Core i3 or AMD E2-1800

Which one would you consider a greater value for money for a laptop. One of the cheapest core-i3s or one of AMD's E350/450, E2-1800? Do you know even cheaper alternatives besides these?

 

performance wise, any mobile core i3 is going to be vastly superior to the e350 or the newer e2 1800.

Now gpu wise, amd does have the edge however if any of the mobile i3's have the HD4000 gpu vs the 2500 or less, then the i3 would still be the way to go. What is your expected use on this laptop,

There are also the intel dual core pentium b950 and the like cpu's which are similar to the i3's but lack hyperthreading and for sure don't have the hd 4000 gpu.

 

Definitely go with the i3 unless you're really stretched for cash. Intel just produces a more solid product with better performance all around.

 

The mobile Core i3-2XXX has HD 3000 while mobile Core i3-3XXX have HD 4000. HD 2000/2500 is only for desktop Core i3 CPUs.

I don't know about your first statement either. Haven't used Ivy Bridge versions, but my ULV 1.3GHz Core i3-2XXX (forgot which exact model) felt pretty sluggish compared to another notebook I had with a normal voltage Core i5-2XXX (both Sandy Bridge). They are both dual core with HyperThreading and same IGP and cache, so the only difference was the MHz. I think the Core i5 would Turbo to 2.7GHz or something. All I knew was that it felt "normal" while the 1.3GHz Core i3 felt sluggish. Both had SSDs.

 

the AMD is still gonna kick the i3 GPU's . so if you wanna play any games or HD content (I think the i3 can hd okay) the AMd may possible be the way to go. So see after the E450 AMd switch up their naming scheme?

 

3D gaming doesn't really matter - both systems are going to be severely CPU-limited.

...Unless if we're talking about standard voltage Core i3 vs E2-1800.

 

well take minecraft for example runs like crap on intel gpus but, say if you have a pentium 4 then an ati or nvidia isn't a big help. but if you have say an onboard gpu and core 2 duo or better than an onboard is gonna do way better than an intel gpu.

 

I wont really care for gaming on this one. But i would like it play FullHD with no problems. I need a system for 300-400 euros max and preferably with 11 to 13 inch screen so that its really portable. But with that hardware i only find products that cost more than 400!

Best i came up with was a Sony Vaio with 11.6 and E2-1800 at 450 Euro and then a Toshiba with core i3 on 480 Euro. Is there something i can get with less than 400 that is still good?

This is the one

http://www.sony.co.uk/product/vaio-e-series/sve1112m1e

And heres the other one

http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe....llite-Pro-L830-11D/1129196/toshibaShop/false/

 

.. then only the amd system will be able to do that. (Anyone can check that - any i3/integrated will croak when trying to play back compressed 1920x1080 video. The e-450 chipsets have been able to handle that for over a year now. It's not a secret, is it?).

I don't know. Might want to consider one of the quad-core trinity a8 apus that come with some of the samsung/asus/acer cheap-tops. They have a few versions out that cost very little, and are dimensioned for lower heat envelopes than the i5 or i7 setups. 14 inch samsung with a lithium polymer battery, for example. Lots of plastic. But you get a lot for the money. Unfortunately we don't seem to see any more 1920x1080 resolution screens on these slimmer chassis options.. Has been one so far, the u38n from asus? A bit steep price, though.

Or one option could be to pick one of the outgoing dv6 versions, other hps like the 6z, some of the k53 or 55 laptops from asus, and older e-450 apu chipsets on 14 or 13? inch lenovos. Those will all be 1366x768px screen - but if any of those turn up used or refurbished, that sort of thing, these could be a very good deal. Specially now that we're... sort of just waiting for more 1920x1080 screens on those slimmer chassis models/lower heat envelope. Could easily go under your budget, while still getting more than you would if you got a new laptop in that class.

 

Actually the ULV AMD GPU's aren't that great compared to their regular 25W/35W brothers.

