The 5740s with ATI 5XX0 GPUs.

I'm trying to decide between the 6395 with ATI Radeon™ HD 5650 graphics, or the 5309 with ATI Radeon™ HD 5470 graphics, but I don't know too much about graphic cards(or computers lol). Can anyone tell me the difference?

 

HD 5650 is significantly faster. In 3D Mark06 scores it looks like some 7000 for HD5650 and around 4000 for HD5470.
In practical terms it means you can play Far Cry 2 on high settings or games like GTA IV or Risen on medium settings with over 40fps with HD 5650.
The same games on HD5470 would run on low settings (i.e. Risen on medium settings achieves only 17fps)

 

I've researched and researched this. right now, i think this is the best combination out there. The gateway on pre order from j&r.


the 5650 card seems like the best video card for $800 you can buy right now in an i5 system... i think i am going to hold out for the Gateway NV7901u as long as possible... it has blue ray... which i could careless about, but it has it.. maybe i could pull it out and sell it.. lol and add optical. Also it has 17 inch screen and higher resolution. i typically on my home pc use 1400ish resolution, and 1024 at work with this old laptop. So i mean resolution isn't the be all for me. but the gateway goes upto 1600x900 and after bing cash back.. it's only $6 more than this acer on newegg... but it is gateway i guess


+Blue ray
+180gigs of hd
+screen size...

which i don't mind, i dont mind toting 10 pounds even.

 

I think that's worth the extra $100 for the 5650 then. Thanks for the help! Now I only need another $400 until I can afford it

 

hello..so i finally went for the 5740,i5,ati5650..i have to say its a great bang for the buck..although the screen could have been better..

the keyboard is nice but takes a lil gettin used to...

i played need for speed:shift... got 30+ fps most of the time..at full rez but without AA..and other settings high..

checked temperatures cpu(CPU-Z) MAX:66,67C
and gpu(amd tool): 70C..
is that ok ??

 

Yep. It's fine.
BTW this card overclocks quite good if you need more fps in some games.
Achieving the level of HD5730 is pretty much guarantied.

 

I'm jealous. I've had an eeepc 1000he for almost a year now, and my eyes are tired of netbooks already. Can't wait for my 6395.(And tf2 again)

 

^^best of luck with the 6395

hmm..overclocking..im a lil skeptical about that.. can i get an idea abt how much i can overclock it by? and how i shud go abt overclocking it..?

plus i have noticed the screen is a little bluish(for example the blue of the facebook login page looks a little purplish)

is it supposed to be like that?? or is it normal?

 

No reason to be too cautious about overclocking. The same GPU is sold as HD5730 with core freq of 650MHz and memory 800MHz.
The only difference between them is probably higher core voltage of HD5730 so you may be unable to overclock your card over certain frequency due to stability issues. This card is produced in 40nm process and in Aspire 5740 achieves temperatures of no more than 70ºC when overclocked to 650/800.
The card will not fry since 5730 does not with higher voltages. The worst thing that can happen is the cards hanging due to voltage being too low.

3D Mark 06 score (1280x768) goes up from some 7200 with default clocks to some 8700-8900 with overclocking (you benefit more from memory overclocking so it scores higher with core at 600MHz and memory at 1100MHz than with core at 650MHz and memory at 800MHz- this indicates that GPU is limited by memory bandwidth)

Use AMD GPU Clock to overclock.

 

Another thing, I haven't used Windows 7 yet. How is it? Compared to xp?

 

Win 7 is good. Its a lot like a tweaked version of Vista, without the stigma, and a couple of years of optimisations to stuff like Superfetch they've been able to make from observing use figures in the real world.
Make sure you got 64 bit though, as 7 and Vista64 are a lot better than thier 32bit counterparts.
Some stuff is faster than XP, other bits are faster, but fundamentally, theres no major issues with 7 at all.

 

That's good to hear. And I'll be getting 64 bit for sure then.

 

Got the 5740g with i3 processor , 500gb hdd , 4gb ddr 3 ram , win 7 64 bit , ati 5650.

Happy with it. For some reason though it says only 3.86 of my ram is usable?

 

hmm i've been monitoring GPU temps as i've been playin NFS:shift for the past few days...

at first the gpu temps used be around 70 max...then yest it was 77 and today it reached a max of 80C ??

is this a coz of worry??

 

Hi guys, I got a few questions for you.

- Can anyone comment on the battery life during text editing and/or PDF reading?
- Do you think there any significant temperature/noise/battery life disadvantage in choosing the models with Radeon HD5650 over the ones with Radeon HD5470?
- Do the touchpad seem durable to you? I've seen issues with the touchpad buttons stopping to work after some months on a Aspire 5735Z (it doesn't look like the exam same touchpad though).
- Does this notebook share the same design of the Aspire 5738?

In my country I can get this model for 599€:
- CPU: Core i3 330M
- RAM: 4 GB DDR3
- GPU: Radeon HD5470 512 MB DDR3
- HDD: 500 GB

A similar model with the Radeon HD5650 will soon be available for 50€ more. If it doesn't significantly affect battery life or temperatures I might consider waiting for this model.

 

Acer estimates battery life on this laptop at max 4hrs. Given manufacturer's optimistic tendencies I would give this laptop a max 3hr battery life with light usage.

With that said, I doubt there will be a big difference in battery life between the two discrete solutions.

Notebookcheck has the following figures on power consumption:

HD 5650 Current Consumption: 15-19 Watt
HD 5470 Current Consumption: 13-15 Watt

When you factor in the other components(CPU, HDD, LCD, Memory) the 4 watt difference in the graphics cards will have a negligeable impact.

We are, after all, comparing discrete graphics to discrete graphics from the same series of cards. Integrated vs discrete or discrete vs discrete across different series is where we would see a noticeable difference.

The 5650 more than doubles the 5470's 3DMark 05 score. So, if I were you I would hold out for the HD 5650.

Check out the following links for comparisons between the two:

HD 5650: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5650.23697.0.html
HD 5470: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5470.23698.0.html

 

Thanks for the quick reply. Well, 3 hours of battery life is pretty good for my needs. I'm not sure the difference in TDP is a good indication of actual power consumption, especially during light usage.

The performance of the Radeon HD5650 is really good, but I found out another model with Core i5 430m and Radeon HD5470, for 629€. Since my primary use for the notebook is software development I will probably benefit more from the faster CPU than from a faster GPU. I doubt I'll ever play games on this notebook, but I might need to do some simple OpenGL/Direct3D programming. Currently I have a Core 2 Duo T7500 with a GeForce 8400M GS DDR2 and it has been good enough to run my OpenGL/Direct3D code. The HD5470 should be a decent upgrade over the GeForce 8400M GS, shouldn't it?