Is the HP dv5t better than the m1530?

I use an m1530, and my brother is in the market for a similar machine that combines performance, style and affordability. Not a pure gaming laptop, but no slouch either. We were looking at the dv5t, but is its 9600M that much better than our ddr3 8600GT? Should he consider an XPS, or is there something much better? Thanks.

 

Not much of a difference, except for slightly less heat and power consumption I believe. I think price should be more of a factor in this purchase than the video card difference. However, you didn't state what his needs are. Will he be gaming a lot? You should probably fill out the faq in the What Notebook Should I Buy? section so we can give better advice.

And please consult the forum rules regarding animated sigs. They are not allowed any more.

 

9600M GT is more on the safe side..


Let alone say that 9600m GT is DDR2, whereas 8600m GT is ddr3

Both come along teh same at the end...

But... remember that the g84 8600m DDR3 has... been known to have problems.

But, i just love how the 1530 looks
so cute.

n ,n

my $ 0.2

 

yea performance wise they will be about the same, i chose the 1530 cause i like the design and i got a good deal on it, and im pretty sure the newer ones have more stable cards, at least mine has been stable when i game so yea. You're choice tho at this point its personal preference

 

Face Jones, yes, newer ones are stable...
(I got my mobo/heat dissipator changed a while ago)

And yes. they're stable-er <--is dat a word?

 

3D Mark scores are almost identical, therefore I guess real world gaming performance would be same too.
However dv5t is based on the new Centrino 2 platform with a better CPU and 800Mhz RAM. Also given the potential issues of 8600 series, personally I’d go with a dv5t.

 

I think I had read a review on 9600 which said it is far better than 8600. But many 3D Marks score showed that 1530 and dv5 of similar specs are almost same.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3234&p=3

Here is the performance comparison one I found in Anand Tech

 

Those tests were done on desktop 9600M GT cards with DDR3 memory. There is a considerable performance difference between DDR2 and DDR3. 9600M GT on dv5t is has DDR2 while 8600M GT on M1530 has DDR3 that is why they perform almost same in real life, even though 9600 core has the potential to perform better (memory is holding it back).

 

Really?
I had a look at http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html according to them the 9600 also supports gddr3, in fact faster gddr3 than that which is supplied with the 8600, so do we know for sure that the cards in the dv5t are all gddr2?
If not the 9600 is much better than the 8600 as its both more efiicient and has higher headroom for overlclocking.

 

yes the card in the dv5t is the DDR2 version

 

Yes all Dv5t's have GDDR2 memory.

If it was GDDR3, it would look like this compared to your 8600GT

 

I assume thats a 3d mark for the system, not just the marks for the gpu?
bty lots of 1530's with 8600's can hit up to 6000 3dmarks

 

i don't see why dell hadn't included an Fn in their keyboard.

 

3D mark score depends on the resolution you run it, higher resolutions give lower marks. Usually when comparing marks the default benchmark (run at 1280x1024) is considered. But some notebooks can’t go all the way up to 1280x1024 because of vertical resolution limitations of built-in screens. Those above 4000 marks you might see on the internet are not for the default resolution, therefore you can't really compare them.

I just noticed you also have 5820 3D marks written in your sig, run the default benchmark , then you’ll get far less than that .

 

the xps 1530 does have an Fn key on its keyboard

 

Well actually I have a 1920*1200 wuxga, that score was obtained by running it at 1280*1024 non-native res
So if anything my score should actually be higher.

The max score I've seen is 6200 for a 1530 with 8600m gt 256mb, I'm actually back home from college today, so I'm gonna try it on an vga hooked up external 1280*1024 monitor. hopefully should get better results.