[Dilemma] Keeping Dell venue 11 (Atom) or returning and buying (i3 version) for more horseppower and ram....

I was really hoping someone could help me on the technical side with my issue.

I needed the dell venue for school.. mainly reading pdf, and typing my notes and very, very light gaming (minecraft, terreria, basic emulators) all of which the atom version does without problem. (despite memory warnings on the 2 gig of memory.

Keeping the dell venue reasons/
1. price point $460 after tax. Microsoft store only sells the atom version so I cant get my student discount and the other 25 promotional credit I received.
2. It does everything I need and more at this point at a fantastic price point.

Reasons for returning...
1. as consumers we always want more, for some reason I expect 4 gb of memory to be a dream come true. Also I expect better gfx capability with the Intel® GT2 Graphics (what ever that does) and lasty you get 64 bit version of windows.

at the end of the day I will loose my discounts and pay this..
$460 - what I paid after tax..
$858.79 - after tax.... from dell....

I would pay an additional $400... wow.... I think I answered my own question.

Regardless would the increase in horsepower be worth the additional price...

 

Pretty much everything I'm reading about the Core i3 and i5 Venues tells me I made the right choice buying the Bay Trail version.

The core-i tablets are heavier, they run hotter, they've got loud fans, they're thicker, they don't handle standby as gracefully as the Bay Trail models, in real world gaming they're not really any faster because the CPU seems to be throttling after a short while.

The one thing I'm still really envious of is the 128Gb or larger of SSD storage.

 

Dell has student discounts too, you may need to call to get pricing though.

 

The problem i'm finding is the core i version is throttled alot. It will do something at like 1.9ghz for like 5 seconds then drop down to like 1.3 or lower. Same with the GPU when i load up a game it never really goes to 800 mhz. As far as gaming goes some random games run better, but a majority of the games i tried ran around the same speed as my bay trail tablet.

Overall desktop performance was a little better but the atom versions are exactly slow for every day tasks. I'm sure you would notice if you were doing heavier things like larger excel spreadsheets, photo/video editing, as well as advantages from the SSD. But if you aren't doing anything particularly big you end up losing a lot of battery life and spending more money.

For the memory error, when are you getting this? I've tried out league of legends, skyrim, and other games as well as had quite a bit open and I've never received a memory error. What is your page file setting at?

 

Agreed that the 5130 seems the better overall buy in regards to total cost, performance and battery life. It plays my two favorite games ever, butter smooth (Unreal Tournament and UT 2004) and all my console emulators as well as MAME. Not seeing a need for several hundred more dollars spent, especially due to the apparent throttle issues.