Here's E-450 vs i3-2367M with single channel RAM: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...9-amd-e-350-e-450-intel-i3-2367-compared.html

Even Sandy Bridge HD 3000 in that i3 with single channel RAM (one RAM stick) outperformed the E-450 with 6320 GPU (which is single channel capable only). If they offered a second RAM slot for that HP DM1 I used for the benchmarks, it would have increased performance 30-40%. The HD 4000 is about twice the performance of HD 3000, and I know the new E2's didn't improve that significantly, not nearly the same as the Trinity IGP (HD 7xxx)

 

That depends on the use. Doesn't matter if the "3d performance" on the combined gpu and cpu score on 3dmark is approximately the same. When one of the platforms can perform on that level while running at half the power-drain.

Meanwhile the average load while playing back 1080p video on the apu is somewhere around 30-40% load on the gpu, 1-10% on the cpu. On the i3 system, you will max out the cpu and stop being able to run higher resolution video at 720p.

So yes, the i3 will have higher synthetic cpu performance (for what that's worth on that class of computer). But the gpu doesn't cut it for anything beyond watching youtube (up to 1280x720 resolution). In the same way, the e2-1800 apu will not have as high syntentic cpu performance. But it will have useable gpu and opencl performance (far outmatching the hd4000 igps in all cases).

 

Well i'm not sure which one is really better or synthetically better, but i dont think either one will have trouble on FullHD? BTW how does one mean sufficient 1080p playback? How does certain hardware qualify with being able to run 1080p? This question follows the comment that i3 wont run anything above 720p or youtube.

I have a dinosaur Asus, the cheapest laptop i could find on 2004 with a crappy Intel Pentium T3200, Intel XMA3150 and 2GB of RAM, and even that can run 1080p. Of course seeking is an issue, or doing anything more than just letting the video run real time, but if you start an mkv on mpc-hc and just let it run, you can finish the movie. Of course this PC is ancient is 15.6 so it troubles me to carry it around and doesnt have hdmi so i cannot output to an HDTV. So thusly i'm looking for a newer one, that will be significantly better than this one and be more portable.

Based on the comment above i understand that the 7340 offer on E2 would better suit my needs, but since the price it is offered doesnt, i should be looking at something less than those. So for pentium b950 is the only alternative mentioned here. Anything else?

How about Intel Atom, Celeron, AMD C-Seires Nvidia ION for graphics etc? Anybody got any experience on those?

 

Nicely stated!

EDIT: I'd like to add both are good CPUs even if the I3 is faster they are both great for office, youtube and games (with AMD having better gpu).

 

It's just that the i3 intel gma setup isn't fast enough to run video-decode on the gpu. So it will have to run it on the cpu instead. There's no way at the moment to let a video-decoder run partially on the cpu and gpu, for example.. or at least very little point to write a decoder like that just to appease intel (or really sabotage them, I guess - if someone made a decoder like that it would wreck their lineup a bit).. so.. You run into problems because you don't have enough processing power on the cpu. And also not a strong enough gpu. Or if you had a stronger cpu, the cpu would need to run on full burn all the time.

In the same way, if you had a really, really weak cpu, but a good enough gpu, it would be enough, as long as the decoder can use "hardware", or gpu instructions for decode.

ION was a good idea, but never was implemented with the cpu/gpu instruction sets on the same processor element. Instead it was paired up with an atom core, so it never really had much potential.

The Tegra 3/4 devices turning up now is a better variant of the same idea, just with embedded instruction sets on an arm-core instead (what about a 2w processor that can decode hd movies?).

The C-series looks promising - will be the smallest and lightest processor array with full x86 support. And a reasonably fast gpu + opencl acceleration. So it might do what you want, if you're looking for something as light as possible/with good battery life, without having to change to another platform, etc.

 

Eh, that i3 streamed netflix and youtube at 1080p just fine. The AMD struggled with both. Netflix especially, but that was more an issue with Silverlight, but still exists nevertheless. In general I found the i3 a much better general use CPU than the AMD and the i3 was only running with single channel RAM.

