Picking out a new laptop today. need advice.

demzo

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May 13, 2014
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Backstory (you may skip this if you like):

Okay I have an old G73jh gaming laptop but the problem is, its graphics card drivers are pretty effed up (search asus g73jh on google and a lot of forums will come up trying to fix its BSOD and GSOD problems) I've tried every fix, but sadly, to no avail. Now, I've decided to sell it and buy a new one mainly because I am a computer science student and I can't get bluestacks and unity (software I use for android programming) to run since it "does not recognize my graphics card" the only fix I've found is to update my drivers but doing so goes directly to a BSOD. this is getting long. anyway, sold it. limited funds (only around 600 bucks if converted to dollars. again, student here)

TL;DR:

wanted to know if this laptop (only one I can afford that has a decent graphics card) can run modern games at 30+ fps with medium preset (1366x768) and I wanted to know how well it performs when programming android apps (I'm not familiar with laptop CPUs and GPUs)

link: http://www.villman.com/Product-Detail/Acer_E5-551G-812L
note: if I can sell my old camera, I might have enough money to upgrade to 8GB 1600Mhz ram. would that increase its performance? I've read somewhere that APUs require fast RAM
 
Solution
the graphic card has it's own RAM :
AMD Radeon R7 M265 with 2 GB of dedicated DDR3 VRAM
so don't upgrade the ram for that, but 8 gig is best for Windows.

demzo

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oh i didn't see "dedicated" lol thanks for clearing that up. but how about the apu, is it any good? like for example compared to i3 3110m?
 

demzo

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I've seen youtube vids of r7 m265 running black flag on high preset 30fps. but it was on an i3 (forgot which but i remember researching, dual core, no hyperthreading) is the A8 7100 really that far from an intel 3?
 

limtenggen

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apu sure lose to dedicated gpu for sure
the difference between those are a r7 m265 which is a dedicated mobile gpu which is powerful (for mobile)
and its own Vram

apu does not have that properties although it is optimize well but it still can't beat dedicated gpu FOR SURE
 

demzo

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yes, that is why i am getting a laptop WITH a dedicated gpu r7 m265. (not going to use the apu's igpu) the only diff between them are the processors i3 vs a8 7100 now i've seen the benchmark scores and they're not that far from each other, but I wanted to double check here on tomshardware because I believe that benchmarks are not 100% accurate.
 

demzo

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anyway, thanks for everything guys, bought the machine about 3 hours ago runs like a beast for its price. can run games medium-high (some low like shadows; no AA, etc) 30+fps Im extremely happy with this. hopefully it doesn't die out on me or something *fingers crossed*
 

madonmac1

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Sorry, do you mean you bought the one with the A8 7100?