Will this Cpu+Gpu run new games smooth?

Processor: AMD Phenom II Quad-Core Mobile Processors P920(1.6 GHz)
1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD5650, Madison-LP, 64-Bit, DDR3

 

Should run most games at medium-high, some lower requirement/older games will run at high-ultra.

 

The 5650 is a little weak but it will run alot of games. Wont max out any new games worth mentioning, or the last 3 years if you ask me. Some games like Sins of a Solar Empire can easily be max'd on this card and the cpu is great for its AI needs, which arent bad either.

Can we see what machine and or price range your into at the moment?

 

Not if you want the full performance of the 5650 GPU.

I had the laptop with the same GPU but a MUCH stronger AMD CPU (see my sig) but had to return it because the CPU still hacked down the performance in most games to bits, sometimes by half, because its single-core clock is so low, no turboboost, and no L3 cache.

Lemme quote myself from a previous post regarding this:

Long story short, don't get that combination if you are buying the laptop for the ATi 5650. The AMD CPU will handicap it in most new games.

 

I agree. Without Turbo Core, AMD laptops solutions are still rather worthless otuside of the low end value regions (sub 500usd laptops - even so, the i3 gives it serious competition, along with the CULV).

 

he can always upgrade the cpu in the laptop tho

 

I have to agree, with the thought of avoiding that Quad-Core. Outside of games which will use 4 four cores, 1.6Ghz on two cores will be below the minimum requirements for most modern games, as we move in to 2011.

 

Yeah but Intel i-series is significantly faster than AMD Phenom-series clock-to-clock. The best he can upgrade with (for gaming, aka 2 cores, higher clocks) is N620 which is 2.8 GHz x 2. Which is equivalent to maybe mid/upper Core2Duos. It'll still run pathetically in nicely multithreaded games, compared to 2-core i5s which have 4 virtual threads. Also the lack of L3 cache in anything AMD.

Besides, the N620 is like $200 on ebay. Also no one buys AMD mobile CPUs lol. So even if he tries to buy the N620 and offset that cost by trying to sell the N920 (a useless quad-core), more likely than not it won't be sold and it's $200 more into the drain, which added to the original cost of the laptop could have gotten a much more powerful laptop with i5 or even i7 processor.

 

i agree that it isn't optimal for gaming. you would be better off with a faster dual core cpu. The 1.6ghz quad core isn't going to be as fast as a fast dual core cpu in almost any scenario - games and normal desktop work alike.

 

In anything that doesn't use at least three cores, that processor performs on the level of a CULV Core 2 Duo or Core i CPU. I really don't understand why AMD even bothered with such a CPU myself. Is the sacrifice in power really worth being able to say "I have a 25W quad core"? I don't think so.

 

That laptop should be dirt cheap if it has an AMD cpu in it. What's the price?

 

I myself have an Intel Core i7 clocked at 1.6GHz with an ATi 4650 (1 year older than yours) with 4GB RAM and I can run modern games just fine on my laptop. An example: I run Bad Company 2 at 720p with AA at lowest settings, HBAO off, shadows at medium, however, everything else such as effects and textures at high and the game looks spectacular (much better than consoles) and I run it at a 40-60 FPS (I have vsync on though so it could be higher).

 

Your i7 is much more powerful than the CPU mentioned here, though, despite having the same base clock speed. That difference will be felt in all CPU-limited games. We can't compare the two systems directly as a result.

 

The architecture is completely different, making it impossible to compare the two based on clock speed. Also, our i7s have "Turbo Boost" so that when a game is only using a thread or two, the CPU overclocks itself to a max of 2.8GHz, which the AMD chips can't. The Intel mobile chips are worlds ahead of the AMD ones. You can make an argument for an AMD CPU on a desktop, but for a laptop they just suck.

 

Yep, in reality your CPU is running at up to 2.8 GHz per core depending on the game, which in "intel core clock" values is more than enough not to bottleneck the GPU performance. The AMD CPU, on the other hand, is CUT OFF at 1.6 GHz per core (in AMD core clock values, which is like... 3/4 the power of intel clocks clock-to-clock, so something like 1.3 GHz per core in intel terms, which is lolpentium3?). So one of the 4 cores will almost definitively be bottlenecking the framerates to hell and back.