Laptop Comparisons

Hey guys,

So i've been looking at updating my laptop for a while now and I decided to finally give it some SERIOUS thought. I'm pretty much edging between two different setups and I'm looking to see what you guys think on a cost/worth basis here. I plan on doing some moderate gaming (WoW, Diablo 3, L4d2 etc) so I don't need crazy high end. The two I'm looking at are:

HP Pavillion dv6-6135DX - Refurb (Eek? )

• Processor AMD A8-3500m 1.5 GHz Quad Core CPU with integrated AMD 6620 GPU
• High-definition LED With BrightView technology (1366 x 768) 15.6″ w/ Built-in Webcam
• 6GB DDR3 1333 MHz
• DVD±RW/Blu-ray Disc/CD-RW
• Beats Audio
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
• HDD Western Digital Blue 5400 RPM 640GB
• Graphics Card AMD Radeon HD 6750M (these crossfire I believe?)

Price: $564 shipped

And Contender:

Dell XPS 17

• 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5-2410M processor 2.30 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.90 GHz
• HD DISPLAY 17.3" HD+ (900p) LED Display with 2.0MP HD Webcam
• 6GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
• 8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
• JBL 2.1 Speakers with Waves Maxx Audio 3
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64-Bit, English
• 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 550M 1GB graphics with Optimus

Price: $709 shipped

Now I've read that the i5 processors generally perform better than the A8's, and since the 6750 and the 550m are fairly close graphics cards would the better processor even them out, or would the crossfire on the HP be much better? Or would the higher rez 17" dell screen kill gameplay compared to 15" HP with the stronger gfx card? Also the one thing that worries me about the HP is the 5400 rpm HDD vs the 7200 on the dell, how much of a difference would that be? Any thoughts on Beats audio vs JBL with Waves? And any thoughts on buying refurb'd from newegg? I've always been weary about refurbs but $550 seems like a steal, or am I delusional?

Thanks!

 

i5 is faster with one or two threads, but A8 is a quad core and anything heavily threaded would fare better with the A8.

 

90% of the time spent on this laptop when I buy it will be either browsing the net, playing WoW/Diablo 3/Other Similar games, and watching video's online. A slight amount might be using some Photoshop CS3, think the A8 will handle this well enough?

Also how big of an impact will the A8's hard drive RPM's being 5400 have on performance?

 

A8 should handle that well. Just get familiar with K10Stat. You can overclock/undervolt easily with it for a faster but cooler and longer battery running laptop.

Diablo 3 will be the big variable, but I can't imagine it not being able to handle it.

5400RPM is always too slow for me anymore since I have SSD's in pretty much everything I own these days. But for general purpose use, if you have patience, then you'll be fine.

 

If you are looking for great gaming I would definitely go with the HP Pavillion dv6-6135DX.

That CPU and GPU will be able to run games perfectly at that resolution and you will be able to max out the settings on most games and get good fps.

If you have a TV at home you can always use an HDMI cable to output the signal to a large 720p HDTV which is amazing (I do this with my Laptop when I'm at home).

The Blu-ray is nice but I don't see how that will come into play for Blu ray movies above 720p unless you have a 1080p TV or external display that you can hook into for that purpose.

The price ($564 shipped) is also very good, you can't get a better bang x buck than that for a gaming laptop of that potential.

I would buy that myself if I didn't already own a gaming monster

 

Well blu-ray is good if you already have blu-ray movies and just want to watch them on your laptop for whatever reason. Don't need 1080p. But I think the HP is the best value.

 

get the hp. better for gaming

 

Great, thanks guys, I was definitely thinking of getting this one too! Seems everything except the hard drive is better than the Dell, guess if I really want I can always buy an upgrade there

Also is there a tutorial/info on this K10stat? I've never heard of it before. But faster running on a cooler, longer battery system? Do want!

 

if you're gonna play games like wow i would get the dell. if you see any benches of the llano vs sandy in cpu heavy games you'll see why

 

1366 x 768 15.6″...

Why would you ever want to game on that? That's the resoulation I used on my m11x...I can't imagine playing with that terrible of a resoultion on a 15".

 

Screen size and resolution would make me take the XPS, every time.

Photoshop on a 1368x768 screen will be terrible.

 

Lol It's still 720p HD, I don't need 1080p to enjoy my games and do light photoshopping Like I said this is a budget build I'm going for, and while I love the aspect of the 17" screen real estate it's not worth another $200 (tax and shipping on the other) to me I've decided. Any hardcore gaming or photoshopping I'll do on my 23" at home at 1080p ^_^

I plan on overclocking and undervolting the 6750 to ~800/900 @ 0.955V instead of the native 600/800 @ 1v to get me some nicer framerates in my games and cooler performance/better battery life, and other than that I should be great I think. My old one was a 15.4" with a Radeon X1200 on it that I used to use for gaming, so this will be like night and day, and I gain .2" on the screen! Lol

 

Good choice bro! I hope my words of advice helped in your decision! And when you do get your laptop make sure to install Nhancer and use the advanced features to optimize all your games to make full use of your quad core!

 

Definitely! I totally agree that it's definitely the better bang for the buck, the one thing I was unsure about was the hard drive, but it turns out that larger 5400's aren't THAT far off of 7200 due to the density being more. There's still enough of a gap, but not so much that I'm going to cry about it given the games I'll be playing I might just HDMI out to my 1080p 23" from time to time just for kicks to see my FPS, if it even works that way