What processor should I look for

barriejohn69

HI,

I'm looking for a new cheapish laptop as mine is 3 years old now and pretty full. I use it for work (excel and accountancy programmes), surfing the net and downloading films etc (legally).


I've seen a few I fancy which have the 500gb hard drive I'm after and are at least 3gb of ram which I'm hoping would be fast enough but I am stumped when it comes to processors. I've seen I3 and I5 mentioned as well as dual core and a few other things but have no idea.
Any help appreciated.

fwor

barriejohn69 wrote: »

mine is 3 years old now and pretty full

None of the uses that you list are very demanding in terms of CPU or memory. In fact none of them should be very demanding for a 3 year old laptop, unless is was a very low-spec model at the time.

If the hard disk is full, a far cheaper option would be to get a replacement drive, or an external drive to move stuff you don't need regularly onto.

If you wait until after Christmas the much-hyped "Thailand crisis" will start to be forgotten and HDD prices will fall to reasonable levels again.

None of the uses that you list require any more than 2GB of RAM, and rather than an i3 or i5 processor, you'll probably get better value for money with the Core 2 and similar older CPUs. I doubt you'll notice any difference in performance.

barriejohn69

Thanks a lot. Part of it is that my laptop has so many programmes on there that it takes an age to load up. I daren't delete anything in case it affects something that is critical. It also keeps crashing and the mouse pad buttons have fallen out. I'm on it 8 hours a day so it takes a battering

nathand_2

If you're getting a new laptop and have a budget of £400 you should look for an i3 (2nd gen, eg i3-xxxx, first gen use i3-xxx) and 4GB RAM.

barriejohn69

Cheers. Is it as simple as I is better then I3 and I7 is the best? I know I'm not going to get an I7 but just wondering out of curiosity?

nathand_2

There are different models of each but that is the gist of it yes. I would be tempted to go for an i5 (always make sure you're getting second gen) but based on your needs it won't be necessary.

The Core i series is the champion of processors at the moment, nothing AMD are churning out is coming close to it in performance.

fwor

nathand wrote: »

The Core i series is the champion of processors at the moment

Probably true - but does any ordinary laptop user need all that processing power? I'd guess that almost all of the CPUs sold today spend more time in the Idle process (doing nothing, waiting for something to happen) than doing anything else.

Hence the recommendation (from a moneysaving perspective) to ~not~ buy the latest and absolute best.

Given that the OP wants something cheapish that can take a pounding 8 hours a day, I'd go for build quality in an older product rather than top CPU spec.

esuhl

barriejohn69 wrote: »

Cheers. Is it as simple as I is better then I3 and I7 is the best? I know I'm not going to get an I7 but just wondering out of curiosity?

It depends what you mean by "best". An i3 chip will be cheaper than an i7 chip, so in terms of price the i3 is better; however (if I remember rightly) the i3 has dual-channel memory, whilst the i7 has triple-channel, so if that's important to you then the i7 is better.

A chip that supports VT (Virtualisation Technology) might be considered "better" than one that lacks such a feature... but again, if you are never going to benefit from VT, the "better" chip is the cheaper one.

The best way to compare CPUs would be to find a benchmark that simulates the kind of usage that is likely to be the limiting factor in your usage of the computer, and then look for charts that compare processors measured against that benchmark. Then factor in the price (maybe work out the benchmark-score-per-pound-spent) and get the cheapest chip that exceeds your requirements. The Tom's Hardware websites (tomshardware.com & tomshardware.co.uk are good places to look for benchmark charts).

But I'd probably just spend £40 on a 500GB drive, fix the mouse buttons and reinstall the OS if that's all that's wrong with the machine. Otherwise it's a lot of money to waste just to save maybe 30 to 90 minutes' that it'll take to upgrade/repair your PC.