Asus vs. Dell

Help me out, I am in need of advising here...

S96J vs. the E1705... 15" vs 17", X1600 vs. 7800 go.

The Dell seems to have the Asus beat, but I am thinking this battle comes down to user reviews and preferences. Can someone tell me what makes the Asus the better choice of laptop over the Dell, or, what makes the Dell better?

 

Asus' laptops have gained respect in build quality and the sleek designs they have.

 

True, but the S96f isn't the prettiest thing of their batch, nor the best built, nor the best quality in terms of materials and design.

Pretty much, at 15.4", the S96j is the best bang for your buck. at 17", the e1705 is unbeatable for the best deal for your money.

In the end, do you want a 17", or a 15.4"?

 

It's mostly the size difference that would make the difference between the two, ASUS does have excellent build quality, but that's more on their ensemble models, their built-ons are good, but they're in a completely different class.

 

I think there are multiple answers to that question, but it comes down to portability in my opinion. The E1705 weighs more than the S96J, although, granted, not by that much. The E1705's chassis is also slightly bigger. However, with a heavier and bigger chassis comes improved performance. The GeForce Go 7800 will outperform the Mobility Radeon X1600 on 3dMark05 and in games. Still, if you're a user like me, performance and portability come hand in hand. That's why I've been eyeing the S96J with more interest than, say, the E1705 or the Toshiba P105-S921( http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?seg=HHO&coid=-30597) which has a GeForce Go 7900GS (reportedly getting 6200 in 3dMark05, and it's available on Amazon for $1850!). The E1705 also looks better, in my opinion. The S96J is pretty bland in appearance. But again, it's really a case of performance vs. portability.

 

The S96j weighs less than 6lb. whereas the E1705 weighs nearly 8lb, rather large difference.

 

hey now... the S96J isn't that ugly, to me anyways, but could you elaborate more on the quality of materials and how this may effect me? low quality materials as in it will break easy? or low quality as in plastic over metal?

I have the same problem too. Dell or Asus. I really like the S96J/Z96J because of it doesn't look that bad and I'm pretty sure I'd be the only person at my school with an Asus as opposed to the over populated Dell Inspirons. I'm stuck between a Dell m1710 or e1705 or the Asus S96J. I don't like the m1710 because its so ugly and way to big. The e1705 isn't much prettier than the m1710 and its about the same size, but with a weaker GPU. The S96J is the right size with a nice look compared to the Dell's. The only negative thing about the S96J is the weaker GPU.

The question you need to answer to help you decide on what you want is, what am I going to do with the laptop?

I think I'm going with the Asus because I don't think I'd notice that much a performance difference with the weaker graphics card. The only games I have on my computer are CS, Guild Wars, and WoW.

The W3J is probably the sexiest Asus laptop I've seen and its specs are as good as the Z96J, but at 14.1in. I'm afraid of the W3J's because I read some stuff about them overheating or running too hot.

 

I've seen quite a few threads here and elsewhere about people worrying about over heating on the W3j. I have yet to read ONE confirmed report of it actually overheating and causing a problem/crashes/screen defects - for performance or the comfort of someones hand/lap.
Could you let us know where this "oveheating" problem has been concretely documented before? Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a go at you. It's just that there has been so much speculation on this heat issue that I'd love the real world opinion of half a dozen users before we buy.

 

well im thinking about the s96j because looks aren't that important to me, and for the money the s96j is amazing of preformance/ buck of course the improvement of the gpu's is substantial, but the question is will you need it? the x1600 atm can run pretty much everything out at upper-mid/high settings and to me that's pretty safe for a couple of years of games even to come. I'm still using my 3 year old 9700 ati desktop and it is fine=P, but i guess beucase my price range isn't that high the 1705 with the nvidia is out of my price range.

 

that sound's right. you will notice the performance difference on youre GPU, like i did from my radeon 7000

 

What are you going to be doing on it? Gaming? If so what games? The X1600 should be able to handel any game on at least medium settings. The 7800 Go should be able to run anything on max settings. The 7800 Go in the E1705 is around 1.5 times the power of the X1600. Will you be moving the laptop often?

S96j:
- lighter 6lbs and more portable
- better battery life
- better design and build quality and most people think it looks better
- Weaker X1600 GPU
- Depending on the dealer... most likely better service then the dell

E1705
- 8lbs not too portable
- build quality could be better. Looks could be improved.
- more powerful 7800 go
- less battery life

 

The X1600 will handle all but the newest games at higher to near max settings, not just medium.

