Planning to buy son his first laptop....

[Flacksguy]

Hello,

I know there has probably been a ton of these type of threads, but I really wanted to get an expert opinion. I'm afraid of buying the wrong computer.

I plan on buying my son his first laptop this year, he is 11 and he would use it primarily for some light gaming. (Skyrim, Minecraft, and maybe some of those Civ games, as well as a few of those free online games he likes, such as RoBlox) He would also be interested in downloading Mods here and there. (No Gore Mod for Skyrim). I would like to be around the $600 price range.
I understand that we would probably not be able to run these games on their higher settings, and that is fine. I would just rather they ran as smooth as possible for him, with as little lag as possible.

I believe I have narrowed my search down to two choices, however I am completely in the dark as far as graphics cards go. There are many different cards, and it is quite confusing trying to figure out which is better.

The first laptop I am considering, is the Asus X550LA-DH71 $739

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/15-6-laptop-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive/1993069.p;jsessionid=95C24DC6138313DFDF862717281F2932.bbolsp-app03-104?id=1219068210293&skuId=1993069&st=asus%20x550&cp=1&lp=4


i7-4500U processor
8g DDR3L Memory
Intel HD Graphics 5000
1 T Hard Drive

However it is a little out of my price range.



The next is the HP Pavilion 15-n023CL $574

http://www.costco.com/HP-Pavilion-15-n023cl-TouchSmart-Laptop-%E2%80%A2-AMD-Elite-Quad-Core-A8.product.100085583.html

AMD A8-5545M processor
8g DDR3 Memory
AMD Radeon HD 8510G
1 T Hard Drive

I am just unsure how the graphics cards is, but the price is much nicer


Am I on the right track with these two choices, or should I forget these two and start from scratch?
I think I'm looking it the right place as far as Processor, Memory and Hard Drive, I am just hitting a wall when trying to figure out Graphics.
Any advice is much appreciated.

 

[TwistedFury]

On the HP laptop, it's going to be decent, not the best, don't expect it to play newer games on High, it should run from low-medium just fine, on older games it should be able to max it out. I've had bad experiences with Intel HD Graphics (HD 4000) on my i5 laptop, go for the APU with a better card.

 

[Flacksguy]

Thanks TwistedFury,
Good to hear that the more inexpensive of the two will work. I just wasn't sure about that graphics card.

 

[TwistedFury]

No problem, glad to help, if you click "Pick as the solution" above my post, it will mark this as solved! Thanks!