Solved! Asus X50GL versus X50Z

[kdon27]

So I've narrowed my choices down to 2 laptops, one sold in an online store, the other on eBay for the same price almost exactly. Everything else besides some of the specs are exactly the same.

ASUS X50GL-AP303E (at the online computer shop)
Core Duo T3400 2.16 Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia 8200MG with 256 MB VRAM

ASUS X50Z (from eBay)
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core Processor 2.0 GHz
3GB DDR2 RAM
ATI HD 3200 Graphics share RAM up to 895MB

(Everything not mentioned is identical).

The laptop would be used 90% for work and 10% old games and movies.

My main concerns is the processor /u] (Athlon versus Intel for mobile computing) and the graphics card (I've heard stuff about nVidia blowing up after a while. I've never had one, only had ATI and it worked perfectly fine on my old laptop).

Thank-yoU!

 

[Maziar]

I would go with the first one and upgrade the RAM to 4GB

 

[WR2]

The video chips are essentially equal in power. The Nvidia cards most affected by the heat related failures of 2+ years ago were the 8400M and 8600M. I can't recall any other mobile chips being affected. You think these laptops could be that old?

There is a bigger power gap in the CPUs than the 2.1Ghz vs 2.0Ghz speeds would seem to indicate. The T3400 has about 14% better performance according to Passmark CPU benchmark tests.
Pentium Dual T3400 @ 2.16GHz = 1130
AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-62 = 993

I hope you're getting an extremely good price 'cause I don't think I could recommend either of those models otherwise.