Laptop: AMD Fusion or Intel Sandy Bridge?

[chaofan]

I know a gaming laptop is typically a bad idea, but I'm only have a budget of $500 so it'd actually be cheaper than buying both a desktop and a crappy netbook for university. I'm looking at the AMD A6-3400M and the Intel i3-2310M (with Intel HD 3000) which are in the same price range. I am not entirely sure how to interpret their specs.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-A-Series-A6-3400M-Notebook-Processor.55753.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i3-2310M-Notebook-Processor.45318.0.html

From what I've read, the Intel is supposed to be a stronger CPU which I guess is more ideal for Dolphin, but wouldn't the AMD actually have stronger processing power considering the turbo boost? What kind of performance can I expect from either of them for Dolphin with a tiny 1366x768 resolution?

As a side note, I'm considering an Acer with A6-3400M at $449.99 or a Lenovo with i3-2310M at $479.99. I'm not entirely sure of the build quality of either one (especially the acer). It's the cheapest one of either choice that is available from BestBuy Canada.

These are their links.
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/acer-acer-aspire-15-6-laptop-featuring-amd-quad-core-a6-3400m-as5560-blue-as5560-sb410/10172576.aspx
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/lenovo-lenovo-15-6-laptop-featuring-intel-i3-2310m-g570-black-g570/10177043.aspx

Thank you.

[dannzen]

you will be happier with the intel notebook
but 2.1GHZ is not enough for dolphin...

80-90% speed in most of gc games some games 100%
and wii games will run between 60-70%...

[Starscream]

Neither one is really ideal, but I'd say the AMD A6-3400M is going to be better in general. You will be able to play many GC games with it and many PC games at decent settings. The AMD laptop you're looking at has some more memory and a slightly bigger hard drive, but this ASUS has a better GPU. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ASUS+-+Laptop+/+AMD+A-Series+Processor+/+15.6%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+500GB+Hard+Drive+-+Brown+Suit/2881042.p?id=1218360613837&skuId=2881042

[NaturalViolence]

Both would do pretty bad with dolphin.

The lenovo has a much better cpu but has a god awful intel HD 3000 IGP. The GPU will be the bottleneck for dolphin and PC games. This laptop will be slightly faster with dolphin but much slower with PC games.

The acer has an inferior cpu but a much better gpu. The cpu will be the bottleneck in dolphin, and the gpu will be the bottleneck in pc games. This laptop will be slightly slower with dolphin but much faster with PC games.

Pick your poison.

[chaofan]

I actually already have a Toshiba with an A6-3400M but I'm handing it over to my mother since she wants a laptop. Just tried WW for a sec since the download finally finished, it has no problem when it's inside (in native resolution) but just crashes down to 50% speed when it's outside.

According to speccy, the motherboard was only at 55 celsius the entire time. I'm not exactly sure what that means since I thought it was the norm for laptop motherboards to reach 70 Celsius under stress, it's the same case when I run newer games like Civ V.

I decided I'm either going for the Intel Sandy Bridge or just dump down my budget for a laptop since I should be studying instead

[NaturalViolence]

Or....*cough* desktop *cough*

Seriously though why do you need a laptop for school?

[Starscream]

Oh, he ran WW for a "sec", and based on that with the wrong settings and not having a clue about what he's doing he came to the conclusion that the laptop is not able to run the game. Excellent. And he's a pirate, what a surprise, see ya.

Closed.