In any case, current gen i3 ULV or AMD ULV are much better for basic use including 1080p streaming. Of course if you're using that laptop will you really be streaming 1080p considering thy will have a 1366x768 screen.

 

I would say yes because even though the native resolution is stuck at 1366x768, a 1080p Youtube video still looks noticeably better than a 720p video on that same display. Still, if I wanted to connect an external display via hdmi, then its great that these ulv APUs (Intel or AMD) can play this HD content without much problem.

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk 2

 

You could always go for the Samsung 535u3c. Costs 500$ on Amazon and it comes with a Trinity APU.
It plays 1080p content without problems by another output and you can even do some moderate gaming.

 

Where are you getting your information from? An ivb i3 would run circles around an e2-1800 in both CPU and GPU performance. The e2 is a slightly overclocked e450. The i3 should have no problem decoding 1080p video at all, especially with quick sync.

Zacate (amd e series) should be compared with Intel's Atom (which it handily beats). The core i processors however, are in an entire different league though and should be compared with AMD's trinity processors.

 

When I tried, I wasn't using quicksync, or variable bitrate (ala netflix), so I had: i3 not fast enough. And the e-450 had room to spare.

So unless something amazing has happened lately, and everyone has suddenly started to support quicksync -- I don't think it's a good idea to go for an i3 for media-playback.

edit: Oh, wait - this is the latest Anandtech/Intel advertisement push, isn't it? They've finally discovered that video-playback is an issue, so now suddenly the i3 "runs circles around an e-450".

Don't buy it.

 

i3 doesn't stream netflix is what you're saying? I don't get it. i3 works great with 1080p netflix. Heck my Core 2 Duo ULV streams 1080p netflix just fine. Which i3 are you talking about because the i3 Sandy Bridge I tested even performed admirably with 1080p Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon video. The E-450 would not stream Netflix HD at all. More of a software issue, but still an issue.

I use a desktop i3 CPU to run my media server which streams 1080p all the time no issues, and it's the lowest end i3 desktop CPU i3-3220 which isn't much different than its mobile brother.

 

..except it runs at lower clock? Which is kind of crucial if you're running in software mode..?

And almost any computer can serve a 1080p stream across a network. Transcoding it as well, if you turn the bitrate and compression down far enough (and give it a few seconds head start).

What I'm talking about is if you have a 1.7Ghz laptop chip with the intel gma setup and want to run video through that laptop. Then the gpu acceleration isn't fast enough/has enough shader units to decode a compressed high-quality stream with the normal hw-filters. While the cpu isn't fast enough to do a reasonably good job with a software filter, even if you allow a bit of distortion.

Not that it won't run most things reasonably well. My EeePC can run most things reasonably well. But it doesn't exactly run well enough to call it "admirable". I've run a fully optimised "Ivy" ULV setup as well - it was running full burn when using hw-acceleration. So that worked with the decoders that had quicksync support. But it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to get working. And having hw-acceleration mean higher cpu-load -- it's not exactly the best way to do it on a laptop.

So if you compare that to a very modestly clocked apu setup... that will (without any trickery beyond installing any driver newer than about march last year) do an overall much better job.... at lower heat/power-consumption and processor usage (and therefore also lower fan-noise. And also better thread response, in spite of being clocked lower). Then you can't seriously say: "Yeah, that apu that does a better job at a fraction of the watt-drain, really should be compared with an Atom processor! While the i3 runs circles around the apu setups!".

Just saying that to me, that doesn't make sense.

 

I think most people are using "i3" as a blanket statement and there are more than a few versions. On the highest end, ivy bridge i3 like an i3 3217u has the HD4000 which is far faster than an e350/450/E2 1800 as a gpu in any setting.

