Question Is a Gemini Lake laptop fast enough for typical use?

[bononos]

How decent is the N4000 celeron for a laptop? Is it decent enough for typical use or is it too slow like atom netbooks?
Need to replace an old core2 laptop for parents which broke at the hinges, which was getting abit too slow at this point anyway.

 

[whm1974]

The N4000 Celeron is Atom based.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I would just shop carfully, maybe wait for a sale, and get a core laptop. They arent that expensive, so why live with a marginal system.

 

[ao_ika_red]

Never buy dual core atom. Better off with N5000 laptop (quad core atom) or like frozentundra said, core i3 (skylake onwards) laptop which much better in every way and only costs a bit more.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I am curious about this too.

I've owned a bunch of low-end Intel Atom-based laptops (mostly Bay Trail, which I was happy with), and some AMD APUs. (Also happy with my A6-6310 APUs, Puma+ quad-core, Turbo to 2.3Ghz, added 8GB of DDR3L and a 512GB SSD, Windows 10, I would rate that as "decent", with the nod to the Intel Core chips for ST performance.)

What laptops these days have all-day battery life (well, 6+ hours), as well as decent performance, for basic usage and web browsing? Non-eMMC, please. Want something with 2.5" SATA6G or M.2 PCI-e, at least x2.

Lenovo 330 comes to mind, anything else?

Oh yeah, removable battery a plus too.

???

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Ide...-8GB-RAM-1-TB-HDD-Win-10-Home-64/173613872931

I think that's a little pricey. I was looking for something $350 and under. I don't know if that's too low to find an 8th-gen Core-based laptop with FHD.


Lenovo IdeaPad 330 Ryzen 5 option:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834850877&ignorebbr=1\
Under $500, still, not cheap.

 

[whm1974]

At$350 and under I doubt you will find anything new that has an SSD and FHD display. You might be able to find one with decent specs that is refurbished, but...

 

[killster1]

At$350 and under I doubt you will find anything new that has an SSD and FHD display. You might be able to find one with decent specs that is refurbished, but...

he didnt say anything about having a SSD only a connector for it. the slowest cpu for a lappy i would buy is a 8250u, or perhaps i3 7th gen if its for someone i dont like. i see 8250u based laptops very often for 300-400 like new used with FHD, the ones with 13" 768p or what ever are very cheap tho maybe you can find for 350! maybe a dell scratch / dent or refurb like new..

 

[VirtualLarry]

he didnt say anything about having a SSD only a connector for it. the slowest cpu for a lappy i would buy is a 8250u, or perhaps i3 7th gen if its for someone i dont like. i see 8250u based laptops very often for 300-400 like new used with FHD

Yeah, I just want the ability to add an SSD to it. Factory SSD options are still rather pricey.

8250U is a quad-core, right? That would be fairly nice, with a FHD screen. That's one thing that I basically promised myself, no more 1366x768 laptop screens, unless I'm getting an 11.6" netbook or something.

How does the 8250U compare, performance and battery-life wise, to a Ryzen 5 2500U, which is also a quad-core? I might prefer the better iGPU of the Ryzen, for an additional $100 or so. Bonus. if it comes with the M.2 PCI-E SSD of 256GB or larger.

Thinking about that Lenovo 330 Ryzen edition, with the 256GB M.2 SSD. That would be sweet. Not sure if that's in my budget, though.

What's the sweet spot on RAM for laptops these days? I don't want less than 8GB of RAM. Be nice if I could get 16GB, but I'm thinking factory configs with 16GB of RAM, are probably going to be astronomically-priced, because they'll probably want to tie-in a 4K screen, 1TB SSD, etc. with that "feature class".

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Ide...SSD-Radeon-Vega-8-FHD-15-6-WIN10/382523712285

That's basically my "dream laptop", at least, at this moment. Sold by Newegg, no less. Only minor downsides: no user-removable battery, and half (4GB) of the DDR4, is apparently soldered in. Which is generally fine, AS LONG AS IT DOESN'T GO BAD. I highly doubt that there's a BIOS option to "ignore onboard memory".

Edit: Here's an HP Envy x360 2-in-1 REFURB Ryzen 2500U. Claims to have 10.5 hours battery life! (But I'm sure that's "New", not "Refurb".)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-ENVY-x3...00-GHz-8-GB-Memory-128-GB-SSD-AM/382734497190

 

[killster1]

Yeah, I just want the ability to add an SSD to it. Factory SSD options are still rather pricey.

