Lafité IV v Fusion III Advice

Hiya,

I'm currently writing on my (very soon to die) laptop that I'm looking to replace. I need something portable and light but not too pillow fisted when it comes to power. I've been looking into these two with the 14" screens and can't decide which will be the most bang for buck value.

Reasons for portability are: I motorcycle every day with books in my bag, this'll be slipped into a rucksack along other stuff. I also fly very frequently. It will not be my main PC (I have a gaming rig at home) but when I'm travelling I would like to enjoy a bit of performance despite being limited by weight and size.

Curious as to your thoughts between these two models, but also very much up for listening to any other advice etc. Budget is around £1k but can be stretched if need be. Only need 500GB - 1TB of storage.

Many thanks
 
Currently thinking the following:


Chassis & Display
Fusion Series: 14" Matte Full HD 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor i7-8565U (1.80GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® MX250 - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)

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AC Adaptor
1 x 65W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery
Fusion Series 46WH Lithium Ion Battery
Sound Card
2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9560 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Keyboard Language
FUSION SERIES SINGLE COLOUR BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KK3-00002]
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
What performance do you need? What do you do with the laptop, and what software do you use?

Do you need a dedicated graphics card? e.g. for photo editing? If so, Fusion probably wins.

Otherwise, the Lafite has dual channel RAM, which could improve performance depending what you use the laptop for, though no dGPU. And is cheaper..? Edit: Oh and the Lafite 4 has the slightly faster Comet lake CPUs too.

The benefit of the i7 over the i5 is questionable. The i7 is pretty much just a very slightly higher clocked i5.

What are you storing on the storage? Buying one of the fastest and most expensive SSDs on offer to store e.g. a music and movie collection would be very poor value.
 
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Hiya,

Thanks for your response!

So I would be doing the odd bit of video editing (not much) and the odd bit of gaming (but nothing particularly demanding as I will be using my rig for the majority).

Storage wise, I just chose what seemed decent - trying to get a nice, portable laptop for around £1k.

That's interesting about the i5 v i7 debate, I had no idea the benefit isn't necessarily significant.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I5 and i7 mean so many different things now they don't really mean anything. And the CPU naming scheme has gone off the rails too.

Intel® Core™ i7-10710U - 6 cores, 12 threads
Intel® Core™ i7-10510U Processor - 4 cores, 8 threads
Intel® Core™ i5-10210U Processor - 4 cores, 8 threads

So the i7 i7-10710U has more cores. But the i7-10510U which is the one in the Lafite IV is, like the i5, and both i7s and i5s in the product series immediately before it, is 4C/8T. Where i7 just means "a little more frequency and a little more cache". As opposed to more threads, or more cores.

If you look at:

You can compare the i5 8250U and the i7 8550U for an idea of what the difference between and i5 and an i7 with the same cores and threads from the same generation might be. Pretty small.

I'd expect similarly small performance gaps in this gen between i5 10210U and i7 10510U. In fact if you look at the specs, the difference in frequencies is similar to the 8250U vs 8550U. i.e. the i7 is 200MHz faster on the base clock and 600-700MHz on the boost clock versus it's i5 little brother. That might sound like a lot, until you look in that article above at what that really means for performance, and ask yourself if that's worth £90-£100. Which is the price difference in the Lafite 4.

If the answer is yes, you really do need that extra performance, it's probably worth buying the Cosmos with its -H series CPUs, and a bigger backpack.

For performance of the Comet Lake i5 (i5 10510U) see:

As you can see, it's a smidge faster than the i7 8565U (the i7 CPU from the family between the i7 8550U and the i7 10510U). Which is not surprising when you consider it's basically the same CPU (yet again - Intel are basically just re-releasing the same CPUs over and over at the moment), that's a little bit faster and a little bit more power efficient.

Performance is also affected by the power limits set by the chassis makers (you'd need to ask PCS what limits are used on these chassis). Probably makes as much of a difference as i5 vs i7.

Bottom line, (these) i7s are not really worth it.
 
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Thank you so much. That's a fantastic and in-depth aid in explaining the different CPUs. Thank you for the links too, it's nice being able to see some of the reference points.

It does seem, indeed that the i7s in these two laptops aren't really worth it (for me).

Now I just need to decide if it's better to have the dedicated graphics, or the dual channel RAM (whilst adding in consideration for physical dimensions etc).

Thank you very much for your help, it's thoroughly appreciated and I'm definitely curious to hear your opinions on the above dilemma.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I edited the post with a different example, but similar point.

I have no idea tbh. The MX250 will get you further in gaming than Intel HD graphics; that much is for sure.


An MX250 will sort of maybe run some demanding games at 720p lowest settings. And the odd older, less demanding title (GTA V - 2013 consoles, 2015 PC) at 1080p medium. A user on the forums commented to that effect recently too. Apparently the Fusion does have the 25W variant of the MX250, not the 10W version.

Adobe Premiere does care for single/dual channel at least a bit, and for CPU horsepower. But I guess the differences will be modest-ish, while the gaming difference is the difference between being able to run the games to some degree or not at all.

Civ 5 (from 2010) doesn't play particularly well on my i5 8250U in my Dell (though I've not investigated to see if there were other causes than weak iGPU).
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
An alternative is to shop around and see if you can swing an older model from another company that is still very thin, but maybe sports a 1050 or 1050 ti. Maybe there's a special offer somewhere. Shop around anyway, as I'm sure you would before dropping £1k. :)
 
That's fantastic, thank you very much.

Think I'll go with the MX250 and hopefully I'll get on ok. It's a definite upgrade from my current dying laptop (early 2015 Macbook Air) and will definitely cope with its primary function. As you said, I'll be shopping around before dropping £1k, but the advice you've given has been very useful.

Thanks!
 
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