Which CPU for my multitasking need

[Apelwein]

Okay, so i'm going to buy a new laptop (not a pc), but since the model sold & the pricing in my country is so different from the US i thought i would ask for advice on specs rather than laptop model.

 

So i need a laptop that can handle something like these at the same time:

 

10-30 Chrome tabs

Youtube/Twitch playing on Chrome or Spotify playing music

4-5 "not very heavy apps" open like let's say calibre

2-3 Documents/PDF open

Compressing video (i usually use Handbrake)

 

1) What's the bare minimum cpu to be able to do the above with zero lag and unresponsiveness? Would an i3-5005u suffice, or is that a "no, just no"? What about A10-7300*?

is i5-5200U enough? What about FX-8800P? Do i need an i7 or is that an overkill? Which one?

 

Please give me an idea of the least powerful CPU i can get away with to do the above for both intel and AMD, i need to compare a few different model after all.

 

2) Do i need 8 GB RAM or will 4 GB do? If it's relevant most model i'm considering have DDR3 RAM but some have DDR4.

 

*Some model i'm looking at have A10-7300M, i'm not sure what that is since i haven't been able to find anything on that. And if this is indeed a different model from A10-7300 it makes me worry a bit that since website of my country is sometimes sloppy in listing specs that maybe the A10-7300 that many model listed is acctually A10-7300M.

 

 

[Megah3rtz]

with 28 chrome tabs open, thats using 1.3gb alone. 8-12-16gb of ram. no less than 8. 
 

i5 6200u would do okay.

 

Whats your budget? 

[The_Denks]

Id get something with an i5 and 8-16GB ram

 

You dont need an i7 in a laptop

[paps511]

10-30 chrome tabs will EAT ram.

8gb MINIMUM, maybe even look at 16.

What country are you in, and what budget do you have?

AFAIK amd doesn't really make mobile processors for laptops in the range you are describing.

 

It sounds like you need at least an entry i5

[DarkEnergy]

Currently have 21 chrome tabs open, most of them are image heavy. Total system memory usage is 5.1gb. 8gb would work fine, 12-16gb would be good for future proofing.

[Mira Yurizaki]

24 minutes ago, Apelwein said:

10-30 Chrome tabs

Unless you're actively doing something with all the tabs at once, they don't need lots of processing to keep around.

Quote

Youtube/Twitch playing on Chrome or Spotify playing music

The CPU usually doesn't handle playing videos anymore these days, at least not purely. Spotify is also pretty weak on the CPU usage front.

Quote

4-5 "not very heavy apps" open like let's say calibre

These won't eat up CPU time if you're not actively doing something with them

Quote

2-3 Documents/PDF open

Ditto.

Quote

Compressing video (i usually use Handbrake)

About the only thing on this list that'll eat up CPU time.

 

Basically while you have a lot of apps open, you don't really need a processor with a lot of cores to keep them all happy unless you're doing something to all of them at once.

 

Having 8GB of RAM minimum would be good. 16GB if you don't want to deal with swapping.

[Apelwein]

Based on how many of you guys recommended an entry i5, should i cross off something like A10-7300 of the list?

What about A10-8700P? A10-9600P? A12-9700P? What about FX like 8800P or 9800P? is there significant difference in performance between i5-5200U and i5-6200U?

 

Budget:

I'm guided more by specs requirement more than fixed amount of budget. That's why i asked for what processor would be needed to do the above, as i would like to have a laptop that can sastify my requirement at the cheapest price possible. Neverthless i will give you guys some ballpark if you need them to do some figuring around.

 

If i can get them for idr 6-7 million (~450-520 usd) that's really desirable. But if i cannot find a laptop i want near that price range i will go up to idr 10 million (~750 usd)

49 minutes ago, paps511 said:

10-30 chrome tabs will EAT ram.

8gb MINIMUM, maybe even look at 16.

What country are you in, and what budget do you have?

AFAIK amd doesn't really make mobile processors for laptops in the range you are describing.

 

It sounds like you need at least an entry i5

Well i know the AMD listed above exist in the price range i'm looking at. Thing is i don't know if they are good enough for what i'm going to use it for. The thing about AMD laptop is they are cheaper overall so maybe i can get extra feature like FHD screen (screen here is almost universally HD) and 1 TB storage (i store a lot of media so obviously i would buy large HDD not SSD) for the same same price as intel all other specs being equal.

 

31 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Unless you're actively doing something with all the tabs at once, they don't need lots of processing to keep around.

The CPU usually doesn't handle playing videos anymore these days, at least not purely. Spotify is also pretty weak on the CPU usage front.

These won't eat up CPU time if you're not actively doing something with them

Ditto.

About the only thing on this list that'll eat up CPU time.

 

Basically while you have a lot of apps open, you don't really need a processor with a lot of cores to keep them all happy unless you're doing something to all of them at once.

 

Having 8GB of RAM minimum would be good. 16GB if you don't want to deal with swapping.

Yeah i'm aware they would need much less CPU power if they are passive. The chrome tabs should be mostly passive i think. Although some of these tabs may play heavy media or play html5 game sometimes. The apps may just sit passively sometimes, but sometimes i also make them do stuff at the same time.

 

I'm not sure what swapping is. Or what it means to "deal with swapping".

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Apelwein said:

I'm not sure what swapping is. Or what it means to "deal with swapping".

Page swapping, meaning data in RAM is being dumped to the storage drive to make room.

[Apelwein]

1 hour ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Page swapping, meaning data in RAM is being dumped to the storage drive to make room.

So when RAM can't handle the data anymore it's stored in the drive instead. How does that affect performance though? What actually happens when the RAM is overloaded and it need to do page swapping? And when you say i need 16 GB if i don't want to deal with swapping, are you implying that there is something you can actively do to "deal with swapping" (other than closing the apps taking up the RAM), or are you just saying 8 GB may or may not be enough.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, Apelwein said:

So when RAM can't handle the data anymore it's stored in the drive instead. How does that affect performance though? What actually happens when the RAM is overloaded and it need to do page swapping?

Page swapping is bad because processing on the application running is effectively stopped. This can happen in one of two ways:

• The application wants more memory, so the OS will kick out data that's being used the least into storage.
• The application wants data, but it's on storage instead of RAM, so it has move the data back into RAM
  • And if there's not enough memory for that data, it will kick out data beforehand.

It hurts performance because storage is still orders of magnitude slower than RAM. Even an NVMe SSD is at least 10 times slower in bandwidth and 1000 times slower in response time. Otherwise the effect of it is if you switch between apps or other processes (like Chrome tabs) that haven't been used in a while, it will take a noticeable amount of time before they become responsive as their data needs to transfer from storage back into RAM.

 

Quote

And when you say i need 16 GB if i don't want to deal with swapping, are you implying that there is something you can actively do to "deal with swapping" (other than closing the apps taking up the RAM), or are you just saying 8 GB may or may not be enough.

No, if you don't want to deal with swapping with low amounts of RAM, you must close applications or find ways to make them take up less RAM. Otherwise you have to increase your RAM capacity.

[Apelwein]

So anyway since almost everyone recommended an i5 and no one recommended an AMD chip i searched for some syn benchmark. It seems like even AMD FX CPU doesn't compete with i5. But since i'm not sure how reliable these syn bench are, i will ask you guys once again anyway. Are there no AMD CPU that compete with i5 for laptop? I'm assuming this will be answered in negatives, but i will ask anyway, CPU like FX-8800P yay or nah?

21 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

...

Ah, thanks . That's a really great answer!