New Compute Help ??

John Young

John Young

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I have the option of two computers (specs below) one is only 16" but has a better graphics card and looks like the CPU is faster (although reads as same model - maybe over clocked ?) The other has a 17" screen but slower graphics card but larger hard drive. I could go for smaller screen laptop and add my own second screen

Should I go for option 1 or 2

Option 1

HP Pavilion 16”


Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ Quad-Core Processor with Intel® HD Graphics 4600
• 2.6GHz, 6MB Smart Cache (Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz)
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit ● 8GB DDR3L SDRAM
• 1TB 5400 rpm SATA; 128 GB M.2 Solid State Drive ● SuperMulti DVD Burner
• 15.6-inch Full HD IPS anti-glare WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080 pixels resolution)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M dedicated 4GB DDR3L graphics card
• Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2x2) and Bluetooth 4.0 combo (Miracast compatible)
• Bang & Olufsen sound with 2 speakers ● Multi-format SD media card reader
• HP TrueVision HD Webcam (front-facing) with integrated dual array digital microphone



Option 2

HP Envy 17

Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ Quad-Core Processor
• 2.4GHz, 4MB L3 Smart Cache (Turbo Boost up to 3GHz)
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit ● 12GB DDR3L SDRAM ● SuperMulti DVD burner drive
• 2TB 5400 rpm SATA hard disk drive + Dropbox + HP Connected Drive
• 17.3-inch Full HD IPS anti-glare WLED-backlit display (1920 x 1080 pixels resolution)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX940M dedicated 2GB DDR3L graphics card
• Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2x2) and Bluetooth 4.0 combo (Miracast compatible)
• Bang & Olufsen with 4 speakers and 1 subwoofer ● Multi-format SD media card reader
• HP TrueVision HD Webcam with integrated dual array digital microphone
 
following on from the other thread..

if it is a choice out of those 2 with no other options then option one has the 128gb SSD which I assume will be your OS drive and thus be a fair bit quicker than option two even with its 4gb extra ram..

??
 
strumstrum said:
following on from the other thread..

if it is a choice out of those 2 with no other options then option one has the 128gb SSD which I assume will be your OS drive and thus be a fair bit quicker than option two even with its 4gb extra ram..

??
Click to expand...


To be honest I wish the first had a 17" screen and it would be a no brainer for me... it has less storage but a better graphics card and slightly faster CPU but less RAM - its the monitor size that is no good for photos but I find a 17" fine as I use it at the moment. So the reason I was thinking of the first with an additional monitor - just not sure how well it works
 
They are both similar to be honest and both will do all you need and more, personally I would have the Envy, on the HP internal site the Envy is classed as Performance Home.

Whats the exact model number? is it this

HP ENVY 17-n104na Laptop

Big thinking doesn’t always happen at a desk. Break free and enjoy the view from your porch, or get comfortable on the couch with this ENVY notebook's impressiv...
  • Windows 10 Home 64
  • Latest 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor
  • 43.9 cm (17.3") diagonal Full-HD display
  • NVIDIA GeForce 940M (2 GB DDR3L dedicated)
  • 12GB DDR3 RAM memory with 2TB storage
£759.00VAT incl.
 
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Mr Bump said:
They are both similar to be honest and both will do all you need and more, personally I would have the Envy, on the HP internal site the Envy is classed as Performance Home.

Whats the exact model number? is it this

HP ENVY 17-n104na Laptop

Big thinking doesn’t always happen at a desk. Break free and enjoy the view from your porch, or get comfortable on the couch with this ENVY notebook's impressiv...
  • Windows 10 Home 64
  • Latest 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor
  • 43.9 cm (17.3") diagonal Full-HD display
  • NVIDIA GeForce 940M (2 GB DDR3L dedicated)
  • 12GB DDR3 RAM memory with 2TB storage
Click to expand...


Thank you - I have no ordered that one (had to order today) so pleased you said go for this one. The girl said it was model number - N7J05 - but I cannot find that anywhere.

But it looks like what you have posted...

Its for photoshop work mainly - would that be OK for that ? and to be fair I said on last thread I was not keen on my present HP but it has not let me down and once I got Win 10 its like a whole new computer
 
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John I work in a non hardware sector for HP so couldn't comment but It's basically a gamers laptop so tons of poke for photoshop I would imagine.

to be fair you could get away with a lot less, photoshop isn't very intensive.
 
Mr Bump said:
John I work in a non hardware sector for HP so couldn't comment but It's basically a gamers laptop so tons of poke for photoshop I would imagine.

to be fair you could get away with a lot less, photoshop isn't very intensive.
Click to expand...


Thank you.... it was mainly the better graphics card in the pavilion that made me think..... but I could not work with 15" so would then need to add a monitor. The envy 17" would be ready to go as I use one now and its fine
 
On thing that stands out is that a lot of those points are quite big numbers but in the wrong places.

