15,4" Vaio FE or BX? - 7600 or x1600?

I'm deciding between 15,4" FE and 15,4" BX series. Now they are both core 2 duo 1,86, both will have 2gigs of ram the only difference is the graphics card. What's better: the nVidia 7600 128mb dedicated ram on FE, or ATI X1600 128mb dedicated (256mb hyper-memory) on BX?! Which one's better? How does build quality compare? What to buy?

 

They are both quite powerful cards, and they will perform about the same. It does depend on what you want to play. I think if you play OpenGL based game, then the 7600 may be a little faster, and if Direct X, then X1600 will be slightly faster. If i'm wrong, please correct me.

 

Isn't the 15.4" BX exclusive to Europe or something? I don't see it on either of the North American sonystyle websites. Anyway, to answer your question, they both shouldn't be too far apart in performance. If neither are underclocked, the Go 7600 should be 5-10% faster in OpenGL games, but don't fret. If clocked to ATI's specifications, the Mobility X1600 should have a 5-10% Direct3D performance advantage.

I know, it's really a hard choice. I wouldn't be too worried about graphics speed. If I were you, I'd make the decision based on:

1) battery life.
2) looks.
3) build quality.

I'd choose the BX series because of its classy professional looks though if you want better build quality, the FE should be superior because of its magesium casing (BX casing is plastic).

Hope this helps.

 

The BX series is Sony's Business class machines, found on b2b.sony.com vs. their more consumer based sonystyle.com Personally I like the extra features of the BX series, like the biometrics. The FE I thought though was plastic as well, not magnesium.