New Laptop - i3-330M with IGP or T6600 with Radeon 4570 GPU???

[chiddy]

Hiya all,

Looking to get a laptop. Will be my daily use PC doing mainly browsing, MS Office, watching media, light gaming and home video editing.

Budget is GBP500 max, choice narrowed down to a Toshiba L500-X1C i3-330M based laptop or a Dell Inspiron T6600 laptop with Radeon HD 4570 GPU.

The Dell is available from outlet and is approx GBP100 cheaper than the Toshiba.

What to go for?

[EDIT] Location: United Kingdom

 

[CurseTheSky]

I'm not a fan of Inspirons. I've fixed far too many for stupid stuff, and I've seen them overheat more times than I can count.

With that said, please define "light gaming." If you're playing simple 2D games then the IGP will be plenty. If you're looking to play some Half-Life 2, Fallout 3, Titan Quest, etc. you're going to want a dedicated card.

 

[chiddy]

Hiya,

Thanks for the response and sorry for my own delayed one.

Light gaming would be Civilizations IV, Sim City 3000, and a little Half-Life 2 with playable settings.

I've never had a Dell laptop before, Inspiron or otherwise, but the outlet prices are miles cheaper than anything else with equivalent specs. Are there any other models that come to mind that would be suitable?

Also, what is the performance of the AMD mobile processors when compared to Core 2 at like for like clock speeds. eg Turion II etc. If AMD are a viable option there are many more models to consider but would like to know what kind of performance hit I can expect.
If AMD are competitive, what are the processors to look out for?

Thanks again.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I can't comment much on AMD mobile processors, but from what I've heard in general, an AMD is slightly slower than an Intel Core 2 clock-for-clock, which puts it moderately slower than an i3, i5, or i7 at the same clock speed. AMDs also tend to get slightly worse battery life, too. The AMDs should still have plenty of power for day-to-day tasks, though.

Perhaps Dell has improved their Inspirons from the last time I used one. They're not BAD computers, they're just not up to par with a lot of the competition. Many of their other computers (Studio, XPS, Lattitude, etc.) seem to be great.

For Half-Life 2 at decent settings, you're going to want a dedicated card - at least an 8400 GS as a minimum. Something more along the lines of a 9600M GT / 9650M GT / HD 4650 would be far better.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I can't comment much on AMD mobile processors, but from what I've heard in general, an AMD is slightly slower than an Intel Core 2 clock-for-clock, which puts it moderately slower than an i3, i5, or i7 at the same clock speed. AMDs also tend to get slightly worse battery life, too. The AMDs should still have plenty of power for day-to-day tasks, though.

Perhaps Dell has improved their Inspirons from the last time I used one. They're not BAD computers, they're just not up to par with a lot of the competition. Many of their other computers (Studio, XPS, Lattitude, etc.) seem to be great.

For Half-Life 2 at decent settings, you're going to want a dedicated card - at least an 8400 GS as a minimum. Something more along the lines of a 9600M GT / 9650M GT / HD 4650 would be far better.

 

[Decembermouse]

I can't comment much on AMD mobile processors, but from what I've heard in general, an AMD is slightly slower than an Intel Core 2 clock-for-clock, which puts it moderately slower than an i3, i5, or i7 at the same clock speed. AMDs also tend to get slightly worse battery life, too. The AMDs should still have plenty of power for day-to-day tasks, though.

This is absolutely right, but only for the Athlon X2 and Turion X2 processors. The ones you see now everywhere have Athlon II (Athlon II, not just Athlon) X2 and Turion II X2 processors. These go clock-for-clock with Core 2 Duo processors. And the integrated graphics that come with these II series processors are far superior to Intel's integrated graphics.

Battery life has also improved with the II series, thank God, and with my girlfriend's new 2.2GHz Turion II M500 HP laptop I get 4.0 hours of battery life if I don't play video games or run DVDs most of the time. Mostly just internet use, video watching, Office type tasks, chatting, Skype. With the 2.0GHz Athlon II M300 you should get more battery life, as the Turion II's are faster and a little more power hungry.

Intel's i3, i5, and i7 are faster than AMD's current laptop offerings, so if you want to go really high-end, get an Intel laptop. But don't forget, get a discrete graphics card, because if you have an Intel IGP, even if you have a mobile i7 processor, you won't be doing any gaming sadly.

I'd recommend the ATi Radeon 5000 series (it does DX11, the 4000 series only does DX10.1 and is in general slower, but is still nice) or Nvidia GeForce GTX260m or another GTX200 series mobile card.

Anyway, yeah, not a huge fan of the old K8-based TL, QL, TK, RM series Athlon/Turion processors. Slower than Core 2 Duos, worse battery life... better graphics, sure, but that's about it. These new ones though are fantastic in my experience. The M500 gets a 5.7 in the Windows Experience Index, out of Windows 7's possible 7.9. Should be faster than an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 by what I read online although I have not benched them against each other. On a platform basis, the M500 is clearly superior on a graphics standpoint, but if you're getting a discrete graphics card then who cares.

Never been a huge fan of Dell since 2003 or so when I started working on laptops, but I have such a bad taste in my mouth, I haven't played with them recently. Maybe they have improved. I do love HP, Toshiba, ASUS, and Compaq right now though.

 

[CSMR]

For Half-Life 2 at decent settings, you're going to want a dedicated card - at least an 8400 GS as a minimum. Something more along the lines of a 9600M GT / 9650M GT / HD 4650 would be far better.

No, it's playable even on the old G45 and current Arrandale graphics seem to be about twice as fast as G45. (Mobile variants a little slower, but then notebook resolution tends to be lower.)
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3417&p=4

 

[chiddy]

Been browsing the Dell uk site and the Studio 15 with an the i3 cpu and radeon 4570 is on offer (£328 discount and selling for £499). Is the Studio series of laptops better built than the Inspirons?

Is it worth paying £60 (approx $100) for a Studio 15 and i3 over an inspiron T6600? Both have same GPU but Studio is new and Inspiron refurb from Dell outlet.