Dedicated Graphics Card With Haswell -- Useful?

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Hey Folks,

I'm looking to get a large (17inch) but thin and light laptop for work and videos. I don't play a lot of high requirement games but do encode my DVD's to mp4, play multiple videos at once, run a lot of spreadsheets (sexy, right?) and play 1080p videos through my TV as a secondary display using HDMI.

Are any of these activities going to be improved by going for a dedicated graphics card? And what kind of impact will it have on weight/battery life?

Specifically, I'm looking at an HP Envy 17t-j000 with an i7-4900MQ and the choice of adding a GT 740M for $60.

For a $1.5K laptop, $60 doesn't make any difference, but I don't want to get a card that doesn't help and just eats battery life and generates heat and weight. On the other hand, if it's going to improve day to day performance, I can accept the weight increase.

My alternative is something like the Razer Blade Pro, but I just don't think I need all that power for what is basically an office/commuting machine. Any and all thoughts, or suggestions for other large and light laptops much appreciated, many thanks,

AR
 
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jaguarskx
For what you want to do a dedicated graphics card is not very important. A powerful CPU is though, but you have already chosen the i7-4900MQ already which I believe is the most powerful in the i7-4xxx series.

$60 for the GT 740m is definitely not bad at all, but it is not very useful for what you want to do. If you are thinking of perhaps playing games to pass the time once in a while, then maybe it's worth adding to the laptop. It will add a few ounces to the laptop. I can't image it weighing anymore than a single pack of 3"x3" Post-It (100 sheets).

As for it's effects on battery life, based on my review of the 14" Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 with a nVidia GT 550m there is no noticeable difference in battery life when using the GT 550m or...
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For all the tasks you name, the integrated GPU should handle. however having a dedicated GPU present always has its benefits. firstly tasks which use lots of vRAM, the vRAM wont be taken from actual RAM. there is also always speed benefits, so if $60 isn't much of a big difference then i would personally go for it.
 
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Thanks for the replies everyone. The G750 looks great but unfortunately it's far too heavy/thick to carry to and from work every day.

I'm still a little confused about the dedicated card though - either it's never turned on for the video/work I'm doing, and thus is pointless, or it's turned on for VRAM, in which case it will eat battery life but provide higher performance? Are there any benchmarks out yet for the impact on battery life vs dedicated?
 
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Thanks, so given the kind of work I'm doing (videos, spreadsheets, displaying on TV) will the dedicated GPU ever be used or will it just be sitting in the laptop using up weight and battery power (I'm guessing even when it's not 'active' it's still sipping power).

 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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For what you want to do a dedicated graphics card is not very important. A powerful CPU is though, but you have already chosen the i7-4900MQ already which I believe is the most powerful in the i7-4xxx series.

$60 for the GT 740m is definitely not bad at all, but it is not very useful for what you want to do. If you are thinking of perhaps playing games to pass the time once in a while, then maybe it's worth adding to the laptop. It will add a few ounces to the laptop. I can't image it weighing anymore than a single pack of 3"x3" Post-It (100 sheets).

As for it's effects on battery life, based on my review of the 14" Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 with a nVidia GT 550m there is no noticeable difference in battery life when using the GT 550m or when using the Intel HD 3000 graphics core. That was done with a total of 8 "real life" battery tests; 4 using the GT 550m and 4 with the GT 550m disabled. The tests were done on a full battery charge and ended when the battery reach 5% when the laptop went into hibernation mode.The tests involved very light usage (reading / studying from ebooks) to a mix of tasks (reading / studying, internet, watching videos, listening to music). In the tests with multiple tasks I tried to allocate the same amount of time devoted to each task when the nvidia GT 550m was active and disabled. Again, no discernible difference; give or take 5 - 10 minutes.
 
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whyso

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Drop the more expensive CPU for the 4700mq, 15% faster at most for a lot more money. Your usage pattern doesn't seem heavy to require it anyway. (Spend that money and get an SSD, worth every penny).

For $60 i'd get the 740m.
 
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Thanks for the replies everyone! I think I'll get the card since it doesn't seem to affect the battery too much. Thanks again,
 
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