I am going to buy a laptop for gaming and other multimedia purpose...I have to choose from these two..asus g551vw or gl552vw..

[zafirhasan]

help me to choose from these

 

[ingtar33]

the gl551vw comes with a 1TB hard drive; and is not an "ultrabook" (heavier and thicker)

the gl552vw comes with a SSD and a 1TB hard drive and is the size to be considered an "ultrabook"

overall the gl552vw does not have great reviews (so so monitor, poor trackpad, poor battery life), and I can't find ANY reviews of the gl551vw. Though since the gl551 isn't bound by the ultrabook formfactor, and doesn't offer an ssd, i suspect the battery life is probably better.

When gaming you probably won't notice any difference, personally I wouldn't buy any computer or laptop that doesn't come with a SSD, so to me, the gl551 wouldn't even be in the conversation.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I can't recommend the 551 as it is outdated and no longer for sale at most retail channels. The 552 is not well reviewed as was indicated above. As for storage, we have done extensive in house testing with two identical laptops configured as follows:

128 GB SSD + 2 TB HD
2 TB SSHD

With 6 different users being randomly assigned one or the other for use as AutoCAD Workstations, not one could tell the difference between the two. Well one of us could ... I was the guy who had to continually "clean out" the C drive from clutter due to the lack of free space.

Yes, you could run a benchmark and see a wide disparity in some synthetic test result, but here's the test results from a desktop system test bed:

Boot to Windows w/ SSD = 15.6 seconds
Boot to Windows w/ SSHD - 16.5 seconds
Boot to Windows w/ enthusiast 7200 rpm HD = 21.2 seconds.

So when building boxes for users, we will generally include an SSD + SSHD when budget allows and user is astute enough to manage the clearing of the SSD from excess accumulation of files / programs. But where user is budget limited, as above testing has shown, it's not a necessary component. An SSHD is certainly a better option than a SSD + HD where the majority of games will sit on the HD.

http/www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5748/seagate-desktop-2tb-sshd-st2000dx001-review/index9.html

A situation like this left most power users using an SSD for their operating system, while still running a secondary mechanical drive for storage and games. A typical setup such as this would allow the OS to load very quickly, while leaving you stunned at how long it took to load a game. With the introduction of the Desktop SSHD, Seagate has again switched up the game, offering a substantial performance boost to those of you in this situation.

Now, if you are one that chooses to use a single drive for your operating system, and have held onto your standard desktop HDD for the benefit of capacity, the Desktop SSHD is calling your name. The 8GB of NAND cache in conjunction with Seagate's application optimized algorithms should offer a tremendous performance boost, and again the more you use, it the faster the drive will get, as it learns how you use your system.

In every case seen here today, the Seagate Desktop SSHD excels, whether it be a synthetic point and click benchmark like HD Tune or ATTO, or even application traces via PCMark 8, the drive just performs.

Again, if budget allows, Id use an SSD + SSHD .... but if it getting the SSD means that you need to drop from a 970M to a 960M, you'd be in for a huge performance hit. That's why we haven't bought a HD in > 5 years.

The other thing that you have to deal with when using mass market suppliers is they "sell you" on the CPU, GPU in the advertising and never mention the lesser components where they "cheap out" in order to show you a more attractive price. When you pick each component, this risk goes away. I would suggest that you consider having your laptop build by a custom builder where you get to pick each component that gets put inside. Boutique shops like Alienware (now bought by Dell), FalconPC, Widow PC have been selling these at a huge markup for years. You can skip the middleman and go direct to their supplier (Clevo).

So you never heard of Clevo ? But you never heard of the company who made the 2 laptops you selected ... it was not Asus .... Asus just had the people they hired to make it, slap a Asus Logo on it.

Quanta sells to (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC
Compal sells to (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP
Inventec sells to Toshiba, HP, Dell and Lenovo
Pegatron sells to Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer
Foxconn sells to Asus, Dell, HP and Apple
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP

Read about Clevo here:

http/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-guide-v2-0-faq-and-reseller-info.91510/

CLEVO is a large Taiwanese computer company specializing in laptops. While the Clevo brand name is perhaps not widely known, their products are re-branded and sold by known boutique brand OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)… notably Sager, VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Eurocom, etc. They are also considered (by whoever knows about notebooks) to design and manufacturer the best of the best notebooks in terms of superior build quality and innovative designs.

And who is Clevo here

http/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/clevo-guide-v3-0-faq-and-reseller-info-read-before-posting.592609/

We have bought all our own and clients laptops from this Clevo distributor for the last 5 years.

https/lpc-digital.com/

But you can find Clevo distributors worldwide .. see the FAQs at the link above.

 

[ingtar33]

any client who can't tell the difference between an SSD and a SSHD must have trouble turning PCs on.

Personally I don't even have a mechanical drive in my system. I'm using all SSDs, the 1TB units are fairly reasonably priced these days. Never will touch another mechanical drive again. Now if you said people couldn't tell the difference between a SSHD and a HD, i'd be 100% on board. I know I can't tell the difference. And if you want to say "placebo effect" about the SSD/HD or SSHD difference. I can tell within 20 seconds sitting down at a random PC whether or not there is "real" SSD in it (without cheating, and without even intentionally looking for it). Granted I work in IT, so i'm more sensitive to load times then a typical user, but the difference between an SSD and a hard drive or SSHD is MILES apart.

My tech firm stopped purchasing or recommending SSHDs to our clients precisely because there was no real performance gains from one in any real way apart from booting into windows, and frankly, most people don't even turn off their pcs these days so that's a feature almost no one notices.

 

[Purpletalon55]

any client who can't tell the difference between an SSD and a SSHD must have trouble turning PCs on.

Personally I don't even have a mechanical drive in my system. I'm using all SSDs, the 1TB units are fairly reasonably priced these days. Never will touch another mechanical drive again. Now if you said people couldn't tell the difference between a SSHD and a HD, i'd be 100% on board. I know I can't tell the difference. And if you want to say "placebo effect" about the SSD/HD or SSHD difference. I can tell within 20 seconds sitting down at a random PC whether or not there is "real" SSD in it (without cheating, and without even intentionally looking for it). Granted I work in IT, so i'm more sensitive to load times then a typical user, but the difference between an SSD and a hard drive or SSHD is MILES apart.

My tech firm stopped purchasing or recommending SSHDs to our clients precisely because there was no real performance gains from one in any real way apart from booting into windows, and frankly, most people don't even turn off their pcs these days so that's a feature almost no one notices.

Yeah, I use SSD only for boot drives and if i have a good 7200rpm drive i almost cant tell the difference my desktop boots in 7 seconds with a ssd my thinkpad with a hitachi 7200rpm drive boots in 8 so its basically the same speed as a ssd in booting which may just be windows. Idk but i honestly dont care what I use as a drive as long as it works but 1tb ssd are still pricey over $500 and I would rather use HDD or SSHD for bulk storage as they are overall still superior in storing things.