Difficulties choosing: CPU or GPU?
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SneeakyAsian
CTFG Vanguard
So I'm getting myself a new laptop thanks to the generosity of my parents. However, they've limited me to anything I can get off the Costco website and close to $1,000. And if you're going to tell me to get a desktop, please get out, dorm constraints prevent me from considering one for a few years.
Anyways, my choices are laptops with:
Broadwell i7-5500U (2 cores with HT | 2.4-2.9 Ghz) & 4GB NVIDIA GeForce 850M
Broadwell i7-5500U & AMD Radeonâ„¢ R7 M270 4GB
Haswell i7-4710HQ (4 cores with HT | 2.5-3.3GHz) & 2GB NVIDIA GT 845M
I'm looking to do a bit of gaming, i.e. Skyrim (with mods) GTA V (with mods) Battlefield 3 but also need to do things such as Autocad and character modelling in Maya. And of course, Adobe CS programs too. So the main question is which is more important, a more powerful graphics card or a more powerful processor? Especially because I'd like to do things like render/export video quickly
Anyways, my choices are laptops with:
Broadwell i7-5500U (2 cores with HT | 2.4-2.9 Ghz) & 4GB NVIDIA GeForce 850M
Broadwell i7-5500U & AMD Radeonâ„¢ R7 M270 4GB
Haswell i7-4710HQ (4 cores with HT | 2.5-3.3GHz) & 2GB NVIDIA GT 845M
I'm looking to do a bit of gaming, i.e. Skyrim (with mods) GTA V (with mods) Battlefield 3 but also need to do things such as Autocad and character modelling in Maya. And of course, Adobe CS programs too. So the main question is which is more important, a more powerful graphics card or a more powerful processor? Especially because I'd like to do things like render/export video quickly
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If you want to do cad work and CS workshop editing between the choices definitely go with the i7-4710HQ. Though the i7-5500u is of the newer broadwell generation, they're ultralow voltage CPU's compared to their mobile counterpart, which is gonna give you less performance for anything processor intensive, especially video rendering.
In terms of the 845m and 850m for light cad they're both acceptable, and honestly they're pretty entry-mid range as far as mobile cards go so they'll probably run Skyrim alright on medium settings depending on the resolution. Just drop AA, motion blur, vsync and shadows and you'll probably be fine. Just check the benchmarks already out there on the net.
I've no opinion of the M270, though as the i7-4710 is the vastly superior CPU you'd be going with the 845m now anyways.
In terms of the 845m and 850m for light cad they're both acceptable, and honestly they're pretty entry-mid range as far as mobile cards go so they'll probably run Skyrim alright on medium settings depending on the resolution. Just drop AA, motion blur, vsync and shadows and you'll probably be fine. Just check the benchmarks already out there on the net.
I've no opinion of the M270, though as the i7-4710 is the vastly superior CPU you'd be going with the 845m now anyways.
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From what I've read AutoCAD favors CPU performance and isn't highly threaded (you want more performance per core and NOT more cores).
As for Adobe products they recommend more cores and workstation type graphics cards. I'm not too familiar with those GPUs but I'm fairly sure their architecture is optimized for work applications and not gaming. And you probably won't have those options on a laptop.
Opinions:
You'll need a solid CPU.
High end graphics aren't critical but I've read that Photoshop can and will take advantage of it.
You probably don't want to do this but see what your school's computer labs have to offer. If you can do your work better on the school PCs you might as well optimize your PC purchase for gaming. Most laptop hardware just doesn't match up to desktop performance.
As for Adobe products they recommend more cores and workstation type graphics cards. I'm not too familiar with those GPUs but I'm fairly sure their architecture is optimized for work applications and not gaming. And you probably won't have those options on a laptop.
Opinions:
You'll need a solid CPU.
High end graphics aren't critical but I've read that Photoshop can and will take advantage of it.
You probably don't want to do this but see what your school's computer labs have to offer. If you can do your work better on the school PCs you might as well optimize your PC purchase for gaming. Most laptop hardware just doesn't match up to desktop performance.