Mobile Platform Wars: AMD vs. Intel
by Jarred Walton on October 5, 2007 9:10 AM EST
HP 6515b Overview
While the primary purpose of this review is to take a look at AMD's Turion X2 TL-66 and their mobile platform, we also wanted to take a brief look at the HP 6515b. There's nothing truly revolutionary about this laptop, but it's a reasonably affordable business offering that would be equally useful in a home or student environment. It comes with all of the standard features users would expect to find in a modern notebook, so here's a quick summary as well as some pictures.
The 6515b is a good midsized laptop offering. The 14" chassis allows for a slightly less cramped keyboard layout relative to 12" laptops, but it still manages to maintain a lightweight profile. Besides all of the standard features - four USB ports, FireWire, PC Card, DVDR, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem - there are only a couple of somewhat noteworthy additions. A fingerprint scanner provides for potentially enhanced (or at least more convenient) security, and the Broadcom wireless adapter provides draft 802.11n support in addition to the usual A/B/G WiFi options. We still don't feel that 802.11n is fully ready for widespread use, but the Broadcom chipset appears to work better with our NETGEAR router, connecting at speeds up to 277 Mbps and achieving actual throughput of more than 11 MBps. That puts this particular wireless configuration roughly at the same level of performance as a 100 Mb network. That may not sound particularly stellar, but it's still more than three times as fast as any 802.11g adapters that we've used (at least under ideal test conditions).
While the primary purpose of this review is to take a look at AMD's Turion X2 TL-66 and their mobile platform, we also wanted to take a brief look at the HP 6515b. There's nothing truly revolutionary about this laptop, but it's a reasonably affordable business offering that would be equally useful in a home or student environment. It comes with all of the standard features users would expect to find in a modern notebook, so here's a quick summary as well as some pictures.
| HP 6515b Features Overview | |
| Processor | AMD Turion X2 TL-50/52/56/58/60/64 |
| Chipset | ATI RS690M/SB600 |
| FSB Speeds | 800MHz HyperTransport |
| Memory Speeds | DDR2-533, DDR2-667 |
| Memory Slots | (2) x SO-DIMM, up to 2GB DDR2, Dual Channel supported |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon X1250 |
| Display | 14" WXGA (1280x800) |
| Expansion Slots | 1x PC Card Type II/III |
| Hard Drive | 80/120/160GB 5400RPM, 80/120GB 7200RPM |
| Optical Drive | 8X DVD-ROM 8X DVDROM/CD-RW Combo Drive 8X DVD+/-RW SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW SuperMulti with LightScribe |
| Networking/Communications | Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet and V.90 56K Modem Broadcom ABG or ABGN Mini PCI Wireless Bluetooth 2.0 |
| Audio | 24-bit High Definition Audio with 2.1 Speakers |
| Left Ports | 2 x USB 2.0 1 x mini-Firewire PC Card type II/III Headphone/Mic Power socket |
| Right Ports | Flash reader (SD, MS/Pro, MMC, XD) 2 x USB2.0 Optical Drive<.br>RJ-11 Modem |
| Front Ports | None |
| Back Ports | 1 x VGA TV-Out RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet |
| Keyboard | 87 Key QWERTY (US) |
| Extras | Fingerprint Reader |
| Battery Options | 6-Cell 55WHr |
| Dimensions | 13.03"x9.57"x1.33" (WxDxH) 5.0 lbs. (6-cell battery) |
| Power Adapter | 90W |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Business 32-bit Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP2 |
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The 6515b is a good midsized laptop offering. The 14" chassis allows for a slightly less cramped keyboard layout relative to 12" laptops, but it still manages to maintain a lightweight profile. Besides all of the standard features - four USB ports, FireWire, PC Card, DVDR, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem - there are only a couple of somewhat noteworthy additions. A fingerprint scanner provides for potentially enhanced (or at least more convenient) security, and the Broadcom wireless adapter provides draft 802.11n support in addition to the usual A/B/G WiFi options. We still don't feel that 802.11n is fully ready for widespread use, but the Broadcom chipset appears to work better with our NETGEAR router, connecting at speeds up to 277 Mbps and achieving actual throughput of more than 11 MBps. That puts this particular wireless configuration roughly at the same level of performance as a 100 Mb network. That may not sound particularly stellar, but it's still more than three times as fast as any 802.11g adapters that we've used (at least under ideal test conditions).
