Dv7-6163cl VS dv6-6c70br VS Inspiron 15R

btdude6

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Jul 1, 2010
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1. What is your budget?
R$2500-3000 [equivalent of US$600-1000 or something, because of taxes]

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15" to 17". I hear 17" are more clumsy to carry etc, but I don't think it will matter much [thoughts?]

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1600x900 and above. 1920 x 1080 is great but idk if it's necessary for a notebook.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
It really is mostly a desktop replacement. But I am gonna be carrying it around. My desktop has a supposedly decent, yet faulty gpu. I want a gaming notebook that is decent enough to use at home, possibly with desktop keyboard and mouse [thoughts on this?], and to be able to play games wherever I want without performance issues.

5. How much battery life do you need? It's not much of a problem, the places I'm usually at have wall jacks. Still, if you have any thoughts on this, do share.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
Yes, this has to be a gaming laptop. I will be playing mostly steam games on med-high, don't really need ultra-high. Such as:
Med-high: TF2, valve games in general, skyrim. MAYBE bf3/mw3 and some new release games, but mostly just for trying out.
High: killing floor, assassins creed [up to brotherhood], dungeon defenders, WoW, general mmorpgs [nothing too fancy that require high-end gpus on med-high]
It would be real good if it supports another monitor without problems. Like playing something on at least med on one while watching vids/browsing on the other [i have a 1680x1050@60hz samsung]. Never did this before, btw.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
I plan to use it sometime for video-editing, but I don't require anything too fancy. Preferably one that is able to render 1080p videos with no problems, how long it takes doesn't matter.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 750gb-1tb

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. [Sorry if anyone can't understand some of the links, willing to translate if needed.]
[hp][3rd party] [dv7-6163cl] [R$2900] [product page, not sales one]
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03024329&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=5173107

[hp][official.store][dv6-6c70br][R$3200, a little off, are APUs really worth it atm?]
http://notebookparavoce.lojahp.com.br/Notebook-HP-Pavilion-DV6-6C70BR-com-AMD-Vision-A8-3520M-8GB-1TB-Leitor-de-Blu-Ray-Placa-de-Video-de-1GB-Tela-Full-HD-e-Windows-7-Professional-1679480.html

[dell][official.store][R15]
http://www.dell.com/br/p/inspiron-15r-se-7520/pd?oc=i15rsewe52-a&model_id=inspiron-15r-se-7520#TechSpec


10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
2-3 years, maybe a bit more. [Depends on how much money I will be making by then :D ]

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
I really don't need Blu-ray. Any DVD drive is fine, I mostly use flash drives anyway [needs to have at least one usb 3.0 plug], the bad thing is mostly they come with Blu-ray [which is kinda pricey here] and there's no opt-out.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
Because of the support and price, preferably hp then dell [hear a lot of factory-damaged components complaints] and then any other brands. I really care most about what's inside. Also I prefer amd over nvidia cards because usually you can get better overall amd cards over nvidia for the same price range, and I'm used to them.

13. What country do you live in? Brazil [tech is expensive in here :??: ]

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
So I read the amd APUs are really bad atm, compared to intel sandy-bridges, that Intel HD 4000 [6163cl features 3000] can run games smoothly almost on its own, and that APU+66xx has a great game performance. So which one would really be better for gaming? Could anyone post any APU+GPU vs Intel+GPU equivalents? [all linked notebooks have 8gb ram, with varying ddr3 frequencies]

Intel i7-2670QM @2.2-3.1 + 6770M [does directx 11 differ much from 11.1?]
AMD A8-3520M @1.6-2.5 + 7690M [will games and overall system performance be slow because of APU?]
Intel i5-3210M @2.5-3.1 + 7730M [how worse is GDDR3 compared to GDDR5?]

Any other models suggestions are welcome :) !

[EDIT: forgot cpu frequency]
 
Solution
GDDR5 is obviously faster and really does make a difference as you can compare 7690M and 7690 XT (which is basically the same as 6770M) benchmarks.

Not that APUs suck really, it heavily depends on the model. Have a look at this link:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
an AMD A8-3800 is almost the same as a i5 2450M. The one you listed here is A8-3520M. You do the math.
But still, even with A8-3520M you're gonna have a snappy system, not sure about heavy gaming though. I'd say go with Intel just because of the wider support from developers and also wider variety of laptops using Intel cpu. One more thing, almost 100 percent of gaming laptops are using Intel processors.


To make it easier for the GPUs:

6770M = 7690 XT>...

talltm

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Sep 5, 2012
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You see an i5 3210M + 7730M (which I assume is DDR5) is enough for your needs including games. But since you wanna keep your laptop for 2-3 years, I believe the best choice is the one with i7 + 6770M. Although the battery's gonna last longer on the Dell, the i5 3210M is not as future proof as the i7, mainly because of the number of cores (maybe someday in future games make use of all 4cores but for today a dual core i5 is just enough). My advice is the one with i5 CPU but for your needs an i7 seems more logical. it also means more heat though.
 

btdude6

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Jul 1, 2010
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Hey, 7730M is GDDR3 [7690M I'm unsure], so what is the real difference from a GDDR5? [6770]
Also, does that mean that the APU combo really sucks for gaming?

Btw, does anyone know about AMD/HP Windows 8 support? I can get w8 2 years student license but I'm afraid I'll have to wait a few months to play anything if it fails
So the thing is my friend got a dv6 with 6490M. I've tried drive sweeper + windows 8 hotfix, but it always fails to install the drivers [rest does ok]. Not sure if card is too low end or if hp/amd are giving w8 the finger until official release...
 

talltm

Honorable
Sep 5, 2012
49
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10,590
GDDR5 is obviously faster and really does make a difference as you can compare 7690M and 7690 XT (which is basically the same as 6770M) benchmarks.

Not that APUs suck really, it heavily depends on the model. Have a look at this link:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
an AMD A8-3800 is almost the same as a i5 2450M. The one you listed here is A8-3520M. You do the math.
But still, even with A8-3520M you're gonna have a snappy system, not sure about heavy gaming though. I'd say go with Intel just because of the wider support from developers and also wider variety of laptops using Intel cpu. One more thing, almost 100 percent of gaming laptops are using Intel processors.


To make it easier for the GPUs:

6770M = 7690 XT> 7690M> 7730M. The thing is 7730M is a newer 28nm chip and will be consuming less power.
 
Solution

btdude6

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Jul 1, 2010
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Thanks for the quick and complete reply man, that's exactly what I was looking for :D ! Time to go and buy it now :)