Various questions

gabe22 said:

Yes i3 > i5 > i7 ... , not being a smartass but I know that .. what I would like to know is .. with my present usages .. do I need i5? or would an i3 suffice?

On a percentile basis .. how much boost can I expect form a i5 processor from the same system?

About the fan .. another thing thats been bugging me ... would it create too much dust(considering the size and spinning rate)?

Need? Suffice? That's known only to you. We know nothing about your level of aggravation with disappointing performance.

Do we know what games you play and at what settings?

"Boost from an i5"?? Doing what? Saving a Word document? Computing pi to 10 billion decimal places? Playing some unknown game at some unknown settings? Running a virus scan? It depends on the software you are using and whether you are trying to do multiple tasks at the same time.

If you are referring to sheer CPU horsepower i5 versus i3, you can get a reasonable idea of that with Passmark benchmarks. They would have some effect of gaming. Not as much as graphics, but you say you can't get higher-end graphics anyway.

If you are stuck with one mediocre level of graphics performance regardless of which laptop you buy, you would likely be disappointed with gaming performance regardless of whether you buy an i3 or i5.

If you wanted a general purpose laptop, we'd probably tell you to stretch to get an SSD--but you don't want a general purpose laptop.

Knowing no more than you told us, I'd point you to an i5 without an SSD and I'd assume the graphics and gaming performance would be mediocre at best--but you're not going to avoid that with $1000 in a high priced country.

@ AddRAM
Lol suppose you're right .. but wouldn't want to clean the system every 2weeks because of the dust ... anyway I suppose we wouldn't know for sure until we try ...
BTW with fan like that how much temp reduction can I expect? 10-15 °C?(cooler fan reduces like 3-5 only)

Alright so ... opinion guys:

1. Asus X555LN with i3, 8GB RAM, GeForce® 930M with 2GB DDR3 VRAM, 1TB HDD(5200rpm i think) > w/o SSD: $580, w/SSD: $675
2. Asus X555LN with i5, 8GB RAM, GeForce® 840M with 2GB DDR3 VRAM, 1TB HDD(5200rpm i think) > w/o SSD: $700, w/SSD: $795

Only downside with the 2nd one is ... older graphics card and also its still limited to max8gb ram and obviouslt HDD is rather slow on both, ideas?

Also the model itself, Asus X555LN .. is it good? I did my own research but I would like to know what you guys think about it.

gabe22 said:

Alright so ... opinion guys:

1. Asus X555LN with i3, 8GB RAM, GeForce® 930M with 2GB DDR3 VRAM, 1TB HDD(5200rpm i think) > w/o SSD: $580, w/SSD: $675
2. Asus X555LN with i5, 8GB RAM, GeForce® 840M with 2GB DDR3 VRAM, 1TB HDD(5200rpm i think) > w/o SSD: $700, w/SSD: $795

What i3; there's a pile of them

What i5; there's another pile of them

What brand, model, and size SSD?

Highly unlikely you'd want more than 8 GB of RAM at your budget.

I know nothing about Asus laptops.

Are you completely indifferent to the price differential between 580 and 795?

I'm hoping to get insights on facts such as: price to performance ratio on those models, battery, temperature/overheating and such ...