Laptop Comparison

Hello everyone. I was looking to purchase an ASUS G-series laptop but I am having trouble deciding on which is a better purchase. Currently I am stuck between the G73SW-A1 and the G74SX-BBK7. Both are equally priced but I cannot tell which would give me a better performance for my money. Here are the links to the two laptops I am debating on buying.

G74SX-BBK7
Newegg.com - Recertified: ASUS G74 Series G74SX-BBK7 Refurbished Notebook Intel Core i7 2630QM(2.00GHz) 17.3" 8GB Memory DDR3 1TB HDD DVD±RW/CD-RW NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M
G73SW-A1
ASUS G SERIES G73SW-A1 BLACK INTEL CORE I7-2630QM @ 2GHZ | eBay

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!

 

G73SW-A1 is probably better because the BBK7 model of the G74 is a 128 bit video card (Best Buy model) vs. the full 192 bit video card on the G73SW.

BBK models are the best buy models that come with gimped video cards. It won't be a huge performance difference, but the G73SW-A1 is basically a top of the line G73SW vs the bottom of the line G74BBK7 model.

 

Thank you very much. I had read somewhere that it came with a gimped card but I wasn't sure if the A1 also did. Do you have any idea of what kind of FPS I would be getting on lets say BF3 or MW3 with high settings on the A1?

 

Oh, and one last question. I apologize for sounding so uninformed but does the A1 model come with the "Turbo Button" I see so many other models advertised with?

 

Yes, it has a Turbo Button.

the turbo button is just a switch that cycles through 4 different settings which you can set by yourself.


Basically you can have 4 power management settings. pressing that switch you can speed up or slow down your maximum and minimum processor state depending on your settings.

Don't mind the turbo boost button. Its just another fancy way of manually throttling your CPU to increase battery life. You will rarely use it. In my opinion, you wont need it since most of the time you would be plugged in and you would want your laptop to run at its max performance.

 

The SW does not have a Turbo button that works the same as a JH/JW does with the GEN 1 CPU's, although the increase in performance is not worth having it anyway but you do not have a Turbo button with the Sandy Bridge CPU's you just use throttlestop to control how they work.

The BBK7 is not worth it and its best to go with the SW unless you are up for going even cheaper and risking a wonderful JH which most will recommend for bang vs buck.

The G74 does not only have the gimped GPU I hear a lot of complaints about poor sound quality add that to graphics and your gaming is going to suffer IMO.