I regret buying this for the same price...

andthenikissedher

Estimable
Apr 14, 2015
12
0
4,560
Hei, guys,

I recently brought a Toshiba Satelitte L50-B for about 220 euro.It comes with Intel Pentium Processor N3530 (2.16ghz, 4 cores, L2 - 2mb cache), 4 gb memory RAM at 1333mhz, and a 500gb toshiba hard disk at 5400rpm with 8mb cache, sata-II. The hard disk i don`t like a bit. It`s slow and loud. I can hear its every spin. It drives me crazy.

Now, at the same price i could buy an Acer E5-571 which comes with an Intel i3 4030U (the four generation, haswell), at 1.9ghz, with Intel HD Graphics 4400 (mine is just Intel HD Graphics - Intel doesn`t provide any clear info). Anyway, it must be from oldest 2000-3000 series. More over, Acer comes with 4 gb memory RAM at 1600mhz. The hard disk is another 500 gb at 5400rpm. I don`t know if it`s junk like mines...

So, guys, should i sell my laptop and buy this Acer for the same price? I don`t expect to play 3d games on it, occasionally i play bigfish games and i had encounter lags from time to time. One of those, an hidden object type, it was unplayable on my laptop... ridiculous.

 

Calculagator

Estimable
Nov 18, 2014
201
0
5,110
The CPU you have is called a Pentium but it is based on the Atom line. The i3 4330U would be much faster. Neither laptop is going to have great performance, but for what you do, the i3 should be quite a bit better. You can always upgrade the hard drive by exchanging it for an SSD. You can pick up a decent 250GB ssd for about $100. It will make your laptop experience much better. Games may not improve much, but everything else will.
 

andthenikissedher

Estimable
Apr 14, 2015
12
0
4,560
Thanks, Calculagator for your quick opinion. I will try and sell mine. About the ssd, my thought, but as you can see, it`s half the price of the entire laptop. I can`t spend that much for a component... shame, the build quality of Toshiba L50-B it`s solid, like one of a premium machine... i saw the exact model as mine, but with even a weaker cpu. A dual core with 1mb cache. Damn.
 

Calculagator

Estimable
Nov 18, 2014
201
0
5,110
One thing to consider about upgrading to an SSD is that you can keep it and reuse it in another laptop or desktop if you ever upgrade. I know it is expensive compared to the cost of a budget laptop, but it may still be worth the investment. Modern SSDs are also a lot less likely to die than spinning disks in a laptop.
 
There will be a pretty large difference in game performance between the Intel HD (Bay Trail) in the Pentium N3530 CPU and the Intel HD 4400 in the core i3-4030u. The difference in graphics performance is like night and day even though the Intel HD 4400 is considered weak compared to a dedicate graphics chip.
 

andthenikissedher

Estimable
Apr 14, 2015
12
0
4,560
In other thoughts, i don`t know if this particular motherboard support sata III. I tried to look on this matter with Speccy, but i can`t find that info. I pretty sure it does not since the hard disk is sata II/3.0gb. Anyway, i`d buy an SSD just because it has no moving parts on top of anything else. One question: do i need an msata SSD to fit in this laptop? The actual hard disk it has to be a generic 2.5, in conclusion a 2.5 SSD should fit, right?
 

andthenikissedher

Estimable
Apr 14, 2015
12
0
4,560
Wow, thanks Jaguar... a solid reason to move on to that. The power consumption for Intel n3530 is 7.5w, and for Intel i3 4030u is 15w, but you can`t have everything, right? With the first opportunity i have, i will buy an Acer or Lenovo with i3 4030u. With Intel HD Graphics 4400 and an SSD i think i will have the perfect machine for my necessities.
 

andthenikissedher

Estimable
Apr 14, 2015
12
0
4,560
Back again, guys. I hope this thread is still active. So... long story short, i compared the two Intel HD Graphics (from n3530 and i3 4030u) on Intel page and the results are: Intel N3530 Intel HD Graphics has a base frequency of 313mhz and a burst frequency of 896mhz. Intel i3 4030u HD Graphics 4400 has a base frequency of 200mhz and a burst frequency of 1ghz. Is there a big difference in performance here?
 


The old Pentium 4 CPUs went up to well over 3 ghz in speed.
The new Core CPUs can be well under that.

Here is a comparison of a Pentrium 4 and a lower end Core CPU, the Core i3. The Pentium 4 is about 25% faster in clock speed than the i3.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/400/Intel_Core_i3_i3-4130_vs_Intel_Pentium_4_650.html

Let me know if just the ghz speed means anything after you look that over.

Let's say you have two people with a bucket and 10 different things to carry. Person A can walk at 10 feet a second while B only walks at 5. But person A has a bucket that only holds one item at a time, while person B can put 5 items in at one time. Even though A is twice as fast in speed, since he can only do 1/5th the work at a time of B, he will be slower.
 
You cannot look at frequency alone. There are other things to consider that just as important or even more important than that. The following link provides some information about the Intel HD (Bay Trail) graphics core in the Pentium N3530 Atom CPU. It is ranked as the lowest performing "Intel HD" graphics core.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-Bay-Trail.103037.0.html


While not explicitly stated, I believe the Intel HD (Bay Trail) CPU core uses the graphics cores from the Haswell generation CPUs. Meaning it is based the Intel HD 4400 graphics core. The Intel HD 4400 has 20 execution units (EU) which are used to process graphics. The Intel HD (Bay Trail) only has 4 EUs; in other words the Intel HD 4400 has 5x more EUs than the Intel HD (Bay Trail). That along with the higher frequencies will mean the Intel HD 4400 graphics core is much more powerful.
 

andthenikissedher

Estimable
Apr 14, 2015
12
0
4,560
hang-the-9, jaguarskx, you guys rock! Thanks for the explicit info. It is what i needed to know. Too bad i didn`t asked earlier. I believe the same thing goes for 4400 versus the 5th generation 5500 Intel HD Graphics (in performance), but those are new and comes with very expensive processors at this moment. While i searched for laptops, i came across a Toshiba with an intel i3 4005u at 1.7ghz, fabricated in 03.13, compared to the newest i3 4030u at 1.9ghz, 02.14. Is the frequency the only difference in performance between them? I don`t want to make the same mistake twice.