Dell 1520 8600m GT vs Asus G1S-A1 8600m GT. 1300 3D Mark difference?

Looked at the reviews for the Dell 1520 and the Asus G1S-A1. They are nearly the same config except the asus is .2ghz faster, but looking at the 3dmark scores, the Asus in 3dmark 2005 got 7,704 3D Marks vs the Dell which got 5,348 3DMarks. And 3,816 3D Marks in '06 vs the Dell's 2,905 3DMarks Is this possibly right? How can almost identical laptops be so different when it comes to 3d. i was about to order a Dell before i saw this, and wanted to ask if this is possibly just a driver thing, or if the Asus is for some reason that much better.

 

They're not identical. The G1s has a clock of 700 while the 1520 has a clock speed of 400. Basically showing that the G1s features GDDR3 while the 1520 uses DDR2.

 

Would you seriously expect anything more from Dell?

-Josh

 

Thats a huge difference in clock speed, and a huge difference in performance for the same card... Glad i didnt order the dell quite yet then. Guess i'll be spending a little more and go for the Asus after all.

 

opps............

 

Wow, that's a massive difference. There must be some other factor (different drivers?). GDDR3 vs DDR2 wouldn't even cause a difference that large.

 

well there is a 300MHz clock difference... I think you should look at the 3dMark06 difference which is around 900 ish.. ddr3 basically is more efficient and runs cooler letting ASUS to clock the speeds higher to 700mhz.

 

the asus may have ran at 1280*800 also?

 

Well 3dmark 06 doesnt really mean much to me right now as im mostly going to be playing wow and maybe some CS Source and other slightly old games. Had no idea the ddr 3 would make that much of a difference. Back to spending 200 dollars more the asus... Looks better anyway hehe

 

I think the 300 mhz difference in clock speed explains it

 

nope. the numbers that I have seen (from the NBR notebook reviews) both of those numbers were run on WSXGA.

 

I beleive the sager 2090 uses the same card as the Dell 1520 doesnt it?

 

yes basically and I think I'd sacrafice the GDDR3 for a cheaper price tag and a better look (in my opinion) the leds are kinda annoying and weird..

 

get a macbook pro 2.4ghz, 8600gt 256MB GDDR3 for the same from ebay and buy windows separately to run bootcamp, you get two os's and a 1 inch thick 5.4 lb laptop out of the deal.

 

mac books are way more though

 

wow, just looked, its 2300 with student price. thats crazy!

 

LED can be turned off though.

 

Not to mention Macbooks also use underclocked 8600m GT's. If you're looking for a 15.4" gaming laptop, go with the Asus.

 

Kinda figured they would have an option for that

even with ddr3 they are still underclocked huh?
Probably stick with the asus as it is 500 bucks less then the mbp. Not so hot on the mac os anyway. My dad has a mac, and i just dont like it as much as windows. Probably just because im used to it.

 

And you get something that's extremely ugly. Idc if it were $1000 cheaper, it's ugly, and made by a horrible company.

Btw, the difference between 400 and 700 is almost an 80% increase, which would easily justify the massive difference in performance.

 

Just noticed u have the asus =) just wondering, can u play most games in 1680x1050?

 

I don't dare try, no. I play most games at 1280x800. Gotta remember that this is still a laptop and it's not going to handle oblivion or GRAW at native.

 

Eh?

If GPUs were clocked at the same frequncey, the GDDR3 would probably run about 50% faster or better while consuming less energy, then the DDR2 would, at some point, be a bottleneck. Thus, they find a point where the GPU would not be any better at X GHz on DDR2, and Y GHz on GDDR3.

I'm not sure if the the GDDR3 being 50% better is universal, but I do know that my DDR2 desktop card is clocked at 800MHz and my GDDR3 graphics RAM is clicked at 1400MHz.

 

playing at 1680x1050 is not recommended for video cards that are in 15.4 laptops.

 

everything seem to look decent on 1280x800 atleast? just because its non native res. I'm hoping wow will play in 1680x1050 atleast. I'm u used to playing it in 1920x1200 on my desktop 24" lcd

 

WOW should give you no problems whatsoever. I run 1680x1050 every toy i can find on max and I get a solid 30 fps, except shattrath where is dips sometimes. FPS can go higher but I have Vsync on.

Considering your 8600 is considerably faster than my 7700 it'll rock.

