Tale of Two Laptops

I'm planning on upgrading my computer. I currently have an Acer Aspire laptop with an AMD Athlon TF-20. I regret that CPU every time the computer boots up - or fails to. I'm on an extremely limited budget, but would like something that can run Civ at medium graphics without lag. Which makes searching very, very tough. I have managed to find one inexpensive model, the price of which goes down every week. There are two versions of the model, one with AMD and one with Intel. It can be found here, with the AMD on the top. The only processor I'm interested in with the AMD version is the A10. For the Intel, I'm a bit more lost. It's the i3-3110M or the i5-3210M. Now, I've heard a lot of bad things about Intel's integrated graphics, but I'm not entirely certain how they'd stack up to AMD's on Civ. Please don't say anything about how much better discrete graphics would be, because I already know, and it's just out of my price range at the moment.

So, I guess my question is this: which is better for running Civ, the AMD or the Intels, and if the Intels, would it be worth it to pay the extra for the i5? Which is technically two questions... Thanks.

I'm kinda tending to think that AMD might be the better way to go in this situation, since(like you said)I'm not sure if Intel has as good integrated graphics as AMD does.

But maybe you should just wait until someone comes along who knows more about this than I do.

Neither of those will make you happy with Civ5

It won't take long and you will be fed up with it, wanting yet another system.


The AMD is likely to be too underpowered on the CPU side for medium settings, and the GPU has only half the maximum computational units active, rendering it about as slow as an Intel HD4000.
The CPU is something like a one-and-a-half core design , letting me to suspect that despite relatively high clock frequency you would have to suffer long turn times.
(I can't find a A10 on that site, and it would be in the $600 ballpark anyway)

The i3 would give you fast turn times (for a laptop), but would struggle even with minumum settings.
(i5s start at $670 on the toshiba site, and those would have the same a better but still underpowered HD4000)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a10-4600m-a-new-hope/6


If you positively, absolutely have to get a new laptop NOW, and your budget is $450 max, then I would go for an Intel system and play in strategic mode.
You won't get a laptop fit for medium settings in that price range.


If you could save just a bit longer, for $600 you would already get a i5 AND a decent dedicated card, e.g.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246626

Intel's integrated graphics are horrible, but AMD is worse for the other things that are not graphics, really worse
But if what you want is better graphics, then buy an AMD, they are cheaper too, and after that you could buy it some RAM to make it a little better

Thanks for the input. And with that first link...
...the A10 looks pretty strong. So I'm going to take from that that the AMD is the strongest choice for my price range. As for the Lenovo@Newegg, $150 is a pretty big difference, and the price of the Toshiba goes down another $50 or so on the 16th. Right now I have about 5fps with minimum settings, in strategic mode, so I'd be a happy camper on low settings without lag.

Edit: Found some more specs here, here (Civ-specifics near bottom of article), and I found out about the -LeaderBenchmark command line thing here.

tokala said:

I can't find a A10 on that site, and it would be in the $600 ballpark anyway

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, that's in the link I gave in my first post. It appears as an A6 in the matrix, but if you customize it, you could tack on an A8 or the A10 for a relatively small amount. Same thing with the Intel one; it's not just an i3, there are two i3 selections, the i5, and an i7 that goes out of my range.

DevilHell said:

...buy an AMD, they are cheaper too, and after that you could buy it some RAM to make it a little better

Click to expand...

I think that's what my plan is going to be...

maestro35 said:

Oh yeah, that's in the link I gave in my first post. It appears as an A6 in the matrix, but if you customize it, you could tack on an A8 or the A10 for a relatively small amount.

Click to expand...

Okay, with the A10 only $50 more expensive that's indeed a very good deal.
Buy a second 4GB DDR3-1600 module and this should indeed become a system reasonably well suited for Civ5

Heck no... If I do, in fact, end up getting the A10, I'm going all the way to 16. )

Oh dear, overnight they further reduced the price due to the adding of the Windows 8 versions... Keep the 7's there for just a little bit longer, guys... o_o