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zsdersw - Monday, October 8, 2007 - link
I'm not going to call you anything, nor am I interested in doing so. I just find it curious that the only thing you think is important just happens to be the one bright spot for AMD in the article. That's all. Read into it what you want.yyrkoon - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
It would be important, because unlike all the Core2 vs AMD Fanfare, it has not been covered 5 million times already.
zsdersw - Thursday, October 11, 2007 - link
The number of times something is covered or reported has no relevance to how important it is or is not. Just because you don't want to hear the same thing "5 million times" doesn't make something else you want to hear more important.JumpingJack - Thursday, October 11, 2007 - link
You are losing this argument.JumpingJack - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
That tends to be the ticket, and, oh yeah, don't forget -- performance doesn't really matter, it is how it feels and the user experience.... :) It cracks me up.JarredWalton - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
I'm not sure what the complaint is - that I actually talked about all aspects of the platform (well, not *all*, but most), or that I wrote an article that shows that AMD's CPUs on notebooks are still slow, but their IGP tends to be better. Quite a few people have complained to Gary/Anand that we haven't looked at Intel IGP performance with X3100 (G965), so this article addresses that to a large extent. The result is a LOT better now than it was three months back, incidentally - when I first looked at an X3100 laptop, it couldn't run the vast majority of games (at least under Vista).For what it's worth, X3100 on XP may diminish AMD's "bright spot" even further. But of course, any discrete mobile GPU is still an order of magnitude faster. Results so far with X3100 XP drivers have it besting AMD's X1250 in most games. It even manages to run Bioshock (which requires SM3.0) - sure, it's only moderately playable at 800x600 minimum detail settings, but it runs. Now if Intel can just get the Vista drivers up to that level.... We're also waiting for some IGP updates, as X1250 isn't really all that new anymore.
yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
That was not a complaint Jarred, that was a suggestion, and one that was not meant as a personal attack on you. I know I am not the only one getting bored of reading the same old things time, and time again.Now, as far as the how-to suggestion, you guys are of coure going to do whatever you think you need to do. However, I find it kind of strange, that anandtech would give all kinds of details as to how you did things, without actually saying anything that leaves your readers feeling like they have learned something. I can honestly say that I haave never learned a thing here, other than when something new came out, and how it performed, etc. For instance, if I only read your site for various things, such as overclocking, I would not have the first idea of how to go about doing so myself. To me that is sort of like saying; 'look what we can do that you cannot'. Now, my main point with this example would be that not everyone out there feels comfortable reading through forum posts on various web sites for insight on how to do these certain things, and would rather look to you, the anandtech technical writters for guidance on these matters. Is that really too much for your readers, and in this case me, to ask of you ? Give us DETAILS !
There are plenty of things I like about your web articles, but as far as actually learning anything technical . . . this has not happend for me here in quite some time, if ever.
And once again please fix your comment section timeout error . . . gets really annoying.
JarredWalton - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
I should also point out, if you weren't aware, that most of us focus on specific areas. Right now, I'm primarily looking at laptops and displays, with an occasional buyer's guide or system review. SAS might interest some of you, but that's not even remotely interesting to me and hence it's not in my area of expertise. SATA port multipliers also don't concern me, as I rarely use more than two HDDs in a system. Personally, I think a look at how the mobile platforms from AMD and Intel compare to each other is going to be far more interesting to a larger audience than a look at something like SAN, SAS, or what have you - not that someone from AT might not cover the other areas, but I can pretty much guarantee it won't be me.Overclocking is something we've also covered in the past, and pretty much every motherboard article provides a reasonable amount of information on the subject. given that OC'ing is pretty BIOS/platform specific, it belongs there more than in a separate article. I think there will be some additional information on the topic in some upcoming reviews, but I don't know that anyone is planning on a separate "How To" article. (We haven't done many of those.)
--Jarred
yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
Also, I think it would be good, if while covering different products, that it would be good if anandtech would list the pro's and con's of each aspect of a subject. If anyone is like myself, 'we' do not bothing reading most of he article, because it is either boring, obvious, or is just otherwise not nessisary to read. This last aspect has nothing really to do with anandtechs ability to write an exiciting article(except perhaps that I personally find some to be long, and drawn out), and has more to do with the different aspects of the subjects mentioned.ltcommanderdata - Saturday, October 6, 2007 - link
Well, I guess as you point out the Vista drivers for the GMA X3100 are still immature. I'm not even sure the 15.6/15.6.1 Vista drivers even enable hardware DX9.0c support like the XP drivers does since the Vista release notes have never mentioned it being added. Anyways, I'm definitely looking forward to those XP results with the GMA X3100. I hope you will use the 14.31.1 drivers since it fixed the hardware/software acceleration toggle problem with the 14.31 drivers.