31-40k Intel i5 (3rd Gen) vs AMD (Trinity)

[iChaitanya]

• What's your Budget? - 38k max.
• What will be your primary usage for the notebook be? - Web surfing, MS Office apps, casual gaming, basic engg. programming, Photoshop, watching HD movies, working on MATLAB.
• What size and weight considerations do you have? - Need a 15.x" (weight is not an issue)
• Any brand that you prefer, or any brand that you detest? - Would like to avoid Acer.
• Any other considerations? - This laptop is going to be a desktop replacement and is not going to leave the home. So, battery life is also not much of an issue.

I've considered two laptops (for my sis):

1) Lenovo G580 (ships with Intel i5 3rd gen.) - Lenovo Essential G Series G580 (59-324061) Laptop 3rd Gen Ci5/4GB/500GB/DOS: Flipkart.com: Compare, Review Lenovo Notebook

2) HP Pavilion G6-2005AX (ships with AMD A8 4500M) - HP Pavilion G6-2005AX Laptop AMD A8 Quad Core/4GB/500GB/Win 7 HB/1GB Graphics: Flipkart.com: Compare, Review HP Notebook

From what I've read everywhere, it seems that among these two, the i5 (with HD4000 IGP) leads in raw processing power / multi-tasking whereas the AMD APU (with the 7670M GPU + 7640G IGP) leads in the graphics dept.

So, considering my sis's primary usage which one should she opt for?

Also, a friend's cousin wants to buy a laptop within the same budget mentioned above. But, he wants a gaming lappy. So, I've advised him to go for the AMD one mentioned above. But, what about my sis?

Will the 7670M GPU + 7640G IGP combo benefit her in image editing (Photoshop) or MATLAB? Gaming is not much of a priority for her, but it would be a plus if she could play a few (old?) games (at playable FPS) once in a while.

AMD's GPU is nice, but how is the performance of AMD A8 4500M APU in general usage as compared to the i5 (3rd gen)? Will she experience any kind of sluggishness during normal laptop usage like browsing the web, office, etc. ? I've read that the performance of A8 is same as that of i3. I've used a Lenovo Z570 with 1st gen i3 and I found it to be slow/sluggish. :annoyed:

I'm confused. :unsure:

 

[sam811]

For Photoshop i'll definitely pick the AMD based one over Intel but check if MATLAB takes advantage of OpenGL or OpenCL. If it does, grab the same.

I recently got hands on with the same laptop and only in case of file compression did it felt slow and it took ages to compress. Else for normal task, it was quick. But to get the best performance out of an AMD laptop you'll have to fiddle a bit with the settings. I did some testing but only in terms of gaming, you can find the review here.

 

[iChaitanya]

Can you please check whether MATLAB takes advantage of OpenGL or OpenCL? I tried searching but couldn't find any relevant info.

Yes, I did read your review. I think it's obvious that the dual GPU thing is useless for old games. But, do the latest games benefit from it?

Took ages to compress? Basically, I think this laptop is for gaming rather than multi-tasking / CPU intensive work. Am I right?

 

[sam811]

yes, MATLAB does support OpenGL.
For time being i'd say think dual GPU thing as a fail idea. Even with new games it doesn't always work as crossfire in desktop itself doesn't yield 2 times the performance. So its not right to expect much performance increase.

Multitasking works great. I played game with download and chrome running in background that also with discrete GPU off. It didn't lag at all nor any slowdown but i don't understand why compress (was extracting MS Office) took so long. It was like 2 times what my desktop does which uses Athlon II X4 and almost same config. Softwares that benefit from extra processing power will feel slow for sure like compressing, decoding or rendering. Rest everything should work fine.

So i'll say go for the G6 in both case.

 

[iChaitanya]

^ Alright, thanks!