Gaming slow or enough?

[nryn99]

AMD E-450
a bit of info :http://laptoping.com...benchmarks.html (the laptop reviewed here isn't the one i'm after, they have slight differences which i am thinking which i would maybe buy)

this'll basically be just a normal day-to-day laptop for college. gaming not in mind, not that much interested anymore, tried but meh.i'm just not sure with the cpu... "dual CPU cores at 1.65GHz, with 512KB of L2 cache per core"?

other specs:
Processor AMD E-450 1.65GHz, 1MB Cache
Operating System Ubuntu Linux (windows can be pirated)
Memory 2GB DDR3 (is this enough or should i upgrade it to 4gb?)
Screen Property 14" LED Display (1366x768)
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6320 Graphics
Hard Drive 500GB
Optical Media Drive DVDRW SuperMulti
Connectivity LAN: 10/100 Mbps/ WLAN: 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth 3.0
Power 6-cell Li-ion battery/up to 4 hours charge-in-use

it's around USD375.93
basically, the reason i need to buy a laptop, is because my brother is also taking computer science and one laptop is clearly not enough, plus my external hdd is nearly full.

i am thinking of another laptop, more than double the price(USD 845.87) of this one, but is an Intel Core i7-2670QM
2.20GHz, 6MB Cache, NVIDIA GT 540M 2GB VRAM, 8GB DDR3 and 750GB HDD. but i feel it's a bit too much?

or should i settle with intel HD Graphics 3000? with an Intel Core i3? prices would be higher than $500 though.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

The $375 one would work just fine for the type of general use you'll be using. Though you should upgrade to 4gb of RAM for it instead because you can never have too much RAM and it'll probably help performance wise as well.

 

[Rydian]

Actually...

Anything past ~3-4 GB of RAM for a home user is currently wasted money. Even for gaming 6GB is the most you could hope to get an improvement out of.

 

[nryn99]

@Rydian i'm not sure if i did get the idea of that image even after reading some stuff...
but based on what you said below the image, it's safe to stay @2gb?

also, some of you are probably being exposed more in the pc industry than me, would i install 32bit or 64 bit win7?
if i use 32 bit windows, then i would probably stay in win7 x86, but win7 x64 recommends that i have more than 2gb of ram.

forgot to say that even though it'll be an everyday life laptop, i might play some old games sometimes.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Depends on the CPU and if it's x64 compatible. But seeing how you'd only have 2GB of RAM I'd go with x86.

 

[Costello]

Actually...

Anything past ~3-4 GB of RAM for a home user is currently wasted money. Even for gaming 6GB is the most you could hope to get an improvement out of.

even though those are per-app limits, i agree with you
you dont usually open a session of photoshop taking up 1 GB of ram AND play two games simultaneously that take 2 GB each etc.
I've always had enough with 2 GB, I guess for comfort 4 GB would be best, but anything beyond that is just a waste of money IMO.

 

[nryn99]

i see now, thanks for helping me decide guys. i'm saved from wasting money on a better laptop which i will not be using that much.

 

[Rydian]

Generally whatever version of the OS it comes with is the one to use.