ATI 4650 or Geforce G105M?

Hi, I'm about to buy my first laptop and I've narrowed it down to these two, and hoping to get your opnion on which one I should go for:

HP PAVILION DV6-1245EO
AMD Turion Dual Core RM-77 processor (clock not listed..)
ATi Radeon HD 4650 (1 gb)
4 GB DDR2 RAM

and

Acer Aspire 5738G
Intel Core 2 Duo processor T6500 processor (2.1 ghz)
nVidia GeForce G105M (512 mb)
4 GB DDR3 RAM

Everything else is about the same in these setups, except the Acer is about 250 $ cheaper than the HP.
The reason I ask is because I'm in doubt which is going to perform best when it comes to gaming.

Supposedly the ATI is a lot better here, but does it matter with those CPUs?
(the clock on the amd is not listed but I think it is about the same)
And how much is it going to matter wether it is DDR3 or DDR2 in these setups?

Thanks

2nd one has a faster intel chip and ddr3. Video should be comparable to the 4650. Did you look at www.lenovo.com ?

ninjai said:

Hi, I'm about to buy my first laptop and I've narrowed it down to these two, and hoping to get your opnion on which one I should go for:

HP PAVILION DV6-1245EO
AMD Turion Dual Core RM-77 processor (clock not listed..)
ATi Radeon HD 4650 (1 gb)
4 GB DDR2 RAM

and

Acer Aspire 5738G
Intel Core 2 Duo processor T6500 processor (2.1 ghz)
nVidia GeForce G105M (512 mb)
4 GB DDR3 RAM

Everything else is about the same in these setups, except the Acer is about 250 $ cheaper than the HP.
The reason I ask is because I'm in doubt which is going to perform best when it comes to gaming.

Supposedly the ATI is a lot better here, but does it matter with those CPUs?
(the clock on the amd is not listed but I think it is about the same)
And how much is it going to matter wether it is DDR3 or DDR2 in these setups?

Thanks

Click to expand...

It depends on what you what you are trying to achieve. The ATI 4650 is hands down the stronger card and will make a difference compared to the G105 if want to play a game. If you play no games or nothing more than solitaire or Braid then a G105 will be fine. Take a look HERE to get a relative idea of mobile GPU performance.

I believe that AMD RM77 will be 2.3Ghz and 65nm which is not as power efficient and likely runs a little warmer than the T6500 which is 45nm.

In notebooks, with these CPU's, there is no real advantage of DDR3 over DDR2 except that DDR3 will consume slightly less energy.

thanks both.
So the HP has the better gpu, and the Acer the better CPU?

i was looking for a computer for gaming. but cash is a little short and i really dont need maxed out settings on newer games. but would like to at least be able to run them

According notebookcheck the 4650 should run games like GTA4 fluently in low settings, but the g105m should only run older games on low..
Why is the 4650 so much better - i mean the g105m is higher clocked yes?

and will it really give that big a performance boots over the Acer?

ninjai said:

thanks both.
So the HP has the better gpu, and the Acer the better CPU?

i was looking for a computer for gaming. but cash is a little short and i really dont need maxed out settings on newer games. but would like to at least be able to run them

According notebookcheck the 4650 should run games like GTA4 fluently in low settings, but the g105m should only run older games on low..
Why is the 4650 so much better - i mean the g105m is higher clocked yes?

and will it really give that big a performance boots over the Acer?

Click to expand...

When it comes to GPU's there are more than clock speeds. The ATI 4650 has 320 Stream processors and a rough equivalent Nvidia card to this would have 64 stream processors. Now the G105 has only 8 stream processors which is considerably less. Also, the memory bus for the 4650 is 128bit while the G105 is only 64bit.

Yes, if you are wanting to game the 4650 would definitely be the better choice. There may be better choices, what kind of price range are you trying to stay in.

I would rather watch paint dry than play games on a 4650.
Just my opinion.

Theocnoob said:

I would rather watch paint dry than play games on a 4650.
Just my opinion.

Click to expand...

You would prefer the G105?

I've had some pretty good experiences with the 1GB 4650. The card overclocks pretty well, runs Far Cry 2 no worries at all with soe fairly decent detail settings. Smooth as, of course, this was with a desktop card.

