[Ra_V_en]

HD 8670M gameplay (btw on the HP i was suggesting :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZjbILW1MY

You will be just fine.

 

[adel219]

HD 8670M gameplay (btw on the HP i was suggesting :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08ZjbILW1MY

You will be just fine.

Yesterday I was going to buy the Dell but I spotted the HP and fall in love with it.

So I got back home and did some research and asked you guys here.

I really want the HP but the SSD is going to ruin that, so I'm buying the Dell tomorrow.

Thanks for your time and your experience that you shared with me.