Choose between two laptops

[nottoman]

Need to choose between two laptops - both Asus

#1 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus---K-Series-15.6%26%2334%3B-Laptop---4GB-Memory---500GB-Hard-Drive---Matte-Light-Indigo/6087209.p?skuId=6087209&productCategoryId=pcmcat247400050000&id=1218717240847

#2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230265

Never learned much about benchmarks, but it looks like the processor in #2 benchmarks higher, but #1 is a quad core, which confuses me. I would think that the quad would be higher. Fill me in if you would please.

 

[phyco126]

AMD is lagging behind Intel in raw processing power. Doesn't matter how many cores AMD has, Intel is beating the snot out of them with less.

What do you want to do with the laptops? If you need processing power, go with the one that has more power (Intel). If you are just doing simple things like word processing and web surfing, either will do you fine.

If you want to do some light gaming though, then the AMD laptop is definitely the way to go.

 

[nottoman]

Thanks for the reply. Computing tasks would be video conferencing with a higher end webcam, video presentations, and basic web surfing,
BTW...so if the Intel has more processing power, why would the AMD be better for light gaming - more cores?

 

[phyco126]

Better for gaming because the A series "APUs" (still CPUs in my book) have better integrated graphics, which beat Intel's offerings significantly. However, Intel is quickly catching up, so the next few years will be interesting to see who comes out on top with integrated solutions.

I think with your needs, either *should* do fine.

 

[Niavlys77]

What phyco said. If you plan to game at all, the AMD will do better (though still quite poor compared to having a dedicated graphics processor). The extra cores will only help with programs that are heavily threaded, but it doesn't sound like you'll be running anything of the sort, so I'd recommend the Intel one (as long as you're fine with 320Gb storage space, compared to the 500Gb on the other).

EDIT: On second thought, looking at some benchmarks, the AMD A8-4500M is actually ~2x faster than the Intel B960. Looks like the AMD should be better at most any task.
Using http://www.cpubenchmark.net as my reference.

EDITx2: Ok, I need to double-double check more often. http://www.notebookcheck.net shows that the Pentium is in fact faster at most tasks, but by a small margin. Not sure why the A8-4500M is rated so highly on the other site...must be including video performance.

 

[nottoman]

I looked at some benchmarks as well, but didn't really know what the meant. Here's one I looked at for the Intel

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Pentium-B960-Notebook-Processor.64192.0.html

I appreciate all the feedback.

 

[nottoman]

Best answer selected by nottoman.

 

[nottoman]

When working with videos - editing, rendering, or playing videos - is the processor or cores more important, or is it mostly dependent on the quality/power of the video card?

 

[phyco126]

Sometimes its both. A multiple core processor will render a video better than one with less cores... however, Intel is typically winning on this front. Unless, of course, the software can utilize a GPU for the rendering, but this is not always the case.