2014-05-04, 01:00 PM
Hanabira.Kage Wrote:Ah I see.
http://pcmart.com.sg
I don't shop online for this kind of stuff, so I really just stumbled upon that site while looking for reviews.
I think I should tell you what I'll be using the laptop for too. I'll be using it for university, but also for games. I don't play games that are particularly graphics-intensive, so I don't need some kind of crazy awesome graphics card, but I'd prefer to have high processing speed so I don't rage every time I'm say, opening a large document.
What I'm looking for in a laptop are:
Affordable price
Good battery life
High processing speed
Decent graphics
Lots of storage
Some other things that'll be nice to have:
High resolution so I can have multiple windows open at a time.
Good speakers, because I love music.
by what it sounds like, you probably want a laptop with emphasis in storage speed(which is the real performance changer in normal consumer use, not as much the CPU and GPU). What you want is to look for a laptop that either uses a hybrid disk drive(only comes in one flavor, Seagate's Solid State Hybrid Disk Drive(SSHD)), or a M-SATA SSD + HDD (small SSD installed for caching, its what makes MBP feel "snappy" and quicker than competing windows laptops). its not that the cpu is slow when opening a large document, it is actually the storage speed.
as for the 3 things you should be looking for performance wise ill explain in short:
CPU: most cpus in the price range you are looking at wil be quad cores, they will be generally labeled as i7-XXX0QM the q meaning quad generally. the first X shows generation which indicates how new it is(4 being current). CPU choice doesn't really matter as much but takes a chunk of the cost
GPU: Marketing wise, most gpus in this price range will be Nvidia, and generally gpus in the X40-X50 family. a rule of thumb is for each generation, its about the same speed as the next generation + 90 from it(a 650 is about the same speed as a 740, a 760 is about the same speed as a 850) which will tell you how much graphics performance you are paying for.
Storage: the most underlooked component many people actually look for. if none of the laptops you look for have SSHD or SSD's, then ask the store employee if they have any laptops that have the in it that fit the bill you are looking for.
For reference, the laptop you picked out earlier does in fact use a SSHD so it fits many of the bills you are looking for its a matter of price to perf you are going to have to sift through and search for.