AMD A6 vs Intel i5 for notebooks

[Omabytes]

Hey,

So I'm looking to purchase a new laptop (probably an hp sleekbook, any thoughts on that you can add them on ) and can't decide between versions with the AMD processor, something like the A6-4455M, and the intel i5-3317U or similar.

I will be using this for light gaming, medium spreadsheet/application work and web browsing ect (basically anything a science student normally does )

Just wondering if anyone had a better perspective on this than I.

Thanks!
Bytes

 

[logainofhades]

If gaming is any concern, go with the AMD one. The graphics will be better than that of an i5. Either can do everything else you want to do just fine.

 

[whyso]

If gaming is any concern, go with the AMD one. The graphics will be better than that of an i5. Either can do everything else you want to do just fine.

Go with the i5 ULV, much better cpu performance (will be almost 2x better). a10-4600m barely keeps up with the i5 ULV in cpu tasks and it has 4 higher clocked cores vs the 2 low power ones of the a6. (hence about 2x difference). The hd 4000 will be similar or better than the a6 ULV gpu (which is badly pared down from the a10 gpu that everyone looks at instead of 384 cores at 496-685 mhz we have 256 at 324-427 mhz).

From notebookcheck

Although the nominally rather high clock rate suggests a competitive performance at least in single-thread applications, the results clearly lag behind Intel's similarly clocked Core i5-3317U CPU in Samsung's Series 5 530U3C-A01DE. For example, 2658s versus 764s in SuperPi's 32M calculation and in Cinebench R10 64bit (single) merely 2172 points rather than 4432 points are reached. When all threads are loaded at the same time, AMD's A6-4455M accomplishes 4254 rather than 7991 points in Cinebench R10 64bit multi-core and needs 1950s rather than 927s in wPrime's 1024m test.

That is a performance difference of roughly 100%, which is not only measureable but is also noticed clearly when performance-hungry tasks have to be managed. CPU-Z and AMD's System Monitor at most displayed the default clock of 2.1 GHz during the tests. Thus, Turbo mode is not enabled and the specified maximum of 2.6 GHz proves to be useless in this model.

Gpu is similar

Until now, integrated graphics solutions from AMD and Nvidia often had an advantage over the competition from Intel. This is only true to an extent in this case, even when we only compare the graphics performance directly because the differences between the Series 5 alternatives are too insignificant. On the one hand, the processor integrated graphics solutions are innately not very strong. On the other hand, our Radeon HD 7500G graphics core does not reach the maximum clock rate of 424 MHz, but stays at 200 MHz, particularly with simultaneous CPU load, according to AMD's System Monitor and GPU-Z. At least the performance is not throttled even more on battery power. It works just like in AC-mode with the right pre-settings in AMD's Powerplay settings.