Cheers. Currys lie then: the sticker in front of the 8GB machine said "ideal for gaming". I'm sure anything I want to try and play will be basic. Thanks also for the word processing suggestion.... the sales assistant wanted me to spend 110 quid on Office but im sure I can find something free and simple for my needs, perhaps one you quoted.
Looks like the 8GB machine is the one to buy from what you said about photo editing.
You would get more sensible answers asking your pet cat to explain Quantum Physics than asking a Currys sales person about anything more technologically advanced than a paper clip!
And of course they want you to spend loads of dosh on Microsoft Office as the sales person is likely to get commission on the sale, which they won't get on LibreOffice as it's free!
If you go for the HP it comes with some version of Microsoft Office pre-installed anyway. I've no idea what version because it was one of the first things I zapped into oblivion when I got mine. It was probably a trial and you would have to eventually hand over some hard earned to keep using it I've no doubt.
I use LibreOffice instead and so far have had no compatibility issues with Microsoft Office documents.
You would get more sensible answers asking your pet cat to explain Quantum Physics than asking a Currys sales person about anything more technologically advanced than a paper clip!
And of course they want you to spend loads of dosh on Microsoft Office as the sales person is likely to get commission on the sale, which they won't get on LibreOffice as it's free!
If you go for the HP it comes with some version of Microsoft Office pre-installed anyway. I've no idea what version because it was one of the first things I zapped into oblivion when I got mine. It was probably a trial and you would have to eventually hand over some hard earned to keep using it I've no doubt.
I use LibreOffice instead and so far have had no compatibility issues with Microsoft Office documents.
lol very true. I sometimes already know the answers to the questions I ask them, but I do like second opinions for reassurance.
The geek in me wants to mess around with RC Helicopter sims to practice on to save me destroying the real things. I'm hoping those types of "games" wont be too much for the laptop to handle, as they don't usually have particularly detailed landscapes.
lol very true. I sometimes already know the answers to the questions I ask them, but I do like second opinions for reassurance.
The geek in me wants to mess around with RC Helicopter sims to practice on to save me destroying the real things. I'm hoping those types of "games" wont be too much for the laptop to handle, as they don't usually have particularly detailed landscapes.
Sorry, I'm getting really frustrated with all the choices now. I popped into the store again and I ended up completely confused and unable to make a choice. I couldn't tell a 400 quid machine from an 800 quid one. They all just blended into the same old blobs. I left with nothing.
I think id be really frustrated if I loaded a RC Heli sim and the laptop couldn't handle it.
so which one of these will work for me:
3D Accelerated Video with: 512 MB dedicated video memory
As for "occasional games"... Being played occasionally does not really matter. The specification requirements are the same whether the game is played daily or yearly.
So the specific game that is desired to be played would have to be mentioned.
I have to say that in my opinion every £400 laptop going will be fine for your requirements.
3D Accelerated Video with: 512 MB dedicated video memory
As for "occasional games"... Being played occasionally does not really matter. The specification requirements are the same whether the game is played daily or yearly.
So the specific game that is desired to be played would have to be mentioned.
I have to say that in my opinion every £400 laptop going will be fine for your requirements.
Thanks for that. I'm obviously misunderstanding ghz, because the 2
Laptops I mentioned appear to be less than the required 2.4ghz the sim requires
Whilst what Tassium says is true, if it was me I'd want the one that gives me the best processor value for my money. In that case, I'd be looking at the i5 model you linked to.
Generally Intel processors still offer better bang for buck than AMD ones.
Similar CPU as the HP laptop with the Radeon R5 graphics chip in each case.
The HP laptop at £349 seems fine to me for what the OP want's to do, maybe someone else would care to comment?
Thanks. So its pointless going for the other one with the Intel chip? It's just confusing because other posters said amd is junk.
I watched a similar video on youtube which featured the other laptop I linked (15-R150SA), and that also looked good. Looks like cheap laptops work fine with games.
I've always been biased towards Intel CPUs and sidelined AMD, but it's horses for courses, right, and the horse for your course is the AMD A8-6410 with the integrated R5 graphics. If you crunch the benchmarks on the R5 graphics it sees off all the integrated Intel HD 4000 series up to and including the HD 4600 on the Intel CPU models linked to in this thread, including the HP 15-r150sa in your post above (and other laptops I have looked at in your price range except see below). It's not going to be exceptional, but by all accounts it'll be okay and the best you can expect from the choices currently available.
The A8 can boost up to 2.4GHz so that will be okay too. So to sum up I'd agree with Tassium that the HP 15-g092sa that chrisjr has is the one to go for.
