Any good review of DV6z Quad Edition with Benchmarks?

Anyone have some links to decent reviews with benchmarks. Or at minimum can someone provide 3DMark06 or Vantage results? Thanks.

I'm also confused by the GPU offering. 512MB dual graphics and 1GB dual graphics. What GPU **IS** it?

 

There's a fairly detailed review at Notebookcheck. It's in German, but here's Google's translation (the benchmarks are all numerical anyway). The "1GB GPU" is a 6750M which performs surprisingly poorly. AMD's drivers for their own hybrid graphics is no better than what they have for Intel's -- both are buggy, the bugs are just different. AnandTech & Co. got different scores with earlier drivers, but those reviews also featured the asymmetric CrossFire getting higher scores than the GPU in some games and lower scores in other games.

 

The 512MB option is the 6490m and the 1GB is the 6750m. If you get an A8 APU with the 6490m it is called the 6645g2 and if you get an A6 APU it is called the 6545g2. Any of the APU's paired with the 6750m becomes the 6755g2. Vantage results from kinetik using the dv6-6135dx with A8-3500m/6750m

AMD Radeon HD 6620G video card benchmark result - AMD A8-3500M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,Hewlett-Packard 358D score: P5665 3DMarks

 

3DMark06 7380? Ouch. My M11x R1 can manage that. But that Vantage score looks better, and that's not as good as the 6755G2 then.

 

It isn't supposed to be a high-end gaming build, it's supposed to be cost-effective. If you're spending 699 or so it's a fairly good choice.

 

ACF fails miserably with DX9 right now. Eventually drivers should at least make it the same as the regular 6750m by just disabling the IGP for DX9. For DX10/11 it works better. The hardware is there even if the dGPU runs at the IGP clock speeds, 880 total SP's, the driver support just needs to catch up.

 

I understand that, but I'm looking for something to be middle ground between a 15" gaming machine like the NP8130 and the M11x. Since I couldn't find something, at least not cheaper than the NP8130 (~ $1250), I decided to go with the NP8130. I still have time to cancel the order though.

The point of the discrete GPU is to be able to game though.

But that Vantage score makes it sound promising. With 1080p, 9-cell, and 1GB GPU I can get this shipped for about $400 less than the np8130. Sounds like a possible good plan.

Hoping driver support moves fast though. I'm so tempted to cancel my Sager order right now...

 

I'd just stick with the NP8130 it's a whole lot better than anything HP or Dell can give you for not that much more $

 

It costs $400+ extra which is like 50% more...

 

The biggest issue is battery life. The HP can deliver 6+ hours and you're lucky to get 3 with the Sager. Plus pocketing $400, and probably selling my M11x as well, a middle ground laptop between the two. At least hold me over to see Ivy Bridge options.

 

$400 is a lot more money, at least to me

 

If you're going to get an IB notebook I would just stick with the m11x and the desktop for gaming. Seems unnecessary to get another notebook if you're going to upgrade in half a year anyway.

 

For one, Ivy Bridge will be at least 9 months out, and M11x R1 won't handle Battlefield 3 to any degree, I can guarantee that.

 

Ivy Bridge won't really be worth it, trust me. The reason why now is the time to buy is because Ivy Bridge will just give you slightly higher clock speeds and not much else. If you buy now, you will have a notebook that's up to date for at least two years until 2013 when Haswell is released. And knowing the tech industry, it might even be 2014 with delays.

 

Battlefield 3 is said to have a desktop quad core as the recommended CPU. In perfectly multi-threaded applications, Llano loses to laptop dual-cores. In fact, depending on how the game is threaded, the highest Llano (at 1.9GHz) may be just about at the minimum requirement of a Core2Duo at 2.0GHz. I sincerely doubt it will handle Battlefield 3 at the settings you seem to want.

 

Well, With Ivy Bridge, chances are more higher end laptops will come with switchable graphics. Not that I want the headaches associated with Optimus or Llano, but Optimus has matured, and the few laptops out there with higher end GPU's tend to use manual switching graphics anyhow, which I'd prefer. Hoping by Ivy Bridge you'll get an even more powerful Ivy Bridge IGP consuming less power, and switchable graphics for better overall battery life.

First of all, there have been no published or official system requirements for BF3, everything is just speculation.

Secondly, while I would love to have max details, for occasional gaming on the laptop I can live with low details. If DV6 can manage BFBC2, chances are good that it can deliver with BF3 at low detail.

Lastly, it's about cost and portability. $400 less than the NP8130, plus better battery life and more portable, would mean I could sell my M11x too and pocket that difference too.

The problem is there have been no solid benchmarks out there of the DV6z without early level drivers.