Fyi, ATI 4650M is stronger than a GT 240M.

As i understand it, ATI's laptop GPUs actually are what they say they are, just lower clocked.
Which is to say, a laptop 4870 is a full 4870 that has been downclocked and run at lower voltage.
Nvidias laptop GPUs bare nothing in resemblance to the desktop card with the same name.

Bobnova said:

As i understand it, ATI's laptop GPUs actually are what they say they are, just lower clocked.
Which is to say, a laptop 4870 is a full 4870 that has been downclocked and run at lower voltage.
Nvidias laptop GPUs bare nothing in resemblance to the desktop card with the same name.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't try to ramp it up to it's normal speed unless you have some liquid nitrogen to pour over your laptop while it's running though.

so the general opinion is that the ATI is a lot better than the g105m, but how much will it matter with the two cpu's? the one being an AMD Turion 2.3 ghz and the other an intel T6500 2.1 ghz?

ninjai said:

so the general opinion is that the ATI is a lot better than the g105m, but how much will it matter with the two cpu's? the one being an AMD Turion 2.3 ghz and the other an intel T6500 2.1 ghz?

Click to expand...

The Turion should serve you well, Id always go for the laptop with the better GPU. It depends what your going to want to be doing, but for games, go for the better GPU.

Too bad its a Turion RM. The Turion Ultra ZM's are a large improvement over the RM's. My Turion Ultra ZM in my laptop is on par with the low-mid T7000 C2D's.

However the RM's will be a bit slower, it still should do fine. Your probably lookin at the CPU performance a bit slower than a C2D T7250 (2.0ghz). So it should match the T6500 no problem. Go for the AMD ATI in my opinion cuz the GPU and the CPU is probably better or on par with the 6500 C2D.

thx. oh btw i bought operation flashpoint 2 which hardly runs on my outdated desktop ( amd 3500+, geforce 7800 256 mb) - think it do any better on a laptop?

ninjai said:

thx. oh btw i bought operation flashpoint 2 which hardly runs on my outdated desktop ( amd 3500+, geforce 7800 256 mb) - think it do any better on a laptop?

Click to expand...

With the screen res of that laptop, you can probably amp the game up to about Medium/High mix and it should play decently.

I had a laptop with that CPU (or a slightly lower clocked version) and it's HOT. You can fry eggs on the palm rest and the exhaust. Eats battery like there is no tomorrow, too (I got ~2:30 with a 55mAh regular sized battery, on a 12").

There is a reason why AMD CPUs are only found in low end laptops. On desktops they can get away with it because heat and power consumption don't matter that much on desktops.

That said, even though I am a big fan of nvidia, the ATI card is much much better. The 105M is just slightly better than integrated graphics.

Since this is your first laptop, are you really set on getting a gaming laptop? A gaming laptop has quite a few disadvantages
- very high premium for high end gaming laptops, compared to desktop
- heavy
- short battery life
- lower performance at higher price than desktops

If you have never used a laptop regularly before, you probably won't really appreciate the importance of weight and battery life, if you actually want to use it on the go.

I made that mistake a few years ago (getting a gaming laptop). On paper it sounds good - everything in one computer, I can bring it to school, too, no need to transfer files from desktop to laptop, etc. The weight and short battery life really set in, though. Ended up getting a cheap desktop for gaming (which is actually faster than the laptop), and a thin and light laptop with 10 hr battery life, at 1.5kg. The combined price is around that of the gaming laptop (just slightly more).

Please think twice. If you don't really NEED to game everywhere, a desktop + a laptop may be a better choice.

really? 2 and a half hour? thats insane.. are you sure that wasent a mistake?

but thx for your input. it made sense now im just more in doubt

Yeap. HP tx2000.

Take the manufacturer's battery time claim multiplied by 60% would be about right. Or 80% for more honest manufactures.

he's right about those battery times. i have the hp dv6-1253 and the battery only lasts for a couple of hours. other than the processor it looks like mine and the one you're looking at are about the same (1253 uses the intel p7550).

oh really? boarderjw - i was reading some reviews on the dv6 series and i've gotten pretty hooked on that one
most reviews say they should play games pretty well but suffers from noise and battery issues.. like you say. anything else i should know?