The next step up would be to have a dedicated graphics card and if you want to take that step, then this HP 15-p038na with the same spec as the g092sa but with the additional dedicated 2GB graphics card AMD R7-M260 would yield a better flight sims experience and you get the Beats Audio as well. £429 from Tesco: http://www.tesco.com/direct/hp-pavilion-15-p038na-156-laptop-amd-a8-8gb-ram-1tb-red/581-5305.prd
One thing to bear in mind, any "gaming" laptop is going to be a bit noisier than non-gaming laptops. It's the graphics chip, they will have an extra fan usually. It won't be massively louder.
That earlier £349 HP laptop was a good compromise and if you are on a tight budget will be a fine laptop.
As for the AMD/Intel thing... Intel probably are a bit better at a given price. But in practice it's a tiny difference.
If you buy the Tesco HP come back and let us know if it plays the flight sims okay and handles your video editing. Tassium did well finding the silver version of the HP, it certainly looks better than the red.
I'd finished composing my above post up to the first 2 paras and it was only by chance I found the Tesco machine when I had a thought and wondered how much shared memory was available for the R5 integrated graphics. Amongst all the R5 links Google brought up was the advert from Tesco on page 2.
My lesson learnt from this thread is that I won't be so dismissive of AMD in future.
If you buy the Tesco HP come back and let us know if it plays the flight sims okay and handles your video editing. Tassium did well finding the silver version of the HP, it certainly looks better than the red.
I'd finished composing my above post up to the first 2 paras and it was only by chance I found the Tesco machine when I had a thought and wondered how much shared memory was available for the R5 integrated graphics. Amongst all the R5 links Google brought up was the advert from Tesco on page 2.
My lesson learnt from this thread is that I won't be so dismissive of AMD in future.
I will let you know
I'm very much hoping it will handle the sim, otherwise ill be looking for a refund!
The spec and reviews look hopeful
I've always been biased towards Intel CPUs and sidelined AMD, but it's horses for courses, right, and the horse for your course is the AMD A8-6410 with the integrated R5 graphics. If you crunch the benchmarks on the R5 graphics it sees off all the integrated Intel HD 4000 series up to and including the HD 4600 on the Intel CPU models linked to in this thread, including the HP 15-r150sa in your post above (and other laptops I have looked at in your price range except see below). It's not going to be exceptional, but by all accounts it'll be okay and the best you can expect from the choices currently available.
The A8 can boost up to 2.4GHz so that will be okay too. So to sum up I'd agree with Tassium that the HP 15-g092sa that chrisjr has is the one to go for.
The next step up would be to have a dedicated graphics card and if you want to take that step, then this HP 15-p038na with the same spec as the g092sa but with the additional dedicated 2GB graphics card AMD R7-M260 would yield a better flight sims experience and you get the Beats Audio as well. £429 from Tesco: http://www.tesco.com/direct/hp-pavilion-15-p038na-156-laptop-amd-a8-8gb-ram-1tb-red/581-5305.prd
Its an interesting compromise; I would have suggested the Lenovo G510 - Intel i3-4000M/4600 GPU. The CPU is considerably faster than the A8-6410 (over 50% faster), but the GPU is slower - for most day to day tasks the CPU speed is likely more useful, but some apps will benefit from the GPU.
Its an interesting compromise; I would have suggested the Lenovo G510 - Intel i3-4000M/4600 GPU. The CPU is considerably faster than the A8-6410 (over 50% faster), but the GPU is slower - for most day to day tasks the CPU speed is likely more useful, but some apps will benefit from the GPU.
If games are a factor you really have to get the best graphics chip you can afford, the CPU speed can be sacrificed.
If games are a factor you really have to get the best graphics chip you can afford, the CPU speed can be sacrificed.
Even that can vary from game to game. My son wanted a laptop to play minecraft, and that is definitely more CPU intensive being java based.
I ran a trial on my laptop (i7 2630QM, HD3000 & NVidia GT520) - enabling and disabling the NVidia GPU. It made a difference to game performance, but not anything like as much as some would have expected (only a few % improvement).
A CPU that is 50% faster can make up for GPU inefficiency; its also worth noting that there appears to be a massive difference in performance on the Intel ranges - the ULV processors are considerably slower than the "M" variants. the i3-4000M is faster than most of the ULV i5 processors.
Even that can vary from game to game. My son wanted a laptop to play minecraft, and that is definitely more CPU intensive being java based.
I ran a trial on my laptop (i7 2630QM, HD3000 & NVidia GT520) - enabling and disabling the NVidia GPU. It made a difference to game performance, but not anything like as much as some would have expected (only a few % improvement).
