Solved! HP Pavilion DV6 6121TX or Lenovo Ideapad Y570?

neo4evr

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Hello everyone,

I am looking forward in buying a laptop basically for:

1. Development work (Adobe PS, AfterEffects, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc)
2. Watching movies and doing internet on-the-go (so i need a good battery life and good display)
3. A bit of gaming

So I shortlisted two laptops based on i7 2630 processor priced at the same spot. Here are the detailed specs:

HP Pavilion DV6 6121-TX

1. Processor: 2nd Generation Intel Core i7 2630QM on HM65 chipset (6MB Smart Cache)
2. Memory: 4GB DDR3 RAM (2x2)
3. Hard Disk: 640GB 5400RPM SATA
4. 15.6" High-Definition LED Brightview Display (Resolution: 1366x768)
5. AMD Radeon HD 6770M 2GB Video Card

Lenovo Ideapad Y570

1. Processor: Same as pavilion DV6 (But it says 3MB Cache in the shop, is that possible?)
2. Memory: 6GBDDR3
3. Hard Disk: 750GB 5400RPM SATA
4. 15.6" HD LED Glare Display (resolution: 1366x768)
5. NVIDIA N12P-GT Optimus 2GB Video Card

Now my concern is that I have never used a Lenovo laptop before. So not sure about it's build quality and performance. I can see that the Ideapad is better than HP Pavilion in everything, except for the inferior graphics card, but that is no problem with me, considering it's good enough to run recent games at 1366x768 resolutions. I have used HP 530 and it worked very well, but it's build quality was not at all good, although the screen was nice at that resolution.

Please suggest me the better laptop that fits my needs:

1. Better screen
2. Better battery life and durability, build quality
3. Better for development applications that use OpenGL like Adobe. This is my most important need, I am concerned about AMD Radeon, I have heard NVidia graphic cards work better in development. Is that true?

Your advise and help is very important to me. Please share your opinion.

Thanks!
Niladri
 

AntiZig

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Hello,
one thing I'd like to note, if you are looking for sound quality from laptop speakers you're looking in the wrong place. Even if you get a dedicated sound card and you don't use a good external audio system / headphones with it, you'd be wasting your sound card.

I can't comment on Idea Pad, as I've never had the experience of seeing one in person, but I know that Thinkpads are very sturdy build, so if ideapads come anything close to that, they should be decent laptops.

Yeah, the 6770 is a gaming class GPU while the 525 is a mid range graphics card. I'm not sure how development would relate to either. I would think that the Quadro nVidia GPUs would be better for development, but the ones you got listed I have no idea.

As far as suggesting you alternative options:
take a look at this website, just for information purposes
http://www.xoticpc.com/

Their ASUS and Sager laptops might give you similar specifications and comparable price, and those two companies have great build quality as far as I know.
 

neo4evr

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Many thanks AntiZig for your reply. Unfortunately Sager laptops are not available here and ASUS laptops are priced high. I went through all the options and shortlisted these two laptops. What do you have about ATI's performance in development and OpenGL? Is it good?

I need the sound for earphone use only. I won't use laptop speakers :)

I will go through the alternatives but I think I have decided to buy either from these two. Waiting for some reply from Lenovo users :)
 
CPUs are identical, Lenovo has 6GB of RAM vs 4GB for HP
HDDs - both are 5400rpm not the preferred 7200rpm
GPUs are virtually identical in 3D gaming performance. Open GL support HP ver 4.1, Lenovo ver 4.0
Battery life, durability, reliability, longevity and build quality should be virtually identical. Same for LCD quality.
I've heard the same thoughts about Nvidia 'favoring' OpenGL but only in past models of GPUs, and only in terms of performance - not in suitability for development of software.

Bottom line: Go with the least expensive option or the one that gives a 7200rpm HDD option.
 

neo4evr

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Do you have any better suggestion for a laptop under similar price? Both the laptops I mentioned are priced at around 55,000 IN (around 1200USD). That's my budget.

Thnx
 

neo4evr

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mackdady

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I bought the Y570 I5, same Nvidia Gt 555 with 1Gb video, bluray, USB 3.0 etc... and I LOVE it. The only negative I have what so ever is the keyboard is not backlit. I will live with it.

I bought it as a work laptop that I could play games on, and....well lets just say it is getting a workout. As far as the suggestions for 7200 rpm drive over a 5400 one....well if you always leave your laptop plugged into a wall then sure other wise, silly in the laptop world.

Have you seen the boot time of this thing it is awesome! oh if you want to get crazy it does support a mSata SSD drive in ADDITION to the installed 750 GB 2.5 in SATA so.....