8250U is a quad-core, right? That would be fairly nice, with a FHD screen. That's one thing that I basically promised myself, no more 1366x768 laptop screens, unless I'm getting an 11.6" netbook or something.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-8250U+@+1.60GHz&id=3042 passmark 7679

Clockspeed: 1.6 GHz
Turbo Speed: 3.4 GHz
No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical)
TDP Down: 10 W Up: 25 W Typical TDP: 15 W3


Acer Aspire E 15 Laptop, 15.6" Full HD, 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8250U, GeForce MX150, 8GB RAM Memory, 256GB SSD

forget exact price, used a ebay coupon i think about 360ish with a REALLY nice dent in the corner of keyboard area.. the battery easily lasts 7 hours it seems, not sure how long it lasts gaming but i love the 8th gen intel for power usage / performance. Never tried a ryzen laptop all the reviews of teh cheap ones scared me away.

 

[VirtualLarry]

forget exact price, used a ebay coupon i think about 360ish with a REALLY nice dent in the corner of keyboard area.

LOL at the dent, but yeah, that's more my price range, thanks. I'll keep an eye out for a cheap scratch-n-dent one.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Never buy dual core atom. Better off with N5000 laptop (quad core atom) or like frozentundra said, core i3 (skylake onwards) laptop which much better in every way and only costs a bit more.

The Gemini-Lake based systems are quite nice for the price. It's on par with Core 2 chips per clock in most applications.

In multi-thread, its competitive with the Core i5 "M" chips.

Due to being developed using a different team, it can also decode certain media formats without needing a separate chip for it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I saw an N5000 FHD laptop for $300 in one of Newegg recent flyers. Looked like you could upgrade it to a SATA SSD.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...sNotebooks-_-9SIAEYA8GM0919-S3A1B&ignorebbr=1

My bad, it's not FHD, it's 1366x768. Ugh. It would have been worth it had it had a FHD screen, and a replaceable 2.5" drive bay.

Edit: Apparently, these are "3rd-party upgraded". That one comes with 4GB DDR4 RAM, and a 128GB SSD (SATA? M.2? I don't know.)

Here's one with 8GB of RAM, for $369.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAEYA8GM0926

Would like to find out if there is a version of these with a 500GB HDD and a FHD screen, for maybe $250-270?

Edit: I've looked at a number of variants, on Staples.com, Walmart.com, and ebay, and none of them have FHD screens. It may be a lost cause, looking for "HP 15-bs" laptops with a FHD screen.

 

[ao_ika_red]

The Gemini-Lake based systems are quite nice for the price. It's on par with Core 2 chips per clock in most applications.

Yeah, I once mentioned about its NUC version and according to some people it's still slow for general use.

I saw an N5000 FHD laptop for $300 in one of Newegg recent flyers. Looked like you could upgrade it to a SATA SSD.

Mind to share the link? That's one heck of a laptop for students and old people who mostly use it for office work and browsing machine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...p-configured-with-fhd-and-extras-620.2561431/

Alright, I found my dream laptop. Now all I need, is for some people to buy my stuff, and older laptops, so that I can make room for this Ryzen 5 2500U laptop in my family err, "harem"...

 

[IntelUser2000]

If you are buying it for your parents, then most likely they will not be picky about the performance.

ao_ika_red has a point but one thing that helps more than hardware upgrades is acceptance. I'd agree for most folks here in AT forums anything less than Ryzen or the latest Core ix chips are viewed as slow. People outside of tech forums though can easily go for much slower chips without much issue.

A decade ago, even for us Core 2 level of performance was enough. Now we no longer view it as good enough, because we got better. But nothing changed another than our minds.

Get a very cheap laptop and replace the drive with a SSD drive. That'll be more than enough for browsing/media use.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you are buying it for your parents, then most likely they will not be picky about the performance.

ao_ika_red has a point but one thing that helps more than hardware upgrades is acceptance. I'd agree for most folks here in AT forums anything less than Ryzen or the latest Core ix chips are viewed as slow. People outside of tech forums though can easily go for much slower chips without much issue.

A decade ago, even for us Core 2 level of performance was enough. Now we no longer view it as good enough, because we got better. But nothing changed another than our minds.

Get a very cheap laptop and replace the drive with a SSD drive. That'll be more than enough for browsing/media use.

You made some very good points. But I meant, my "family" of PCs. To me, my PCs are kind of like my children. Sort of strange, I know. That's what you get, I guess, when you're getting older and still single, and are a fairly hard-core PC parts enthusiast.

I had been doing that. (Buying cheaper laptops, and adding RAM and upgrading to SSD.)

Now, I've got a bunch of Atom and Puma+ laptops, with SSDs. They browse alright, I guess, but they can lag at times, even with an ad-blocker.

