IlovetheGamecube Wrote:And my gut feeling
Please start proofreading. It's not very hard or time consuming and nearly everyone on these forums (to my continued amazement) does it.
Now let's look at this hardware objectively shall we?
HDD: Irrelevant. All three have HDDs with storage capacities that will likely exceed your use. The differences in storage capacity between the three is small. They're all 5,400 rpm. The difference in disk performance would be difficult to look up and likely extremely small as well. SSD is out of the question in your price range.
RAM: Also irrelevant. All 3 have at least 4GB and are expandable to at least 8GB. Memory frequency is irrelevant except to IGP performance. All three don't list the memory frequency in the specs but since they're all laptops we can safely assume 1333 MHz or close to it.
Chassis: It's a laptop. So unless you're one of those people that likes shiny things this is likely irrelevant as well.
Display:
14" TFT LED Backlit 1366 x 768
15.6" TFT LED Backlit 1366 x 768
17.3" TFT LED Backlit 1600 x 900
#3 is the winner by far.
Battery: All 3 use standard 6 cell lithium ion batteries. Battery life will vary based on cpu and gpu. The third laptop will give you better battery life due to the i3 cpu and igp being generally more energy efficient. It won't be a huge difference though.
CPU: A6-4400M, A8-4500M, i3-3120M
Comparing laptop cpu performance is always very hard due to the number of models and how few of them get benchmarked. To make this easier I'll break this up.
A6-4400M vs. A8-4500M
4400M will have slightly better performance in lightly threaded applications and much worse performance in heavily threaded applications. Overall the 4500M is the better cpu (obviously).
A6-4400M vs. i3 3120M
Not even close. The i3 will obliterate it by a large margin.
A8-4500M vs. i3 3120M
The A8-4500M will get its ass handed to it by the i3 in lightly threaded applications and win slightly or moderately in heavily threaded applications.
Personally I would take the i3 3120M (laptop #3) as my pick since it's the best overall. But for some heavily threaded applications the 4500M may be a bit faster. #3 wins here as far as I'm concerned.
GPU: AMD 7520G, AMD 7640G, Intel HD 4000
According the tomshardware the 7520G is indeed faster than the HD 4000 overall (although barely). And the 7640G is of course faster than the 7520G. And I'm inclined to agree with their data since it matches other sources.
So #2 wins this one.
Cooling: Additional research required. More important than most people realize.
USB Ports:
#1 has 2 usb 2.0 ports
#2 has 2 usb 3.0 ports and 1 usb 2.0 port
#3 has 1 usb 3.0 port and 2 usb 2.0 ports
#2 wins this round although since you likely won't have any usb 3.0 devices for awhile anyways #2 and #3 are tied when it comes to just the total number of usb ports.
Other Ports: All of them have 3.5mm TRS ports for audio output and 3.5mm TS (or maybe TRS? Can't remember) ports for mic input. All three have RJ45 ports for ethernet. All three have SD card ports. So this becomes irrelevant as well.
Motherboard (excluding ports): Additional research required. As far as I'm concerned there shouldn't be a big difference in motherboard quality between the three.
Optical Disk Drive: Irrelevant. All of them can read or burn any format of DVD or CD at a decent speed.
Reliability (brand): Additional research required. As someone who doesn't buy a lot of laptops you'll have to ask someone else. As far as I'm concerned there shouldn't be a big difference in build quality between the three.
Keyboard: Requires additional research. Pretty important.
Mousepad and associated buttons: Requires additional research. Pretty important.
WI-FI: Requires additional research. People fail to realize how important the integrated wireless module and antennas are. All three support 802.11 b/g/n though.
Warranty: Who the fuck cares? Laptops almost always break after the warranty expires. For the record all three have a 1 year warranty so it matters even less here.
OS: Irrelevant. All three run windows 8 x64
Software: Irrelevant. It's always going to bloatware that you'll want to remove a.s.a.p. anyways.
Bluetooth: None of them have integrated BT controllers.
Webcam: All three of them have one.
Speakers: Requires additional research. Fairly important if you don't plan on using headphones or external speakers.
Weight: 4.8, 5.5, and unknown. They all have about the same size and weight so this is irrelevant.
Size: Pretty much the same as screen size. #2 is slightly bigger than #1 and #3 is slightly bigger than #2.
Video Out: Requires additional research. Only #2 has images showing the video ports. I'm fairly certain that all three have a VGA port and an HDMI port but I'm not positive. I am sure that all three have an HDMI port.
