ASUS X72D/K72DR: Three Cores, No Waiting
by Dustin Sklavos on October 25, 2010 12:01 AM ESTGaming on the X72D
Given the—let's be generous and say "humble"—ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 the ASUS X72D hands the heavy-lifting off to, we're not expecting miracles and as such have chosen our test suite accordingly. For the 5470 we're using our "Low" preset, but because the X72D is a 17" notebook with a 1600x900 screen, we've tested at that resolution as well. The 750MHz core clock on the 5470 means this is about as fast as this GPU is going to get, but you'll see that's not quite enough for gaming at 1366x768 and nowhere near enough for gaming at 1600x900.
First, our 3DMark benches.
In some cases, the 5470 seems to be limited by the Phenom II; the Studio 14 has a slower core clock on the GPU but a much faster processor, making most of the results a wash.
Well, the 5470 can game, sort of. StarCraft II generally cedes victory to the Radeons at Low assuming no major CPU bottlenecks (like, say, a 1.6 GHz quad core Phenom II), so no surprises there. But keep in mind these settings are pretty much as low as these games can go, and frankly StarCraft II looks horrible at these settings—imagine the original game, in 3D, but with textures from 10 years back and you get the idea. The Mobility Radeon HD 5470 is still miles away from catching up with mainstream class GPUs, though. It picks on the GeForce G 310M pretty liberally, but that's like winning a race with a three-legged horse because the other competitors are dead.
Which raises the same complaints we had when we reviewed the U35Jc and the GeForce G 310M: entry-level GPUs are terrible, offering little value over integrated options. On the X72D, this problem is made more egregious by three things: first, as I've mentioned before, the Radeon HD 5470 is a joke on any platform. Our next generation part has the same number of shaders as its predecessor, and worse, because of DirectX 11 support those shaders are actually slower. So in practice, the difference between the 5470 and last generation's Mobility Radeon HD 4570 is like night and night. But wait, there's more!
The X72D is using AMD's RS880 chipset, which means it already had perfectly serviceable integrated graphics to begin with in the form of the Radeon HD 4290. Since the 5470 just doesn't offer enough gaming performance to merit its inclusion over the IGP (let alone its existence), it's difficult to figure out why it's even here. The 5470 isn't capable of better Blu-ray playback than the 4290—okay, it can bitstream HD audio, but otherwise they're equal—so that's no justification either.
And finally, this is a 17" notebook. In a chassis this size, there's just no reason not to include a Mobility Radeon HD 5650, especially when Acer is happy to offer one in a competing notebook at just $699. The Acer Aspire AS7551G may have one of the worst keyboards on the market and be missing a Blu-ray drive, but in terms of gaming performance it's a far better deal. If Acer can hit that price point, there's no reason ASUS couldn't put a 5650 in the X72D.
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lammers42 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Would you guys at Anandtech stop screwing around with 6-cell 48Whr battery laptops that have larger than 14 inch screens. No matter what CPU and GPU combination are used, these laptops are crap and typically don't have over 2.5 hrs of battery life. I think the 6 cell 48Whr batteries have there place in <15.6 in laptops. In 15.6-16 inch laptops a minimum 6-cell 60Whr battery should be used and the jump to 17.3 inch should grant the use of a 9-cell battery.Batteries have battery curves and have different runtimes depending on the load put on the battery. Batteries from different manufactures with the same spec aren't the same, period. Maybe it would help to use a general purpose battery with special connector to connect to the laptops for the battery test life. I don't feel I can trust the relative battery life performance table as it is in its present state. Or just show the power consumed from the wall for the different idle, internet and multimedia testing. I think I would much rather see that and then I would know what battery to order when I purchase the laptop.
I wish the manufacturers wouldn't put the crappy 48Whr batteries in these > 15.6 inch laptops, but you can request them to only send those sizes to you.
lammers42 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Sorry, I meant to say that you can request the manufacturers to not send you those laptops that exceed 14 inch screens but still have a a 6-cell 48Whr battery or equivalent.JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Many of the laptops we receive don't even have an option for a larger battery. Personally, I'm with you: 6-cell batteries should all be "extended capacity" 63Wh or so models. But we do check wear levels with HWmonitor and our "relative battery life" is at least something more to consider. The fact is, even if you have two laptops with the same specs and the same battery, BIOS tweaks and other power saving utilities can enable one manufacturer to offer superior battery life. ASUS' Power4Gear actually does quite well in that regards, but obviously pairing it up with a discrete-only GPU and a tri-core AMD CPU is far more than a 48Wh battery can handle.lammers42 - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
Seriously! I only know of one option out there to buy an AMD laptop with a decent battery (I'm not talking the extended runtime batteries that look like the laptop has a tumor growing out the back). Certain configurations of the DV7 comes with the 9-cell 93Whr battery that supposedly gives 5-7 hours of battery life but details are sketchy at best for the configuration tested. If you guys have a chance request the DV7-4060US and/or DV7-4170US. I'm sure there are a few of us here that would love to see the relative battery life of those laptops!JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
The HP Envy has been on request for months, so don't hold your breath for a DV7 to come our way! LOL. Funny thing is, we can get HP to send us their business laptops, but getting consumer laptops from them is like pulling teeth from a grizzly bear.Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
That's not true. At least the grizzly bear responds. ;)shady28 - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
I have a hard time seeing why this laptop is being used to represent the AMD price / performance line.The K72DR is indeed an $850 laptop at NewEgg.
However, for $679 you can get an Acer with a phenom II x3 850 that's slightly faster, and with a Radeon 5650 GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
And, for $750, you can get an Acer 17.3" laptop with a quad core Phenom II 2.1Ghz with a Radeon 5650 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Clearly the K72DR is just not up to snuff compared to competition within Acer's own line.
I'd say either of the 2 laptops I listed above are a much better representative of what you can get for 650-750 $ using AMD, especially the Quad core AS7552G-6061,