Which one should I buy?

Hi guys,

I am a student and I need to buy a new laptop I have some in my mind and i'll post their specs right here, if you could please tell me which is better and why. I mostly need this laptop for programming software (Unity,Visual Studio,VM virtual machine)

Lenovo Yoga 500-14 80R500FJIV

Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor, 4M Cache, 2.5 GHz up to 3.10 GHz
8GB DDR3L 1600MHz (1 x 8GB), 1 x SO-DIMM slot
256GB SSD
14.0 Inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS display with 10-point multitouch technology
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 940M with 2GB DDR3 VRAM
10/100/1000M Ethernet LAN
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 - 802.11b/g/n/ac
Yes, Built-in Bluetooth™ V4.0
Widi
Integrated 720p HD webcam
1.5W stereo Speakers with Dolby® Home Theater® certification
Integrated digital array microphone
4-in-1 card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC)
2 x USB 3.0
1 x USB 2.0
1 x Audio combo jack
1 x HDMI
1 x RJ-45
Windows 10 Home 64Bit (Hebrew, English)
1.95 kg (4.3 lbs) without ODD
340.1 mm x 230.1 mm x 21.6 mm
2-cell 30WHr Li-Ion Battery
65W AC Adapter

Price - 991.47$



Lenovo Yoga 510-15 80S8000MIV

Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor, 4M Cache, 2.5 GHz up to 3.10 GHz
8GB DDR4 2133MHz (1 x 8192 MB), Up to 8GB, 1 x SO-DIMM slot
256GB SSD
15.6 Inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS Touch, 250 nits display
AMD Radeon™ R7 M460 2GB
10/100/1000M Ethernet LAN
WiFi 1 x 1 a/c
Yes, Built-in Bluetooth V4.0
Widi
1 MP Fixed Focus CMOS Camera (720p)
Stereo Speakers with Harman Audio Certification
4-in-1 card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC)
2 x USB 3.0
1 x USB 2.0
1 x Audio combo jack
1 x HDMI
1 x RJ-45
Windows 10 Home 64Bit (Hebrew, English)
Starting at 4.58 lbs (2.08 kg)
378 mm x 253 mm x 21.4 mm
3-cell 52.5WHr Li-Ion Battery
65W AC Adapter

Price - 1095.90$


Now for some questions:

1)I checked in some compare websites and I saw that the Yoga 510 is LCD display while the Yoga 500 is WLED display, what's the difference between the two?
2)The RAM speed is different , how bad is 1600MHZ , there's major difference between 1600 & 2133 MHZ?
3)As I said before, I need this laptop more for my studying and i'm not going to play games much, do I really need a GPU? is the GPU has any effect on those programs I use? And just to know which one you think is better from those GPUs?

Please let me know what you think guys, really important for me!

Thanks!

More a

 

Pardon this comment of mine. But your profile name is insulting, it is like you are using gibberish. We all have a real name and we can also use a decent alias but why that gibberish profile name?

 

Lenovo Yoga is pretty good. I haven't used that model except lightly a few times (have to add it to my list ) but the specs on it are good, and within the range of the Thinkpad E555 and E455 series. Honestly, you won't notice too much of a difference between the 1600MHZ and 2133MHZ on a system that fast if using it for traditional things. A lot of people don't normally notice the difference all that much between DDR3 1333MHZ and DDR4 2133MHZ unless they are doing a lot of graphics, performance, or other cpu-intensive things simultaneously that require a lot of things to move back and forth to ram on the system bus. For the most part, you're more than good here. You're going to have a quad core on these two, the 256GB SSD to make file access smooth as silk, and the DDR3L to DDR4 ram is going to be the icing on the cake.

LCD is liquid crystal display, which became the standard display type for laptops and desktop monitors to replace the bulky cathode ray tube monitors (CRT monitors) you may have seen from the 60's, 80's, and 90's up to the early 2000's. The LCD display is still the standard, but the White Light Emitting Diode (WLED) or White LED is definitely an improvement because it lasts a lot longer than the LCD displays (in theory and technical tests), is way brighter, and it uses a fraction of the power (which means you're going to get a much longer battery life and have power available for other things longer like your video display or external usb devices).

Personally, I would go for the DDR4 system since you can take advantage of higher speeds both on the bus and the ram you'll be getting.

However, I noticed that although these are both going to be blazingly fast systems at 3.1 GHz and more than adequate for programming and virtual machines use, you might want to see if you can find a system that supports up to 16GB or 24GB of ram rather than just 8GB.

Even if the ram is DDR3L, you're going to be able to do more (long term) with a system that has powerful specs but can handle vast amounts of available system ram in addition to the SSD drive keeping things running quickly for you. Remember that even though your host system can page what it needs to accordingly with the virtual machines, most of the systems won't start or let you use virtual ram as if it were actual ram when it comes to running multiple VMs with VMware, Virtualbox, Bochs, or QEmu. There is a way to make it...but it's not recommended for constant or professional use to do that.

So I would definitely go for the system that can support the most ram for that rather than the fastest between DDR3L and DDR4 right now.

If you can find a system that supports the same ram limit being 16GB or 32GB in DDR4 for just about $100 extra or so, then I'd probably opt for that since you're securing your upgradeability a little more into the future. As far as the hard drive goes, you'll be able to take advantage of faster SSD drives as they become available regardless because of SATA II and SATA III being more universal now.

Oh, and on the GPU...if you're not doing gaming or bitcoin mining with a laptop (also not recommended due to overheating lol) then I wouldn't worry about it too much.

The AMD Radeon R series and NVIDIA GeForce 940 is ok, but you might want to get the 940MX if it's available for a little more power on it. I try to go with 960 or above, usually settling for 970M or 980M on most systems that I use virtual machines on and any other graphics work with. 940 is plenty for anything and everything else, but you seldom see any graphics hiccups or slowdowns with 960 or above even if you're running video and multiple graphics updates in virtual machines that are minimized WHILE you are running things on the host system. That used to be much more difficult to pull off, but now you can do that pretty seamlessly. But again, be careful of the overheating since your graphics card and your hard drive (even as SSD) are going to be working double or triple for one or more systems at once.

If you want to check out comparisons for different graphics chips available to see how they stack up and fare against each other, check out a site called gpuboss and enter the chipsets and/or graphics cards you want to compare there.

P.S: At the upper left and right parts of the GPUBoss website, you'll find two other associated sites called CPUBoss and SSDBoss which let you compare CPUs and SSD drives accordingly to see which one is right for you between the performance and budget you have to work with.

 

Lenovo Yoga 510-15 80S8000MIV seems to be the winner here so far, as you can notice it has better specs than the first one you stated above, the simple fact it runs DDR4 memory makes it way better than the one using DDR3 memory.
It's important for you to know that the newer the PC (when talking about parts) is the better and faster it is going to be, other than that, the prices are not way too different, you could add one hundred bucks and buy the second build, it's all up to you but I would definitely buy the second one if I had the chance and the money for it, that's my opinion though.

 

The two computers are have identical specs, but 510 has a bigger screen. I personally would go with the 510 mainly for this reason, it doesn't strain your eyes as much.