Inexpensive daily use, laptop selection

[DrPop]

My pleasure, no problem. If you choose the AMD route, I would suggest not going with anything less than the A10 because it is the only one with a GPU powerful enough to make it worth losing out on the Core i5 HT CPU horsepower.
I think it's probably going to come down to ... do you want to crunch a certain project (or a couple favorites) and then see if those particular projects have GPU available. If they do, then the AMD route will get you more credits, because parallel GPU crunching beats serial thread CPU crunching any day of the week for points.
However, if they are mostly CPU only projects that you want to crunch, then you can't beat the i5-3210M for CPU power at this price point.

[Fire$torm]

Here is one more to consider.

lenovo IdeaPad Z585 - $499.99 (Link)

Although this lappy only has an AMD A8, it makes up for it with TWO GPUs! It has the integrated HD 7640G + Radeon HD 7670M (Discreet Mobile GPU)

GPU Specs (Both support OpenCL 1.2)

HD 7640G iGPU
Bus: PCIe 3.0 X16
RAM: Sys
Clock/ Core - MEM: 496/685 - Sys
Unified Shaders/Texture mapping unit/Render Output unit: 256/16/8
GFLOPS (SP): 253.95
DP Support: Yes


HD 7670M
Bus: PCIe 2.1 X16
RAM: 1024MB GDDR5
Clock - Core/MEM: 600/900
Unified Shaders/Texture mapping unit/Render Output unit: 480/24/8
GFLOPS (SP): 576
DP Support: ???

BTW: My A8-5600K desktop APU (HD 7560D) can crunch Collatz so this lappy APU should be able to crunch it also.

[denim]

My pleasure, no problem. If you choose the AMD route, I would suggest not going with anything less than the A10 because it is the only one with a GPU powerful enough to make it worth losing out on the Core i5 HT CPU horsepower.
I think it's probably going to come down to ... do you want to crunch a certain project (or a couple favorites) and then see if those particular projects have GPU available. If they do, then the AMD route will get you more credits, because parallel GPU crunching beats serial thread CPU crunching any day of the week for points.
However, if they are mostly CPU only projects that you want to crunch, then you can't beat the i5-3210M for CPU power at this price point.

I agree with you DrPop. Not being able to do Lattice on any of my current machines, stinks. So the AMD/GPU combo seems the best route with this choice. My favorite projects are obvious by my credit distribution, top heavy on PG GPU with a bunch of other moderate CPU return projects. I really appreciate everyone's help.

[denim]

Here is one more to consider.

lenovo IdeaPad Z585 - $499.99 (Link)

Although this lappy only has an AMD A8, it makes up for it with TWO GPUs! It has the integrated HD 7640G + Radeon HD 7670M (Discreet Mobile GPU)

GPU Specs (Both support OpenCL 1.2)

HD 7640G iGPU
Bus: PCIe 3.0 X16
RAM: Sys
Clock/ Core - MEM: 496/685 - Sys
Unified Shaders/Texture mapping unit/Render Output unit: 256/16/8
GFLOPS (SP): 253.95
DP Support: Yes


HD 7670M
Bus: PCIe 2.1 X16
RAM: 1024MB GDDR5
Clock - Core/MEM: 600/900
Unified Shaders/Texture mapping unit/Render Output unit: 480/24/8
GFLOPS (SP): 576
DP Support: ???

BTW: My A8-5600K desktop APU (HD 7560D) can crunch Collatz so this lappy APU should be able to crunch it also.

Oh man, you just threw a monkey wrench in there. That is wild about the two GPU's making it very tempting, but I am not seeing the 7640i GPU on the NE specs.

[DrPop]

Denim, F$ brings up a good option - to get a laptop with a discrete GPU. That one he linked would blow the doors off the integrated GPUs (both AMD and Intel). You sacrifice some CPU power, but if you're after bigger GPU credits in a laptop....
...BTW, are you dead set on a laptop?

