Samsung Ativ Book 8 or HP Envy 15 Touchsmart?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

My new job comes with a laptop of my choice. The 2 options presented to me are those 2 in the thread title.

I’m not really good at judging technical hardware so I’m throwing the questions to you techies here: which one is better for gaming and won’t break down in like a year or so. I’ve noticed that the Acers and MSIs that I’ve been using tend to break down physically within a year’s time - the keyboard keys keep getting busted.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

2

There are a couple of different models of HP Envy 15 Touchsmart laptops. I have a 15t-j000, the “quad edition,” which means it has a higher-end CPU (i7-4700mq). I regret the purchase, because the display contrast has been very poor.

Gaming performance of the HP depends on the model. Some have separate GPUs, some don’t. The version with the NVidia 740M is nearly identical in game performance to the Radeon 8870m in the Ativ Book 8.

3

Aside from the screen contrast, its the only knock you have against the HP Envy 15? I assume both of these laptops can run Bioshock Infinite at high settings 1080? Thanks for the info on HP Envy 15, Gus. Appreciate it. I still got a couple of more days to decide before the purchasing department takes the decision out of my hands and picks one at random.

4

My other major gripe is that the BIOS is deliberately crippled, which made it difficult to get it to boot to the mSata SSD I installed. However, since this is a company machine, I doubt you’ll be doing anything like that.

I haven’t tried to run Bioshock Infinite on it. High settings at 1920 x 1080 might be pushing it, but I can’t say for certain. It handles Civilization V well enough.

5

Thanks. I’ll probably go with Ativ Book 8 then. The IT guy in our company tells me the video card has more muscle compared to the Nvidia loaded on the HP. However, I do prefer the way the HP looks. But gaming capability first over looks. lol