Can a laptop GPU help the CPU out in general?

chivs688

chivs688

chivs688

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Currently struggling to decide between two laptops, exact same price, with same HDD and RAM, at £400.

One has an i5-4288U, with just the integrated Intel 5100 graphics.

The other an i5-4210U, but has a AMD M265 Dedicated graphics card.

Comparing them separately, it seems like the 4288U is a fairly decent bit better than the 4210U.
And the M265 is a fairly decent bit better than the integrated Iris 5100 graphics.

I have a gaming PC, and a load of games, so it would be nice to be able to run a good few of them on the laptop, but I don't know whether the extra grunt from that GPU would be worth the drop in CPU performance for all the general tasks, and might not even bridge the gap between the two for the middleing-graphics games.

Will having that dedicated GPU help at all with general tasks? I know that's what the CPU is mainly for, but just wondering if having a GPU in there helps out the CPU at times when doing all sorts of things on the laptop, potentially bridging the gap that the 4288U has ahead of the lesser 4210U.?

Any help much appreciated, thanks.
 
The only difference I see in the CPUs is the clock speed.

The Max for the lesser CPU being 2.7ghz and the better being 3.1ghz. Not a huge difference.

Graphics wise the AMD 265M is streets ahead of 5100, so if your looking to play games the 265 laptop is the better for you. The clock speed difference will affect very little in games (comparative to the GPU).

General uses, I doubt you'll see any difference. The only thing that will make a difference in general tasks is the presence (or absence of) an SSD.
 
You don't want to use integrated gpu from the cpu for gaming, you want a dedicated GPU in the laptop. The integrated Gpu will not help the CPU in any way, nor will the dedicated GPU in normal tasks (unless you are doing folding@home type stuff) but the best choice would be a laptop with dedicated GPU regardless.

The CPU's are identical in terms of cores, cache etc it is only a slightly higher clock on the 4288u that makes it "better" however 400mhz is not all that much and in the real world you would benefit from having a dedicated GPU more than having that 400mhz (Also the 4210U will last longer on battery)
 
Thanks for the replies.

See that's what I was leaning towards, thinking there wouldn't be much difference in terms of the CPUs.

But what got me was when looking at Passmark scores for them (usually use it to compare specs initially when looking).

Intel Core i5-4288U @ 2.60GHz Score: 4,570
Intel Core i5-4210U @ 1.70GHz Score: 3,441

That seemed like a pretty big difference to me.

Although presumably that's at their base clocks, and not when they're both in turbo mode? In which case the scores would be closer?
Or would the turbo have kicked in during the test and these are infact the scores at their respective turbo clocks?

Would the 4288U be faster at doing things in general when the clocks are just at their base speeds? So not necessarily when they're reaching the point where they kick in the turbo, but in general for general browsing and doing stuff on the PC?
 
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Just found this on a review site:

"The issue: Although the GPU would actually be capable of using its DDR3 memory via a 128-bit interface, Dell uses the slower, but cheaper variant with a 64-bit memory interface. This leads to a noticeable difference in terms of performance"

Which according to that review site means as difference "of approx. 20 fps when playing BioShock Infinite.".

So the Dell isn't using the GPU nearly as well as it should be, and so would probably end up not being all that useful over the integrated 5100 graphics right...?

So annoying (although good) to discover this as I was about to decide on the Dell, now I'm back to not being sure..
 
Budget end laptops + Gaming is a no no area personally.
They all perform similarly weak with slight FPS differences.

If you have a laptop & a gaming PC, I would suggest just using Steam Streaming instead, allows for full performance & portable.

Our of your choices, I'd have the dedicated GPU.
 
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