 

Games like FEAR struggle on max settings. I play it on my 6800 overclocked. I get a 3Dmark05 score of just under 5k. The X1600 stock gets around 4000. My 6800 runs it at about 25FPS in FEAR with Max settings. Stock X1600 around 20FPS. For some 20FPS is fine, but I prefer 40+ FPS, and therefore I wouldn't play FEAR on max settings with the X1600.

 

I'm also toying between getting an Asus (A8Jc) or Dell (Inspiron 640m).

The price difference is about £200, but the Asus has the following benefits:
- its lighter
- built in webcam
- built in bluetooth
- graphics card
- better screen
- bigger hd
- extra year warranty
- free bag and mini mouse
- better build quality

The Dell does have some things going for it though
- its cheaper!!
- excellent battery life
- specific media on button for movies, etc

Now I'm only planning on the laptop lasting a couple of years anyway and its an upgrade from an Inspiron 6000, which is about 8 months old.

Any views?

 

I'd go for the Asus A8Jc. It's built so much better, looks better, and has better specs / features in general. And that extra year warranty is great!

 

Ah, the ever-present "heat" issue on the W3 series....been bouncing around since somewhere last summer. The W3 does not overheat. Even though it's just come out, the effect should be similar in the W3j as W3v, since they share the identical chassis but now has a more powerful video card. A few things to keep in mind, though, despite being obvious:

Issue #1: discrete graphics cards always run warm under use.
Issue #2: Hard drive directly under wrist rest, separated by (I think Justin said somewhere) something like 1/32" of space.
Issue #3: Aluminum conducts heat well - see MacBook Pro.
Issue #4: Smaller form factors/chassis leave less room for air to circulate and cool the interior.

Bottom line - if you want a compact, high-quality and perfomance package you have to expect some trade-offs, the first being warmth; you can't cram all that stuff into a little 14" box and push electrons through it without having heat build up. The notebooks are designed and tested to run at higher temps under normal conditions without any problems - by the time that the system would heat up enough to start causing functional artifacts, it will shut down by itself to keep from melting.

The W3 series is a performance system with powerful components (although Asus underclocks the ATI cards to help with the heat production), and there are few notebooks out there in the 14" arena that have discrete graphics in them. Don't get me wrong, the underside and wrist rest on these units do get slightly warm under load or extended use (even on my z63 w/ integrated graphics) - the bottom a bit more so at the HD door - but never to the point of being exceedingly uncomfortable or burning you. I've noticed, however, that the definition of heat and "warmth" of a notebook and the tolerance for it is a personal preference for folks, with some having a lower threshold for this than others.

We'll probably have a few opinions on this from the preorder forum members once they get theirs over the next couple of weeks.

 

In my case X1600 stock has 4400, OC - over 4700.

 

It really comes down to size and build.

I compared the S96j to an e1505 (which I imagine the e1705 is similar to) and the build quality of the S96j is much better. I also happen the think the S96j looks nicer with the tapered body.

My S96j fully configured weighs 6.8 lbs so there is a about a 1 1/2 lb. difference I believe.

The e1705 comes with just a 7800 (not GTX) so performance is actually very close at stock speeds. My S96j actually scored a bit higher then the e1705 reviewed on this site:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2776
The e1705 scored 3,837 3dmarks in 3dmark05.

 

This score is too low, 7800 (even non-GTX) is better (faster) card than X1600, it has more pipelines. This must be with outdated Dell drivers and with stock clocks. I'm sure 7800 can easily reach 6k in 05.

 

This is a really great disscusion as I am considering either the Dell E1705 with 7800, Toshiba Satelllite P105 with 7900GPU, or either the ASUS Z/A96J with RADEON X1600 or Asus W3J.

Now which one would be best for gaming vs price, heat, size, hmm, indeed. Seems the nvidia 7800 and 7900 are better than ati's x1600 for notebooks, and although the asus has better looks and build quality the overall price and performance I could get from the dell or toshiba might be the best choice.

edit, the toshiba has a 160gb 4200 rpm HD as opposed to the others which have 5200 or 7200 upgrade. I'm sure manually replacing to a faster HD is possible though.

 

No way 6K. Not even close wihtout some major cooling mods. The 7800Go is way underclocked. X1600 is a newer architecure....there's way more to a card thatn the number of pipes and the frequencies.

Also consider that with the X1600 you'll be able to play games at the screen's native resolution....you will NOT be doing that with the E1705 on any newer games. The E1705 has 70% more pixels to fill.

 

I heard the X1600 was "underclocked" too but your saying the 7800go is as well?

perhaps 7900go is the ultimate solution, but not many laptops have it.

