Mobile Buyers' Guide: 14" and Larger Notebooks and DTRs
by Dustin Sklavos on June 30, 2010 12:53 AM ESTBudget Gaming Notebook: Acer Aspire 5740G-6979
This one wound up being a very easy choice; a quick run through Newegg was evidence of that. Our budget gaming machine is the Acer Aspire AS5740G-6979 we reviewed a few months ago. The intervening period has seen new notebooks from many other manufacturers, but none has managed to hit the staggeringly low $750 price point Acer did. It is simply the most gaming notebook you can get for the price, and one of the cheapest notebooks equipped with a Mobility Radeon HD 5650.
For those needing a refresher of the Aspire AS5740G-6979's specs, it comes with a robust Intel Core i5-430M chip running both cores at 2.26 GHz, 4GB of DDR3, and a 500GB hard drive. In our own testing, we found the 5650 to perform quite well at the low 1366x768 native resolution of the AS5740G's screen. Just about every game we tested was playable at high settings, though DirectX 11 support wound up being more of a checkbox feature than something useful in practice.
There's very little to say about this notebook that we didn't already cover in our review, but if you're on a dire budget you aren't going to be able to find more power than this for $749, and the fact that it's sold out on Newegg at the time of this writing should give some indication as to the kind of borderline-Faustian bargain the AS5740G-6979 (complete with catchy title) provides.
Update: The 5740G-6979 appears to have been so popular that it is now sold out and discontinued! In it's place you can readily find the 7740G-6364 with similar components but a 17.3" 1600x900 LCD for $800. We've listed a few other alternatives in the comments, but really nothing comes close to the price/performance of the 5740G anymore. The updated 5740G-5309 is less expensive but comes with an HD 5470, so it's a big step down in gaming potential.
Budget Gaming Runner Up: MSI GX640
Let's be honest: $1100 doesn't exactly qualify as “budget”, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a GPU as powerful as the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 in anything cheaper than the MSI GX640. The 5850 is easily one of the fastest mobile GPUs available, and MSI makes great use of it with a high-resolution 1680x1050 screen. We weren't hugely impressed with the notebook's looks or its keyboard, and the price is a major jump from our primary recommendation, but again...it's awful hard to beat a Mobility Radeon HD 5850—a card powerful enough to actually make use of DirectX 11—for $1100.
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hko45 - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
So this has boiled down to Nvidia vs ATI.My decision tree: Need multiple monitors at home site coming off of identical ports. As far as I could tell, Dell's E-Port Plus is the only reasonably priced docking station that does this. This leaves me with Latitude or Precision laptops. Having had PhotoShop complain about insufficient RAM when I tried to stitch together five large NEF images (and knowing that PP will use all the RAM you will give it), the M6500 seemed to be the best choice. While its not clear that PP takes full advantage of multiple cores (now) like Premiere does, a future-proofed i7 quad processor fits in quite nicely. So my choice is the M6500, and it only offers FX Quadro cards. As for PP only using OpenGL, I'm willing to bet that Premiere's use of CUDA will trickle down to other members of the Creative Suite--certainly within the three year time frame I'm using to drive my purchase decisions, if not by CS6.
aylafan - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
You forgot to mention that the Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG 14" laptop is available in the US right now. It's one of the most anticipated laptops besides the Envy 14. A great mix between performance and battery life.The one out right now has a Core i3 350M, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650, 4GB DDR3, 320GB harddrive, optical drive, etc.
Black brushed aluminium lid, 6-8 hours of battery life, less than 1" thin, weighs 4.65 pounds & it has switchable graphics (HD 5650 + Intel GMA).
All this for just the price of $799.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results....
geek4life!! - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
I went to my local Best Buy today to look at the 13.3 inch screen sizes as I was thinking about the Asus U30Jc but that screen is too small for me. I found the 14 inch to be a great balance between size and portability. With that said I look forward to more reviews and hopefully that refresh will arrive for the back to school season.aylafan - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
You should look at the Asus UL80JC at Best Buy. It's a 14" laptop and it costs only $699. Core i3 & switchable graphics.aylafan - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
I meant UL80J. I was confusing the name with the U30JCgeek4life!! - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Thanks I will definitely check it out!!!!!!!!!!!!numberoneoppa - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Can somebody please tell me why 14" thinkpads were not included in this article? They are by far the most iconic 14" laptop.dumpsterj - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
I actually placed an order for an alienware m11x just a couple days ago (interest free for a year) . My asus F3SV has been a great companion for almost 3 or 4 years now but its 8600gs is having a hard time with bad company 2. I decided to replace both my netbook and laptop with one and the m11x seems to fit the bill. Cant wait to get it (07/15)Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Can you guys do some testing of notebook IGP performance with single and dual channel memory configurations? Also, could you shed some light on these 3GB AMD configurations. (Do they run in dual channel mode?)JarredWalton - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
The last AMD laptop we looked at with 3GB (Acer Ferrari One) did not run in dual-channel, but that was a Congo platform. Unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose) I don't have any 1GB SO-DIMMs around anymore, and all the laptops pretty much come with 4GB now. It would be interesting to see if the new Danube/Nile platforms with DDR3 are able to do dual-channel even with uneven memory sizes, though. Intel can do that but AMD hasn't allowed it for whatever reason. I don't think the difference will be more than 5~10% but without testing, who knows for sure?