Cpu for Cheap laptop, go Bay trail or ivy bridge celeron?

[FJRisco]

Hello everyone,
I'm currently looking to buy a cheap laptop to carry around while I commute here in nyc. I really can't afford that much so anywhere below $300 would be nice. Now, I'm not afraid of buying refurbished laptops as I have in the past without a problem. I narrowed down my choices to the Acer travelmate b113 (celeron 1017u, 4gb), lenovo x140e (AMD a4-5000, 4gb), acer v3 (celeron n2930, 4gb), and another lenovo laptop which has a n2920 cpu (can't remember the model number). Now all the benchmarks show the a4-5000/n2930 as being the superior cpus, but are they really? Bay trail or kabini might get better benchmarks than a 2955u or a 1017u when it comes to multicore but it's a complete different story for single core performance. I've heard that amd's a4-5000 is rather weak and it can't keep up as well as the ivy bridge's celeron on day to day use. I intend to use this laptop to read documents, run netbeans, Eclipse, and visual Studio. By the way, I used to have an acer aspire ao756 (11.6, sandy bridge celeron 847, 6gb,) and it could really keep up with my demands. Any advice?

 

[ninaholic37]

I think the Celeron 1017u would perform best, the others might even be a downgrade from your old Celeron 847, especially if you're trying to run things like Visual Studio and Eclipse. I guess it depends on what your "lag tolerance threshold" is though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think the Celeron 1017u would perform best, the others might even be a downgrade from your old Celeron 847, especially if you're trying to run things like Visual Studio and Eclipse. I guess it depends on what your "lag tolerance threshold" is though.

I concur. I have a 1007U laptop (1.5Ghz IB Celeron dual-core), which I am typing this on. I also own some Bay Trail Atom Celeron N2830 dual-core laptops, which were nearly $100 cheaper, but are actually slower.

I would go with the IB dual-core myself. Web browsing and editing is mostly single-threaded, and the "big" cores excel at that. The A4-5000 is crap. Bay Trail is barely better.

 

[you2]

I don't much care for 1007u; bit on the slow side but certainly a better option for than bay trail. In the desktop arena (I know you said laptop) for lowend I like the G3820 (or similar) processor which can be found for $35-$40 (microcenter and similar) and is as fast or faster tahn a mobile i3. For laptop life is more miserable at the low end. I did build a low end system with an 1007u for my dad (web browsing only though the processor can handle video @ 1080p). Given your options (listed) I think the 1007 or 10047 are the best option but maybe you can find an i3 laptop on sale during blackfriday ? The other thing that will kill you is the disk drive; cheap laptop have very slow diskdrives; maybe check if there is an option for user replacement of ssd. You can find 128GB ssd for $50-$60. Also you might want to run linux instead of windows.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Also you might want to run linux instead of windows.

If OP cares about battery life and power-saving, stick with Windows.

 

[TeknoBug]

I'm typing on an A4 5000 laptop right now, it's lacking in many areas that Intel mobiles are a bit better if you're going this far down on the low end category. I have some interest in the N2930 for a NUC but if it's weaker and slower than a 1017U then I may not bother so I may just as well go for that fanless i5 4210Y NUC that was posted on the Anand front page a few days ago.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have some interest in the N2930 for a NUC but if it's weaker and slower than a 1017U then I may not bother

It is weaker.

 

[infoiltrator]

over your budget, not sure of Surface 1 performance but it is I5 Pro
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...34735025-S2A8C

$20 off w/code EMCWWPD85 till 11/10