AnandTech - The Intel Ivy Bridge (Core i7 3770K) Review SOme HD4000 benchmarks, also keep in mind these HD4000 benchmarks are on the higher end since its a desktop chip mobile hd4000 runs at reduced clock speeds

Other i3's like the ivy bridge with the HD2500 graphics, from a video playback perspective are going to be suitable for anything you can throw at it,

AnandTech - Intel Core i5 3470 Review: HD 2500 Graphics Tested

Desktop HD 2500 benchmarks once again higher clocked than what the mobile chips would be but still a valid comparison

I can't find any benchmarks for the E2 1800 but it is a higherclocked E450
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...9-amd-e-350-e-450-intel-i3-2367-compared.html

That is a far comparison

In my opinion and i3 cpu is going to be faster than an E2 1800 in the majority of situations.

 

You aren't making sense. The i3 Ivy bridge or Sandy bridge manage 1080p video just fine no matter how you throw it at it. Blu-ray 1080p, h264 or whatever. Show me any reputable review or report that shows this is the case. It isn't and issue, plain and simple. Netflix streams 720p not 1080p and uses Silverlight which is quirky software as it stands. E-450 struggles with Netflix HD because of Silverlight. So not sure where you're coming from. What exactly do you mean by "full burn hw-acceleration"???

 

Wut.

You're the one that claimed an i3 couldn't stream 1080p YouTube videos (strange, an i5 ulv can decode unoptimized 1080p video with less than 20% CPU usage, let alone stream YouTube), the HD4000 is "far outmatched" by the HD 7340 ( nope, unless you want to claim that the AMD HD 7340 is faster than a HD 7450 which has double the shaders and has dedicated vram), and that HW acceleration means higher CPU load (nope, the whole point of HW acceleration, quick sync included, is to offload stuff from the CPU).

No advertisements here, just facts. If you'd taken the time to look up any benchmarks you'd know that an IVB i3 is indeed faster than any Brazos APU. If you're going to be snarky, at least make sure that you're right?

 

Tofu boy makes a good point.

Now that you mention it i remember reviews comparing the E series to the Atom AND desktop CPUs at the same time because it spanked the Atom so hard but, it came up al ittle short when compared to desktop GPUs.

They need an APU that meets in the middle or just shop for a low end "full fledged(A series)" APU.

You need to word that better, you have some stuff running together that makes things a little confusing.

IE " and that HW acceleration means higher CPU load (nope, the whole point of HW acceleration,"

Might make better sense worded like this.

and if you thought that HW acceleration means higher CPU load, NOPE the whole point of HW acceleration is to off load CPU usage.

I hate to pick on people because I am a VERY terrible word smith. I can't even type correctly.

 

The way it works is that the "radeon" card supports all the dx11 features, and has a larger number of stream processors/shader units. This means that when using well-documented function calls, this will run accurately and stable with "full hardware acceleration". That's something the hd4000, or the more modestly clocked gpus on the i3 laptop version, won't do. You also notice that the clock on the ULV i3 processors will be load-balanced based on the total TDP - meaning that the clock-speed is forced to stay at a low level as long as there's any activity on the cpu. The desktop version - that Anandtech conveniently use in their test - does not obey the limits in that way.

I know that. So when I ran an i3 with "quicksync", and found that this essentially makes the laptop glow in the dark (it fully pushes to 35w tdp constantly) - then I decided, based on facts, that for example Anandtech don't know what they're talking about.

But yes, you expect that hw-acceleration means offloading to the gpu, and specially for intel processors, reducing the cpu-activity, lowering the heat, and draining the battery slower. This was not the case.

So then when you see tests indicating that your i3 notebook will be able to effortlessly run 1080p blu-ray, raw or compressed. Based on i3 desktop results and theoretical sizes derived from the clock speed of the gpu (that partially isn't actually used with the quicksync feature set) - then that's misleading at best. And false at worst, depending on your point of view. Such as, from the point of view of someone who actually bought the laptop.

Another thing - the radeon cards do work with hw-acceleration in Silverlight now. I hate the very idea of promoting proprietary solutions like that, of course, but it's as far back as a year now that AMD hailed having the hw-acceleration switch in Silverlight recognizing c-50 and e-3x and 4x platforms out of the box.

And I just made the point that because of actual full graphics card feature set support in those amd apu setups - you get a low drain on the apu/cpu array compared to other platforms.