A CPU that is 50% faster can make up for GPU inefficiency; its also worth noting that there appears to be a massive difference in performance on the Intel ranges - the ULV processors are considerably slower than the "M" variants. the i3-4000M is faster than most of the ULV i5 processors.
Without knowing precisely how the OP would use the laptop the best advice is always going to be a compromise between cpu/gpu/price/usability/seller.
If a person has knowledge of what works for them then they can go more specialist in the spec.
The thing that always puts me off is the reviews. I am on the verge of getting the suggested silver HP laptop, but now I have just read its 26 reviews on the Tesco site, and they are very mixed grrrrr. Some love it and some complain about the keys and the cd tray etc, and one reviewer even said it was riddled with viruses so had to reinstall the OS. I just don't wana be dissapointed.
The thing that always puts me off is the reviews. I am on the verge of getting the suggested silver HP laptop, but now I have just read its 26 reviews on the Tesco site, and they are very mixed grrrrr. Some love it and some complain about the keys and the cd tray etc, and one reviewer even said it was riddled with viruses so had to reinstall the OS. I just don't wana be dissapointed.
The virus guy is just weird, maybe he got a return by mistake.
No reviews of a laptop ever fail to have people who think it's the worse machine every made.
You just won't find a perfect collection of reviews. The only time I consider reviews is when multiple reviews mention the same thing, such as the sound being tinny or the fans being noisy.
In other words if people agree on something it's probably an issue, if the vast majority praise it then I would go with that and ignore the naysayers.
Comments
You would get more sensible answers asking your pet cat to explain Quantum Physics than asking a Currys sales person about anything more technologically advanced than a paper clip!
And of course they want you to spend loads of dosh on Microsoft Office as the sales person is likely to get commission on the sale, which they won't get on LibreOffice as it's free!
If you go for the HP it comes with some version of Microsoft Office pre-installed anyway. I've no idea what version because it was one of the first things I zapped into oblivion when I got mine. It was probably a trial and you would have to eventually hand over some hard earned to keep using it I've no doubt.
I use LibreOffice instead and so far have had no compatibility issues with Microsoft Office documents.
http://www.libreoffice.org/
lol very true. I sometimes already know the answers to the questions I ask them, but I do like second opinions for reassurance.
The geek in me wants to mess around with RC Helicopter sims to practice on to save me destroying the real things. I'm hoping those types of "games" wont be too much for the laptop to handle, as they don't usually have particularly detailed landscapes.
20fps and Open GL
http://www.marksfiles.net/HeliSimRC/
my Intel 4000HD is OpenGL v4.0
Bookmarked TYVM
I think id be really frustrated if I loaded a RC Heli sim and the laptop couldn't handle it.
so which one of these will work for me:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/laptops/hp-15-g092sa-15-6-laptop-black-10011511-pdt.html
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/laptops-netbooks/laptops/laptops/hp-notebook-15-r150sa-15-6-laptop-black-10034877-pdt.html
To repeat. I will do word processing / very lite photo editing / obviously surfing / watching movies / the very occasional game / heli sims.
Don't think I can handle looking at more laptops lol
Thanks
http://www.realflight.com/system.html
It does not look very taxing:
Optimal System:
For best graphical performance
Dual Core 2.4GHz CPU
2 GB RAM
3D Accelerated Video with: 512 MB dedicated video memory
As for "occasional games"... Being played occasionally does not really matter. The specification requirements are the same whether the game is played daily or yearly.
So the specific game that is desired to be played would have to be mentioned.
I have to say that in my opinion every £400 laptop going will be fine for your requirements.
Thanks for that. I'm obviously misunderstanding ghz, because the 2
Laptops I mentioned appear to be less than the required 2.4ghz the sim requires
Generally Intel processors still offer better bang for buck than AMD ones.
The "GHz" speed is not the only measure of performance.
I have found a video demo on youtube that has the same CPU and Graphics chips as the first laptop you linked to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8bjL5_4wf4
Running the game "Left 4 Dead 2" quite well.
This HP laptop you picked has an Radeon R5 graphics chip, it seems it's not an amazing "gaming" chip. But I think it's good enough.
R5 demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxT7twl4sBY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6YRZotpVwo
Similar CPU as the HP laptop with the Radeon R5 graphics chip in each case.
The HP laptop at £349 seems fine to me for what the OP want's to do, maybe someone else would care to comment?
Thanks. So its pointless going for the other one with the Intel chip? It's just confusing because other posters said amd is junk.
