Mobile Richland vs older gaming laptop vs current cards

[frozentundra123456]

Hi all

Hope someone can give me some advice about gaming performance of the current amd A10 mobile chip vs an older gaming laptop and vs current cards.

My grandson has a four or five year old asus gaming laptop that is no longer working. It has a GTX 260m (112 shaders) and a core 2 duo of about 2.2 ghz. Now however, it is shutting off constantly, and gives an unplayable framerate even in games it used to handle OK. I am thinking about replacing it at some point with a new laptop, and would like to keep the cost down as much as possible.

I am wondering how a current A10 would compare in gaming performance to that laptop (when it was working properly), and also what current discrete mobile card is comparable to the A10.

 

[Enigmoid]

Check out here

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-260M.14559.0.html

Looks like it is quite a bit faster than any igp though it will not be able to handle DX11 games.

A10 is a little less powerful than a 620m/7670m. It is wholly inadequate for most gaming.

 

[Arkadrel]

Check out here

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-260M.14559.0.html

Looks like it is quite a bit faster than any igp though it will not be able to handle DX11 games.

A10 is a little less powerful than a 620m/7670m. It is wholly inadequate for most gaming.

Huh?

the link you show has the 7660G (a IGP) (from a A10-4600M) being like ~3% slower (3DMark Vantage) than the GTX 260m (112 shaders).

Is 3% differnce your idea of "quite a bit"


http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8650G.87916.0.html:

The performance of the 8650G is about 20 percent above the HD 7660G. Thus, the Radeon HD 8650G performs similar to a dedicated HD 7670M or NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M. Without fast dual-channel memory, however, performance drops dramatically.

So you could get your grandson a 10-5750m (apu) and have a IGP (HD 8650G) thats about ~20% faster than his Current GTX 260m.

It wouldnt be much of a upg. You can get much more with a discrete card even in a laptop.

The question is does he need to game on his laptop?
Does he need his laptop to be light weight? low power so he can do stuff on it when its not plugged into a wall?

If hes always near a wall socket, and wants to game on it, you could probably pay abit more and get one with a more powerfull discrete card in it.

If its not always hooked up to a power socket, when he needs it something like the 10-5750m would be a good upg. He would probably notice his laptop lasting much much longer, when say hes at school ect and not near a power socket.

 

[Stuka87]

If you can wait for a laptop with Kaveri in it, I would. Not only is the CPU faster than Richland, but the GPU is a quite a bit faster. But the biggest thing about it is that the GPU is GCN 1.1. This means Mantle will function on it, which makes high end games much more playable with the lower end graphics.

It will not play top end games perfectly. But it will play BF4 at 720P well enough to be enjoyable in Mantle mode.

 

[Arkadrel]

If you can wait for a laptop with Kaveri in it, I would.

If you need one now then, this is what id do: (from just looking at newegg atm)

~530$ :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834313719

A10-5750m + 6gb DDR3 1600, 1TB HDD + windows 8.1


~650$: (should be ~25% or more GPU performance, than the 530$ laptop)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834231455

Intel Core i5 4200U + 8GB DDR3 1600 + NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M

 

[frozentundra123456]

Thanks to all for the input. So basically at best an A-10 would be about equal to what he has now when it was working properly. Seems a shame to spend 500.00 plus to get back to the same place. As for kaveri, it is interesting for mobile, but I tend to not favor waiting for unreleased products with unknown price, performance, and release dates. Mantle is nice for what it is, but he is not interested in BF4, and the limited number of games within the next couple of years makes it pretty much a non-factor for this situation.

He lives out of state, but we will be visiting soon, so we will try to re-image and update the graphics drivers to see if that gets it working. Otherwise it is probably worth it to spend the extra money for something like the Lenono Y series with a gt 755m, which is around 800.00 on sale.

 

[Stuka87]

Kaveri isn't an unknown. Its been fully reviewed by many sites (Including AT). I just have not seen a shipping laptop with one yet, but should be very soon.

Also, from the sounds of it, the issue he is having sounds like the heatsinks/fans are plugged with dust and its going into thermal shutdown.

 

[Arkadrel]

Thanks to all for the input. So basically at best an A-10 would be about equal to what he has now when it was working properly. Seems a shame to spend 500.00 plus to get back to the same place. As for kaveri, it is interesting for mobile, but I tend to not favor waiting for unreleased products with unknown price, performance, and release dates. Mantle is nice for what it is, but he is not interested in BF4, and the limited number of games within the next couple of years makes it pretty much a non-factor for this situation.

He lives out of state, but we will be visiting soon, so we will try to re-image and update the graphics drivers to see if that gets it working. Otherwise it is probably worth it to spend the extra money for something like the Lenono Y series with a gt 755m, which is around 800.00 on sale.

No, theres many differnt versions of APUs and many differnt A10's.

The A10-4600M APU would be where he is now more or less.
The A10-5750m APU would be about ~20% faster than what he has.

Both have A10 in front, but their performance levels are differnt.


And yeah a GT 755m would be like ~250% of what he has now, but like you said most of those Laptops are 800$+ in costs. If your going for a new laptop though and want more performance, this does sound like a better alternative, esp if his old one was too slow.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Kaveri isn't an unknown. Its been fully reviewed by many sites (Including AT). I just have not seen a shipping laptop with one yet, but should be very soon.

Also, from the sounds of it, the issue he is having sounds like the heatsinks/fans are plugged with dust and its going into thermal shutdown.

Dust problems was my first thought too, but he said it wasn't overheating. Not sure how he determined that though. The performance is really slow even when it is working, but I guess it could be throttling even when it doesn't shut down. He also tends to download a lot of stuff, so it could be loaded with malware.

 

[Enigmoid]

Huh?

the link you show has the 7660G (a IGP) (from a A10-4600M) being like ~3% slower (3DMark Vantage) than the GTX 260m (112 shaders).

Is 3% differnce your idea of "quite a bit"


http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8650G.87916.0.html:





So you could get your grandson a 10-5750m (apu) and have a IGP (HD 8650G) thats about ~20% faster than his Current GTX 260m.

It wouldnt be much of a upg. You can get much more with a discrete card even in a laptop.

The question is does he need to game on his laptop?
Does he need his laptop to be light weight? low power so he can do stuff on it when its not plugged into a wall?

If hes always near a wall socket, and wants to game on it, you could probably pay abit more and get one with a more powerfull discrete card in it.

If its not always hooked up to a power socket, when he needs it something like the 10-5750m would be a good upg. He would probably notice his laptop lasting much much longer, when say hes at school ect and not near a power socket.

Look at the game benchmarks. I'm not sure how accurate notebookcheck is with old games on different drivers but the 260m does surprisingly well on some games. Looking at 3dmark 06 for instance puts in nearly on par with a 640m.

I'm guessing these numbers are probably wrong. Mafia 2 numbers show it nearly on par with a 640m which is probably wrong.

 

[Stuka87]

Dust problems was my first thought too, but he said it wasn't overheating. Not sure how he determined that though. The performance is really slow even when it is working, but I guess it could be throttling even when it doesn't shut down. He also tends to download a lot of stuff, so it could be loaded with malware.

Slowing down is what it does first. Everything will start to de-clock. If it still heats up, then the system will shut off.