This is what makes that particular piece of hardware a good choice - on that particular level of performance - if you don't care about raw benchmarks, playing halfway supported games on ultra-low detail, and so on and so forth. And I say that as someone who owns a top of the line i7 with a kepler card.

All of this is a tool for a job - and when that job is serving video as accurately and as effortlessly as possible, with an as low battery drain as possible - then there's really no contest.

In the same way, if you had a higher clocked i7 and used a kepler card for graphics, in order to run the latest games comfortably on high detail. Well, then there's no contest either.

But you're not going to recommend someone an i3 ULV for playing back 1080p video, and base that advice on "yah, Anandtech tested the desktop version, and it hardly glows in the dark at all!". You know.. Just saying.

Anyway. Carry on.

 

Never posted anything from Anandtech, but if you look at the link I posted from Tom's Hardware, you'd see that using quick sync reduces CPU and power usage.

I posted a link with an ULV i5 playing an unoptimized 1080p video with 10-18% CPU usage at all times. Never said anything about the i3 desktop.

But netflix isn't using the newer version of Silverlight. Hence the problems that people are having with it.

I wrote that the i3 is faster. Which it is, by a large margin. And I only posted that because you seemed to have it confused with a Celeron from 2006. Never said anything about which one was better for 1080p video, only that the i3 is capable of playing it.
You seem to be arguing with an imaginary version of me that only exists in your head.

Yeah I'm just going to conclude that you're either willfully ignorant or just trolling.

 

Umm, you guys do realize that modern day hardware accelerated video decoding whether from Intel, AMD, or Nvidia almost does not rely on the GPU core at all, right? The heavy lifting is done by a completely separate part of the GPU which only handles video acceleration using fixed-function hardware, kinda like an on-die version of Broadcom's Crystal HD.

 

First, I love how on this forum a simple question becomes complicated very quickly by the vast amount of knowledge possessed by the users. There is no black or white or yes and no (sometimes). But I like learning all this new stuff when I can. Great stuff!

The OP asked for the APU (be it Intel or AMD) that will offer the "greatest value." In my opinion, AMD offers greater value in comparison to Intel, in most categories, but remember sometimes we pay less but we may get less in return. Besides the Silverlight software issues with the C and E series AMD APUs, they're just as capable as the competition and usually for less money (hence my greater value opinion).

If we had more information available from the OP (like exact brands/models/prices/specs/budget/personal requirements and so on) then it would be easier to draw a conclusion as to which notebook(s) offers the "greater value." Without knowing anything else, it a tough choice and i don't want to be biased without knowing more first.

An alternative to these is a last gen model notebooks from either chip maker, a refurbished or used computer, the AMD C-50/60/70 series APUs, or "low-end" dual-core Llano or Trinity notebooks.

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk 2

 

I think i've mentioned everything that needs to be said about my requirements and preferences. I need a laptop from 11.1-13.3 that will allow me to run office application, intense web browsing (i can have up to 100 tabs on firefox at times, so i need run and dual core at least to handle it), and output FullHD via HDMI to an external screen. AS i said i am looking for something up to 350-400 Euros at the most.

I saw a Samsung mentioned somewhere on this topic. I dont know about American Prices, but where i'm from this costs 700 Euros 900USD making it nowhere near the budhet i set or your Amazon Price.

As for brands, i dont care as long as the other requirements are met. Of course Well know brands are more welcome than Lenovo or other ones, and build quality and appeal are also appreciated, but not if i need to sacrifice overall value.

If there's anything else i havent said please ask me again, so i can reach a decision, and purchase something. I seriously cant stand the laptop i'm working on right now. It really has got to go.

 

Still looking into it. What about INTEL DUAL CORE 887? Is it better than E2-1800? Is it considered ULV, and what gpu does it run?

Also is it wise to consider the passmark charts to determine hierarchy based on cpu points?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

 

I wouldn't touch AMD e/c series unless you are looking for a cheap netbook/pure hdmi out machine. Discussing about hardware acceleration on 2013 non-atom, amd c/e series cpu is pointless, sure they may struggle with 10 bit 1080p60 content but anyone have those content know what to do.