I watched a similar video on youtube which featured the other laptop I linked (15-R150SA), and that also looked good. Looks like cheap laptops work fine with games.
I've always been biased towards Intel CPUs and sidelined AMD, but it's horses for courses, right, and the horse for your course is the AMD A8-6410 with the integrated R5 graphics. If you crunch the benchmarks on the R5 graphics it sees off all the integrated Intel HD 4000 series up to and including the HD 4600 on the Intel CPU models linked to in this thread, including the HP 15-r150sa in your post above (and other laptops I have looked at in your price range except see below). It's not going to be exceptional, but by all accounts it'll be okay and the best you can expect from the choices currently available.
The A8 can boost up to 2.4GHz so that will be okay too. So to sum up I'd agree with Tassium that the HP 15-g092sa that chrisjr has is the one to go for.
The next step up would be to have a dedicated graphics card and if you want to take that step, then this HP 15-p038na with the same spec as the g092sa but with the additional dedicated 2GB graphics card AMD R7-M260 would yield a better flight sims experience and you get the Beats Audio as well. £429 from Tesco: http://www.tesco.com/direct/hp-pavilion-15-p038na-156-laptop-amd-a8-8gb-ram-1tb-red/581-5305.prd
I think this is the silver version:
http://www.tesco.com/direct/hp-pavilion-15-p046na-156-laptop-amd-a8-8gb-ram-1tb-silver/573-1501.prd?pageLevel=&skuId=573-1501
One thing to bear in mind, any "gaming" laptop is going to be a bit noisier than non-gaming laptops. It's the graphics chip, they will have an extra fan usually. It won't be massively louder.
That earlier £349 HP laptop was a good compromise and if you are on a tight budget will be a fine laptop.
As for the AMD/Intel thing... Intel probably are a bit better at a given price. But in practice it's a tiny difference.
http://www.tesco.com/direct/hp-pavilion-15-p142na-156-laptop-amd-a8-8gb-ram-1tb-red/492-2193.prd?pageLevel=&skuId=492-2193
Only available in Red colour case so it seems.
In the full specification area it shows R7 graphics, Beats Audio etc etc
From the reviews of this model (and the other one at £429) it seems they are both quiet and work well.
Think it'll have to be silver.
If you buy the Tesco HP come back and let us know if it plays the flight sims okay and handles your video editing. Tassium did well finding the silver version of the HP, it certainly looks better than the red.
I'd finished composing my above post up to the first 2 paras and it was only by chance I found the Tesco machine when I had a thought and wondered how much shared memory was available for the R5 integrated graphics. Amongst all the R5 links Google brought up was the advert from Tesco on page 2.
My lesson learnt from this thread is that I won't be so dismissive of AMD in future.
TDX-HWGG
http://www.tesco.com/direct/special-offer/save-30-when-you-spend-349-or-more/promo30170082.promo
I will let you know
I'm very much hoping it will handle the sim, otherwise ill be looking for a refund!
The spec and reviews look hopeful
It gets better
Its an interesting compromise; I would have suggested the Lenovo G510 - Intel i3-4000M/4600 GPU. The CPU is considerably faster than the A8-6410 (over 50% faster), but the GPU is slower - for most day to day tasks the CPU speed is likely more useful, but some apps will benefit from the GPU.
If games are a factor you really have to get the best graphics chip you can afford, the CPU speed can be sacrificed.
Even that can vary from game to game. My son wanted a laptop to play minecraft, and that is definitely more CPU intensive being java based.
I ran a trial on my laptop (i7 2630QM, HD3000 & NVidia GT520) - enabling and disabling the NVidia GPU. It made a difference to game performance, but not anything like as much as some would have expected (only a few % improvement).
A CPU that is 50% faster can make up for GPU inefficiency; its also worth noting that there appears to be a massive difference in performance on the Intel ranges - the ULV processors are considerably slower than the "M" variants. the i3-4000M is faster than most of the ULV i5 processors.
Without knowing precisely how the OP would use the laptop the best advice is always going to be a compromise between cpu/gpu/price/usability/seller.
If a person has knowledge of what works for them then they can go more specialist in the spec.
The virus guy is just weird, maybe he got a return by mistake.
No reviews of a laptop ever fail to have people who think it's the worse machine every made.
You just won't find a perfect collection of reviews. The only time I consider reviews is when multiple reviews mention the same thing, such as the sound being tinny or the fans being noisy.
In other words if people agree on something it's probably an issue, if the vast majority praise it then I would go with that and ignore the naysayers.
Some people confuse their own difficulties with a problem with the machine, and thus blame the machine. So I would ignore those minority comments.