Intel i5 5200M in budget laptop

[tobypsl]

My current laptop hs a core 2 duo T5800 processor 4GB Ram (but 32 bit) and I use it for the following tasks:

• web design (mostly done online)
• photoshop actions (some of which currently take up to 5 mins to run)
• MS Access - medium sized DB's
• MS Word
• Browsing

At this moment I have 2 MS word docs, Chrome and Firefox both with multiple tabs, Thunderbird, MS Picture Manager, a pdf viewer and the 888poker app running.

I need to update as this laptop is coming to end of it's life. I want budget as I'll be investing in an iMAC later in the year.

Potentially i will need to run adobe captivate and / or adobe after effects which are both more demanding than applications I currently run.

I've been looking at the Intel i5 4200M processor and it seems to do pretty well. It's only dual core and I think for the multi-tasking I tend to do quad core may be better? but I can get the 4200M in a laptop for less than £400.

I've looked at the AMD's but they don't seem to rate so well, even the AMD 10's against an i5 but they are quad core.

I'm not sure how implortant certain other features are such as:

• amount of RAM
• DDR Ram speed
• L2 cache
• Hard disk size etc.

I'm sure if I upgrade from a 2008 processor to a more modern processor and a 64bit operating system I'll notice some immdeiate benefits.

Any advice?

[David (PassMark)]

Yes, you will notice the upgrade.
Get at least 8GB of RAM. Don't worry too much about the RAM speed however.
Get a SSD for a hard drive. I'll never buy another machine with a traditional hard drive. They make a huge difference.

I don't know if you realize but the Core 2 duo T5800 is a 64bit CPU. So is you are going to a Mac at the end of the year maybe you can upgrade your existing machine rather than buy a new one.
e.g. 64bit Win7, additional 4GB of RAM and a SSD to replace the HDD.

[tobypsl]

Yes, you will notice the upgrade.
Get at least 8GB of RAM. Don't worry too much about the RAM speed however.
Get a SSD for a hard drive. I'll never buy another machine with a traditional hard drive. They make a huge difference.

Thanks for advice David.

The screen is going on the old one so new is probably better. Have found a couple with processors in the similar performance range to the 4200M retailing at £310 to £350. They don't have SSD's though.

I can get a small 128GB SSD for less than £100 which keeps things in budget. But I can also get a hybrid drive for less. I've seen 500GB hybrids for £70

So I could get the new laptop and swap out the hard drive.

Does a hybrid drive perform to the same level? I'm mostly interested in boot up and program load enhancement.

Thanks.

[David (PassMark)]

Does a hybrid drive perform to the same level?

No. It is about halfway between a SSD and HDD.