With your usage/budget, I say just get a i3 (preferably ivy bridge) and be done with it.

 

They are more power then that i saw one in video make by a user here run starcraft 2.

 

But this is during a transcoding run, specifically using the "fixed function logic". The question you should ask is why the cpu-utilisation has to go down to 10% before the power-consumption for the total package goes down as well.

See, if you step three inches away from the prepared benchmarks intel use. If you rely on hardware filters that don't actually have a result that will be predictably flattering (and note that in your link as well they really are comparing with desktop systems and earlier i-platforms, to show the trend where mobile platforms will catch up to the desktop platforms, etc. Which Tomshardware conveniently points out) - then you're running into a case where optimal utilisation of intel's quicksync will increase the power-consumption of the device.

In the same way, if you look at the overall power-drain that a specific task will have -- then this is awesomely flattering, because the actual transcoding is so much faster. So the overall run was lighter, compared to the same platform running it over a longer period of time. (Are we on the same page now?) But if you need to run that along with the igp during the run of a tv-series, for 30 minutes regardless of how fast it would be possible to crunch the video (given the right format, etc.) - then the overall power-drain is massively higher.

But you don't see that in those tests, for very obvious reasons. Although Tomshardware, to their credit, have been revising their testing methods severely over the last two years partly because of how utterly useless the company jingle is to customers. Anandtech has not, and they do run intel's benchmarks as their own not just uncritically, but while actively endorsing them. Which ends up helping people drawing very wrong conclusions.

Or, like you do here - suggesting that as long as it's "possible" to play it, you really shouldn't look elsewhere for a better alternative. I'm just saying that that's not a good idea if you want the best product for a particular task. Which, at least in this case, was neither transcoding to an ipad, or serving uncompressed 1080p video streams over the network, etc.

That depends on what you want to do. What you focus on -- low idle watt drain, low work-load drain. High synthetic performance.. "high enough" synthetic performance. Depends completely on your needs.

(Or, more commonly, I guess, which faceless corporation's marketing department you like the most).

 

Say you have a 80w Pentium 4 and a 130w Sandy Bridge-E hex core. If you're transcoding (i.e. goal of maximum throughput, and thus hardware utilization) and using both CPUs their their maximum potential the SB-E would use more power. Now try to play back a 480p video or something (i.e. goal of maximum efficiency with a fixed throughput) and the SB-E would be using less power than the Pentium 4 because the SB-E CPU would be running at 10% utilization while the Pentium 4 would still be at like 90%. Same applies to Quick Sync. Not all of the logic blocks used for transcoding will be active video playback (e.g. there is no use for the encode hardware), but Quick Sync will still be offloading from the CPU. Your argument of judging decode power consumption by looking at the transcode power consumption is flawed. Not to mention that you ignored every other point I made.

Anyway, you can believe what you want. I'll just ignore you from now on and let other people disprove your claims that an i3 can't play 1080p video or whatever other ridiculous claims you come up with, as some already have in this thread.

To answer the OP, any modern non-atom CPU will play 1080p videos just fine. I would try to avoid the extreme low end (such a Brazos aka AMD E series and the Intel Celeron you mentioned) since they may have problems with non-hardware accelerated apps such as Netflix. But other than that, just get the cheapest suitable notebook you can find.

 

Sadly i cant get these processors for less than 400euro, but i did find this acer with 887 (HD3000?) 4gb ram at 270 Euro. I dont think theres a better value for money than this and i'm seriously considering buying this. BTW I mostly play files from my storage drives, and dont use streaming services, or transcoding or anything that will require addiotional power. So will this hardware be enough to run fullHD X264 files non-stop?

I keep hearing of quicksync in posts here. What is this, in short?

 

I think the Intel one is the better choice, a friend of mine has a core i3 und the performance is well and the power consumption is low, but thats only my opinion

 

So how about it guys? What do you think of this? BTW You can install Win on ultrabooks that come with ChromeOS or FreeDOS nowadays right?