 

[ao_ika_red]

Puma+ apus are no slouch even by today's browser standard (thank God multithreading and gpu acceleration support). IMHO, Gemini Lake Atoms are finally closing the gap with puma+ apus with their advantage on power consumption and better multimedia encode/decode support.

 

[killster1]

If you are buying it for your parents, then most likely they will not be picky about the performance.

ao_ika_red has a point but one thing that helps more than hardware upgrades is acceptance. I'd agree for most folks here in AT forums anything less than Ryzen or the latest Core ix chips are viewed as slow. People outside of tech forums though can easily go for much slower chips without much issue.

A decade ago, even for us Core 2 level of performance was enough. Now we no longer view it as good enough, because we got better. But nothing changed another than our minds.

Get a very cheap laptop and replace the drive with a SSD drive. That'll be more than enough for browsing/media use.

for the most part you are correct, forum readers CARE for better because they know what is out there and often have more demanding tasks than a couch potato or casual news browser. HOWEVER what if their parents did anything demanding? THEy will wish for a faster more energy efficient cpu. (5 hours battery time vs 12+ is not a little diff) Often times a c2d or atom or slow cpu will lag incredible amounts in browsing. Typical person doesnt care and will wait right? but is that what you want for your parents when 100 more gets so much better? Even if they will die soon i think they deserve better than a celeron with ssd :'( you should feel ashamed.

and virtual larry why is a 2500u your dream laptop? just wait little longer or get intel, i havnt seen a good review for a 2500u laptop, you just want it because of the price? id still get a 8300h 8650 8360 etc etc over a 2500u same price because the used market is larger for intel ;(

 

[VirtualLarry]

and virtual larry why is a 2500u your dream laptop? just wait little longer or get intel,

Quite frankly, I'm not that impressed with Intel, and I want something WAY better than "HD630" graphics.

 

[killster1]

Quite frankly, I'm not that impressed with Intel, and I want something WAY better than "HD630" graphics.

LULULUL yea well of course you can get a mx150 still below the price. or 1050ti or 1050, hell i even have seen 1060's for 700 which is about the same after tax i enjoy light powered dedicated gfx so its between no games rez and no battery life.

 

[IntelUser2000]

killster1,

Having a faster computer is not a life or death situation. In fact, most modern day lifestyles are extravagant, or even wasteful.

That's what I mean expectations are the greatest tool in whether you view it as slow, or perfectly acceptable.

If you keep expectations unchecked, the limits are really endless. We thought 60Hz refresh was ok. And 75Hz was the limit where most would not notice. But it keeps going up, 100Hz, 144Hz. I bet we'll notice even higher refresh rates if there was.

C2D or Gemini Lake level of performance with 4-8GB RAM and SSD is perfectly acceptable. Puma+ is using Carrizo, so its actually a decent core. Both Intel's low power and Core platforms are far more power efficient, but that's really a side point.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Puma+ is using Carrizo, so its actually a decent core.

I thought that Puma+, being an extension of the Jaguar core, was a "Small core", and Carizzo, being an extension of Piledriver/Streamroller/Excavator, was a "Big core".

I don't think that they're the same at all.

Edit: Maybe you meant to say "Carizzo-L"? I think that's a "Small core".

 

[IntelUser2000]

Yes, you are right.

Puma+ is a minor extension of the Jaguar core. Since Jaguar is about on par with Goldmont, Goldmont Plus on the CPU core is far more capable(about 30% faster per clock).

 

[killster1]

killster1,

Having a faster computer is not a life or death situation. In fact, most modern day lifestyles are extravagant, or even wasteful.

That's what I mean expectations are the greatest tool in whether you view it as slow, or perfectly acceptable.

If you keep expectations unchecked, the limits are really endless. We thought 60Hz refresh was ok. And 75Hz was the limit where most would not notice. But it keeps going up, 100Hz, 144Hz. I bet we'll notice even higher refresh rates if there was.

C2D or Gemini Lake level of performance with 4-8GB RAM and SSD is perfectly acceptable. Puma+ is using Carrizo, so its actually a decent core. Both Intel's low power and Core platforms are far more power efficient, but that's really a side point.

who said life or death? we are talking about extravagant lifestyles and spending 300 on a laptop? why not cook yourself a dinner instead of the 200$ steak and you got your self a 450$ laptop. I gave my mom a 16gb i3 7100 with ssd and YES its to slow! her next laptop will be my 8250u when something better is found, 8650u or better

 

[VirtualLarry]

I gave my mom a 16gb i3 7100 with ssd and YES its to slow!

I guess her statistical analysis hobby requires more compute power, eh?

/s