Need advice on new laptop priority

[Vuronev]

I need a little advice and perspective on making a laptop purchase and knew the trusty old HardForum was the place to go.

I recently graduated from a professional program and start my new career in about a month. As a generous celebratory gift, my parents have offered to buy me a new laptop to use in the range up to $1000 (though I'd prefer to not push right up to that limit). As money will be tight from here on out as I start my new job and focus on saving money, I want a laptop that will last me a reasonable amount of time into the future.

My only hard requirement is that it have discrete graphics as I do some gaming, though it is mostly just WoW and a little Sims3, though I also plan on trying out Star Trek Online once it comes out and the Star Wars MMO down the line, so I guess mostly MMO style games.

I also plan on pursuing a graduate degree in the next year or so and would most likely need the laptop to use in the program for online classes, in-class work, etc. It wouldn't be in anything that requires advanced computational power for any specialized programs.

What I'm trying to decide on right now is whether to get a laptop with the new i5 processor and a video card in the radeon 4550m 512mb range, or a laptop with a p7450 or p8700 and a radeon 4650m 1gb.

I guess I'm just wondering which avenue would provide me the best long-term benefit given my pattern of usage, the newer processor/chipset and lesser graphics or the somewhat older processor/chipset and stronger graphics? Which one is more "worth it"?

From what I've read in various posts around here, I get the impression that I wouldn't really appreciate the new i5 as much as I would the stronger graphics, but then again I don't do any "hardcore" gaming like FPS's or new RPGs, so perhaps the faster graphics would be a waste?

Any thoughts or advice? Thanks in advance!

 

[Dabbler445]

you can get a refurb macbook pro from apple for 999 with 2 gigs of ram and an nvidia 9400m chip. It isn't integrated but it runs WoW very well. I know a couple WoW players with 13.3 macbook pros and they run wow on full graphics settings with no problems.

 

[Lateralus]

Tough call. I think the better graphics card would help more for gaming, but like you said you don't really play demanding titles. An i5 would be nice to have in a notebook, but it wouldn't provide a tremendous benefit unless you were running apps that were optimized for quad core CPUs.

CPUs tend to have longer lifespans than graphics cards, so assuming you couldn't do both I would probably go for a faster CPU and a decent graphics card vs. a beast of a graphics card and a mediocre CPU. If you were buying a laptop primarily for gaming, my recommendation would be different.

Here's one to consider: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...PA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=y550&x=0&y=0

Newegg previously had a variant of the Y550 with an i7 CPU and GT 240M graphics card for $999. Best of both worlds, but it's at the very top end of your budget and I don't see it listed now.