ACER ASPIRE ONE 756-887BCRR 11.6'' INTEL DUAL CORE 887 4GB 500GB FREE DOS RED - ÖÏÑÇÔÏÉ ÕÐÏËÏÃÉÓÔÅÓ - E-SHOP.GR

 

I don't know man, that link looks like it's all Greek to me.

With Win8 replacing Free Dos, this looks like a pretty good setup (~$366 CDN converted price).

 

Computer characteristic are in the universal language. Greek description doesn't matter anyways. If drive is indeed SATA so i can change the Drive with an SSD, i think for that price it beats everything else I've ever seen. But one last thing. I thought 887 processor was Intel HD3000, but now I'm reading its actually HD2000. Will that make a significant difference?

 

Yeah, that's huge:

See:
AnandTech - The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested

 

Ok so i finally ordered the one with celeron 887 cause i couldnt find anything better at that price. Would you think its a serious upgrade from my T3200 Pentium with Intel GMA X3150?

 

Nyes?

What you get is the most power-efficient intel gma, with the lowest idle clocks, and the most of the features of the newer on-die designs. It will bury your other card in terms of 3d performance, and it will give you better and more accurate 3d-accelerated contexts. Hardware acceleration for web-browsing, plugins, web-gl, etc., will go from not working at all, and to working perfectly fine. You should be able to decode pretty high resolution h.264 streams with little stutter and distortion, if the bitrate isn't too high. Notably (and much different from earlier gma designs, as well as the full desktop variants), the tdp won't go through the roof as long as you have an animated button flashing on the screen (relatively speaking - it will actually double in a context like that.. a flash-advertisement raises the draw from 9 to 20 watt, etc).

Therefore... [insert long rant about more complete/dynamic instruction set/gpu acceleration and video-playback on a lower tdp-budget here].

 

Right, nice. I forgot to ask before. Is it possible to use HDMI and VGA at the same time? Cause i want to utilise external Monitors when at the Office. Also does Intel HD2000 support vga duplicators like Matrox Dual/TRiple Head 2GO?

 

VGA duplicators should work fine (and looping hdmi outputs, or a hdmi to dvi, if the box needs that -- this should work as well - if you're talking about a splitter, they just depend on a signal).

But I don't think there's a function in the intel driver, or in windows, to extend a desktop across hdmi and vga separately. If you had separate graphics cards with separate outputs, they could all be different devices, and that would work. But the hdmi and vga on the intel board is just one device from the viewpoint of the driver.. Could be a way to circumvent that problem, though, but I'm not sure. Never had any luck with integrated graphics because the cards have one pipeline. So even if it was technically possible to split the outputs, the driver model doesn't really allow for it..

I know someone who use usb -> dvi outputs for this, by the way. Seemed extremely cumbersome to me at the time, but it's essentially a capture of an area on the desktop, fed to the monitor separately. Won't be fantastic quality, but should be better than vga.

It's definitely possible to emulate a "display device" with those adapters as well - so you could.. at least in theory.. extend those screens if there was some intelligent program wrapper out there that could do create those "display devices" for you. (Then you would arrange "monitors" in the display properties normally afterwards). This is.. in a sense more dynamic than a dual head adapter as well, since that probably requires a huge resolution picture, that then is split. Or else it would need you to run lower full resolution, along with manually picking the splitting point on the screen, etc..

Because I really don't know the max resolution the intel gma offers on the outputs here..

 

No duplicators. Devices that allow for more Monitors like Matrox Dual/Triple Head 2 GO. There is a compatibility wizard on their site, but it doesnt list the card this laptop has got. BTW Celeron 887 isnt actually Intel HD2000, but more like an HD2000 equivalent, and i would think less than that It is listed as Intel HD Graphics, and i dont know how it compares to HD2000.

Multi Monitors Adapter for Laptops
Matrox Graphics - Support - GXM System Compatibility

EDIT S. I just realized this celeron doesn't support Quicsync. Is that bad? Where is my graphics hardware acceleration going to happen?