 

VERY good point. Remember, sometimes a smaller but clearer picture is better. Don't forget about the frames per seccond too. The dell's graphics card would have to be 70% faster too keep up at the same image quality.

 

My friend just picked up a e1705 with T2400, 1 GB ram, and a 7800 go. He also got around 3900 with default drivers and maybe 4100 with modded ones (Xtreme Gs i think). Whats weird is that the newer 7600go and x1600s seem to get similiar scores, though i do think the 7800go has a larger room for overclocking being in a 17", prob around 5k.

 

There is a 17" Gateway that has the 7900Go for $1500.
http://gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=nx860xl&seg=hm

Rest of the specs are kinda blah, but for gaming it'd do.

 

True, the 7800Go definitely has abundant headroom but it's underclocked and is only available in monster 17" notebooks for a reason. It has a much higher energy draw and heat/noise will be a major factor in overclocking.

 

Not even close? So take a look at this, this is my friend's score on Dell E1705, with Core Duo T2400 and on XtremeG 83.xx. Over 5750 marks!!
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1924182
I'm 100% sure that with newer drivers and highers clocks he could get 6k. And just don't tell me that in Europe we have special edition Dell's

 

Considering the higher model number (7800 vs. 7600) you'd assume that the stock scores would outclass the lower 7600.. but it doesn't seem to be the case as you say here. That's VERY weird to me, especially since the 7800 is part of the same generation as the 7600 and is assumably built on the same architecture but with more pipelines, better memory, and maybe even higher clocks. Can anyone more knowledgeable explain why Nvidia would have created a higher model number which delivers similar stock scores, but has much higher overclocking potential? Wouldn't Nvidia naturally just set the stock clocks higher?

 

Anyone else know of the other latpops that have the high end 7900?
That are under 2400$
Preferablly configurable...

I wonder if i should get the Sager!

 

That's not from drivers, the card is OC'd like a mofo.

Core Clock 11 MHz
Memory Clock 945 MHz

 

I was talking stock speeds. To get that kind of score he overclocked the hell out of that card and probably had it sitting on a block of ice. The reason why the e1705 is at the core and memory speeds that it is is because it has some serious heat issues.

Again, at stock speeds the 7800go and a x1600 are almost identical in performance. The X1600 does have some newer tech though as well.

 

At stock speeds the 7800Go and the X1600 are about the same. But dell underclocks their graphics cards by 10-20%. Making it possible to overclock them 20%+. I'm told Asus also underclocks their cards but not by as much. Your not going to get near the performance overclocking an X1600 as a 7800Go. The highest X1600 3dmark05 score I have seen is around 4800. 7800Go - over 6000.

 

Actually highest X1600 score is about 5200 (I checked on futuremark website). But in case of 7800 even OC +25% (from based 4100 in 05) should give around 5-5,2k. But no 6. Ok, I don't want to argue but I think you understimate the power of the 7800

 

You checked on the futuremark website... but was that for a notebook X1600 GPU? Or a desktop? Big difference. With a desktop you can use water cooling or even something crazy like liquid nitrogen and possibly double the stock score by overclocking. If you for one have 2GB's of 667mhz RAM, a Duo CPU running at like 2.5ghz and a 7800 Go overclocked quite a bit 6000 shouldn't be a problem in a 17" chassis.

 

I'm not that stupid, ofcourse it was Mobility X1600, here's the link http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1811219

 

There is a very good reason they underclock the 7800Go. Heat and the cooling of the e1705/9400. That is why I always use comparisons at stock speeds.

The e1705 is now (as of yesterday) available in US with the 7900GS which does perform better than the X1600. The 7900GS performs similar to 7800GTX (though I imagine that Dell will underclock this card as well in that chasis):
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=E1705S3&s=dhs

So if you want smaller and better build go for the S96j and if you don't mind the extra size and weight your best choice is the e1705.

 

I never said you were stupid. I just wanted to clarify. That's quite a nice score.. 529/558 mhz frequencies were used. In Asus laptops the stock frequencies are 450/450 I think. So that's around a 20% overclock.
____________________________________

To respond to FlipTwisteR....

The 7900GS is actually around 10% slower than the 7800GTX. But it uses less power and therefore is more efficient.

 

No problem BTW : this score is on Acer laptop, 8200 series.

 

Must have decent cooling. I wonder if you could get a similar score on an Asus. I wonder how high the W3j could go It might just start melting. lol

 

Hehe I got MAX 515/519 without shi..ing my pants Maybe there are some other kamikaze who will try for example 530/530