Those i7 cards are quite slow for i7's, much slower than a lot of i5's and I wasn't aware you could even get an i7 in 4mb cache.
The RAM doesn't seem too bad. I think L is PC3-14900.
The option with the SSD is faster but with such a small amount of storage it's only good for opening programs/OS etc. for anything that's data intensive your HDD is going to come into use and it's quite a slow spin speed. It doesn't give much detail on read speeds. The other PC doesn't have an SSD at all and personally I would avoid that option given the rest of the spec.
The graphics cards are ok but they're the lowest spec in their range.

It depends what you want to do with it really. The problem is that with a lot of these consumer grade laptops they're made with components that are designed to increase the numbers on the info sheet in PC World so if you look through a list of processors for example you can see that there are always a couple of strange ones in each range that appear to be a bit out of place with the numbers (like i7's that are of lower spec than the good i5's).
 
Thanks.... I never knew the i7 is slower than the i5 that is interesting. So what were the i7 brought out for or is this particular i7 rubbish
 
John Young said:
Thanks.... I never knew the i7 is slower than the i5 that is interesting. So what were the i7 brought out for or is this particular i7 rubbish
Click to expand...
Yes it definitely can, that's nothing new. It's kind of like how you might see 32gb of RAM as being more beneficial than 16gb of RAM, it's possible but fast RAM is expensive so some of the consumer-orientated shops may put lots of slow RAM so it looks like more.

Hard drives are used in a similar way as I'm sure you're aware. The size is something everyone understands so people will be looking for more. There may be one PC with 2TB or storage and another with 4TB of storage. The majority of people will be drawn towards the 4TB PC because that's what they understand but the chances are it's a very slow drive and it may have worked out better to go for a smaller drive which is faster.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have an issue with the shops and I even bought my last laptop from Amazon but they are setup in a way to appeal to people who don't understand what they're buying. It's debatable whether the shop assistants even know what they're selling.

Take a look at this site, it indexes processors by performance in a simple way. You can see how lots of i7 processors are basically inferior to supposedly 'lesser models'. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
 
John Young said:
is this particular i7 rubbish
Click to expand...
The site I just posted actually rates that processor quite well. I originally looked a direct comparison rather than benchmarking but it actually seems quite good. Just remember if you have a good processor but any of the other components bottle-neck for some reason it's unlikely to give you the benefit.
 
connersz said:
Yes it definitely can, that's nothing new. It's kind of like how you might see 32gb of RAM as being more beneficial than 16gb of RAM, it's possible but fast RAM is expensive so some of the consumer-orientated shops may put lots of slow RAM so it looks like more.

Hard drives are used in a similar way as I'm sure you're aware. The size is something everyone understands so people will be looking for more. There may be one PC with 2TB or storage and another with 4TB of storage. The majority of people will be drawn towards the 4TB PC because that's what they understand but the chances are it's a very slow drive and it may have worked out better to go for a smaller drive which is faster.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have an issue with the shops and I even bought my last laptop from Amazon but they are setup in a way to appeal to people who don't understand what they're buying. It's debatable whether the shop assistants even know what they're selling.

Take a look at this site, it indexes processors by performance in a simple way. You can see how lots of i7 processors are basically inferior to supposedly 'lesser models'. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
Click to expand...

Interesting in what you have written. I am in the process of buying a new computer and when I have been looking at tests the i7 seems to perfom better than the i5 processor, see this > http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=intel+core+i5-4460+@+3.20ghz&id=2230
 
So out of the two laptops would you - go for option 1 and add a monitor and probably need an additional external hard drive as lack of space

Or

Option 2 - slightly slower clocked CPU, slower graphics card, more RAM and larger hard drive and a decent sized screen
 
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Swanseajack said:
Interesting in what you have written. I am in the process of buying a new computer and when I have been looking at tests the i7 seems to perfom better than the i5 processor, see this > http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=intel+core+i5-4460+@+3.20ghz&id=2230
Click to expand...
Yes but you have to remember there are probably hundreds of versions of each processor. You have to be careful how you read these graphs too.

If you look at the entire list you will see that there are tonnes of other i5's and other processors higher than the ten in the graph. It doesn't end at the last i7 you see in the graph.
 
John Young said:
So out of the two laptops would you - go for option 1 and add a monitor and probably need an additional external hard drive as lack of space

Or

Option 2 - slightly slower clocked CPU, slower graphics card, more RAM and larger hard drive and a decent sized screen
Click to expand...
What are you going to use them for?
 
John Young said:
For Photoshop mainly and some light graphics
Click to expand...
Would probably go for the first one because on the second the hard drive wouldn't do very well. I don't claim to be an expert on this stuff so don't totally take my word for it. I used to have a business building desktops for linux development but a lot has changed since then. I like to feel like I can spot a few weird trade things sometimes though.
 
Thanks for your help - they both have the same hard drive. Do you mean the first also has a SSD as well as the hard drive ?
 
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