 

nervous about spending 1850 dollars hehe. im about to do it though, overnight shipping included in price isnt to bad from buy.com I want it by friday so i dont have to wait over the weekend =D

 

Ya i was the same way with my G1P. I got it from bestbuy for $1780 including tax and overnight. Since I only get a new laptop every 3 years or so was a tough decision.

Don't worry though it will not disappoint

Make sure and post some pics and first thoughts so I may drool.

 

Yeah the MBP has some serious heating issues, some massive downclocking on the CPU as well, whenever you're not using it its downclocked so you won't get a fast response from lets say leaving it for one minute and then trying something

 

From what I heard they fixed the heat problem in the last round of MBP's.

 

I do - to both of those questions. The most demanding games I play however are Doom 3 (which doesn't give me the option for that resolution), F.E.A.R (no problems at native res, as long as soft shadows are off and I don't go insane with AA) and CNC3 (no problems, all on max). None of this Oblivion, Lost Planet, GRAW etc. nonsense for me, where I would expect to have to tone the res down a bit.

I expect to have to start making resolution compromises with the likes of Crysis, however.

 

thanks for the info. I would expect that for the newer games, and thats perfectly fine, thats exaclty what i wanted to know.

 

Ordered and on its way! Should be here tomorrow!

 

I like the bang for the buck when going with the Dell 1520. I ended up paying 1140 for mine (with 300 off coupon) and just got a 3DMark06 score of 3491 (under XP Pro at 1280 x 800). See my sig for configuration. Used the great guide on this website to install XP Pro. For me playing games on a notebook was an afterthought because I didn't know that 1100 bux would go as far as it did. I'm actually able to play MSFSX at 20fps (SP1 helps a lot) as well as every other game I own with no loud fan noise and a very attractive and well designed lappy. Only drawback is dealing with Dell but I knew, and prepared myself for that going in lol...

Whoops forgot to include driver 6.14.11.6501

How do you take a screenshot of 3dmark06? I don't have a registered version it just takes me to a website.

INSPIRON 1520
Jet Black
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHZ
Anti-Glare widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)
256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT
2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
160G 7200RPM SATA HDD
Bluetooth, 2mp webcam, wireless bgn,

 

I only get 3350 3dmarks with XP Home O_O Any screens to show your 3dmark06? Also what drivers?

 

Im using 163.16 on my 1520 and got a 3263 with vista 32

 

Yes, but that's not at standard resolution.

 

on my G1s (best buy so it's only 2.0 Ghz) i got 4005 at 1280x1024 with no overclocking. http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2809921

hoping to get over 5k with the right overclocking but we'll see.

 

i got almost 4100 with default settings with my new g1s =D

 

Since 3dMark does have a "CPU" test in its benchmark that would also affect the score... Probably 300-600 I would guess...

 

wow, nice post thats make one thing clear i will order ASUS

 

It's convenient that this thread has turned up, I'm trying to decide between the two but the difference is over US$500 for similarly configured machines (bar the graphics card and processor). Now I have to see if I can save up enough to be able to afford a tricked-out Asus by the end of the year.

 

It may also be because the ASUS has 1GB of Intel Turbo Memory. Therefore, to get a better comparison you would have to have 3GB of memory. Many suppliers (HP, DELL, Sony) say 1GB of memory provides just as much or better performance gain as 1GB of Intel Turbo Memory but costs less.

 

two different version of the video card thats why, this has been proven again and again.
Please don't bring month old threads back up please.

 

As posted above, this question has been answered quite satisfactorily, and there is no need to revive months old threads. However, to clarify your post (so it doesn't mislead anyone), Turbo Memory does NOT act like RAM, in any way. Having an extra gig of RAM could very well significantly improve gaming performance, however having a gig of TM will not affect gaming performance, at all.

 

-.- can you stop repeating everything I say

 

In the US, how much is the difference in price between the Inspiron 1520 and Asus G1? For them both with a 2.2Ghz T7500, 2GB RAM, 8600GT?

In the UK the dell costs £800 with that config, but the Asus costs £1150. A £350 (or $700) difference. Not worth it for just the GDDR3 VRAM, HDMI out and a higher res screen (which would be useless to me while gaming anyway).

 

damnit i got 3326 and ran on 1280x800

**** it sucks.,

 

The 8600 GT DDR 2 sucks now lol? You get what you pay for. And in the case of the Dell 1520 it's definitely not a bad deal at all. You could also overclock it a bit as well... the DDR2 still can handle at least most of the current games anyway.

 

That's a very decent score for that card.