[denim]

Denim, F$ brings up a good option - to get a laptop with a discrete GPU. That one he linked would blow the doors off the integrated GPUs (both AMD and Intel). You sacrifice some CPU power, but if you're after bigger GPU credits in a laptop....
...BTW, are you dead set on a laptop?

I had my CC out to grab the HP you linked, then F$ really threw me for a loop with that one. Really got me thinking, as the reviews find it to be a semi-exotic option as it is a rare all AMD piece. AMD CPU (sorry APU), and twin AMD GPU's. I had been so easily swayed by the minor ignorance of the Intel "i" chips having total superiority enough to just ignore AMD CPU's for our crunching purposes, I had really fallen out of touch with what was going on with the AMD offerings. Which is really silly, as the little Toshiba laptop (Satellite L645D L645D-S4100WH Notebook AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P360(2.30GHz) 14" 3GB Memory DDR3 1066 320GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Radeon HD 4250) that we bought for my mother just about 2 years ago, has not skipped a beat the entire time. Anytime I stop over, I just adjust the BM to which ever challenge we are doing, so I should have been looking for one similar to that machine as it is the right size and has a GPU that can crunch.

Out side of the PG work, the rest of what I crunch is probably 90% CPU work. If the consensus is that the drop off of CPU power with the Lenovo is too much, I will go with the HP, if the difference between the A10 2.3Ghz and the A8 1.9Ghz is not worth sweating, I think I will grab the Lenovo.

As for this purchase, yes I need to go with a laptop for daily portability. My big horse (Qosmio X500-S1811 Intel Core i7 740QM(1.73GHz) 18.4" 4GB Memory 500GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M) needs to go in for repair and is just too big to lug around even if it was in service right now. So I needed a light weight, crunching laptop for daily use that was around the $500 mark. Once my big laptop is back up and running, it has the power rivaling many moderate desktops. I think later this year, I will readdress a super desktop, with suggestions from the team with a 1500 budget or so.

Thanks again guys for all the help, this has been a good learning experience too.

[DrPop]

OK, just took a look for you, the laptop that F$ linked with discrete graphics added, has the A8-4500M, which is actually a Trinity CPU as well, with same cores and cache as the A10-4600M. Difference on the CPU side is speed only. So apples to apples, 2.3GHz to 1.9GHz is a 21% drop. So you will be taking a 20% hit on your CPU, and then on the built-in GPU side, a 50% hit in the shader count.
This is offset by the addition of the discrete GPU, which is 200 GFLOPS more than the built-in GPU in the A10-4600M.
I would say it's worth it if you don't do a lot of CPU and/or you just want to maximize GPU on the laptop for $500. Hard choice. What I wonder is if BOINC will actually "see" both the built-in GPU on that A8-4500M AND the discrete GPU. If it will see both and you can use both to crunch, then it would be an easier choice.

[denim]

OK, just took a look for you, the laptop that F$ linked with discrete graphics added, has the A8-4500M, which is actually a Trinity CPU as well, with same cores and cache as the A10-4600M. Difference on the CPU side is speed only. So apples to apples, 2.3GHz to 1.9GHz is a 21% drop. So you will be taking a 20% hit on your CPU, and then on the built-in GPU side, a 50% hit in the shader count.
This is offset by the addition of the discrete GPU, which is 200 GFLOPS more than the built-in GPU in the A10-4600M.
I would say it's worth it if you don't do a lot of CPU and/or you just want to maximize GPU on the laptop for $500. Hard choice. What I wonder is if BOINC will actually "see" both the built-in GPU on that A8-4500M AND the discrete GPU. If it will see both and you can use both to crunch, then it would be an easier choice.

I didn't think of that until you said it. Wish there was a way to know. If it does, then I will go that direction.

[Fire$torm]

I didn't think of that until you said it. Wish there was a way to know. If it does, then I will go that direction.

Maybe drop Slicker a line..?

[denim]

Maybe drop Slicker a line..?

You got it. Thanks.