CyberpowerPC's Compal NBLB2: Affordable Gaming
by Dustin Sklavos on December 21, 2010 5:50 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- AMD
- Intel
- CyberPowerPC
- Compal
Gaming Performance
With the AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5650 essentially off the chain, let's see how it fares compared to NVIDIA's recent 400 series GeForces in our "Low" setting gaming suite. Also keep an eye on the same GPU when coupled to the Athlon II P520.
At these CPU-limited settings the NBLB2 essentially takes on all comers, even producing playable performance in nearly every game at the native 1080p resolution. While the GeForce GTS 350M should be more powerful and is generally considered a higher class part, at least on paper, the i7-740QM it's strapped to could be bogging it down. The Acer 5551G also sits back anywhere from 10% (STALKER) to as much as 45% slower (BFBC2) thanks to the CPU deficit. What happens when we ratchet up to our "Medium" preset?
Performance is again excellent, and the 5650 trades blows with NVIDIA's lineup, new and old. In most games the NBLB2 is overall able to provide playable performance even at 1080p. That said, performance isn't entirely smooth at that native resolution, and with most games you may want to back down to 1600x900; 1080p seems to push the bandwidth-limited GDDR3 too hard, and this is true with either vendor's graphics hardware. AMD's P520 remains a noticeable bottleneck even at medium detail, with the i7-640M delivering anywhere from 6% (STALKER again) to 36% (BFBC2—or 31% in SC2) better frame rates. That gap will finally disappear at our 900p High settings, though.
When we get to our "High" preset, the NBLB2 falters: the 5650 just can't take the increased stress. This is true of all the parts in this class, as evidenced by the performance of the high-end GPUs. At this point it doesn't matter what processor the 5650 is paired up with, because it's entirely GPU-limited.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - link
Apple went full glass on the top. Every designer of cheap laptops slavishly emulated the shiney bit as cheaply as could be done. Clueless PHBs then decided shiney was in and forced the rest of their designers to commit the same crime or be fired.JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - link
I dislike the "edge-to-edge" glossy approach just as much as regular glossy; in fact, putting a glossy sheet over an LCD (typically with a small gap between them) is just brain dead. It's a case of two wrongs making a bigger wrong.Pylon757 - Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - link
Then get a Thinkpad or a comparable business laptop (e.g. Dell Latitude or HP Elitebook). Those don't compromise on usability and most are all-matte.5150Joker - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - link
With a 5650m GPU, you can hardly call it gaming worthy. Sure it's better than Intel integrated graphics but it's definitely not considered mid range in the notebook world. A midrange graphics chip in the notebook world is an nVidia GTX 260M or it's equivalent. The 5650 falls quite short of that.JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - link
I'd say GTX 260M is more of a high-end mobile GPU. It's not in the dream category like GTX 480M, but for mobile graphics it's in the upper echelon. HD 5650 is a good "midrange" mobile GPU, but it's really an entry-level gaming GPU. The 1080p LCD is a bit of a problem for 5650 as well if you're playing games, but again you need substantially more expensive GPU and everything else to make that happen.5150Joker - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - link
The 260M these days is mid range in terms of gaming video cards available. The top end consists of GTX 480M, GTX 470M, GTX 470M, AMD 5870m, 5850m. 2nd tier would be 4870m, GTX 280M and third tier is 260M (mid range by performance). The 5650 is even lower on the scale of performance thus IMO doesn't constitute mid range at all. It's lower mid range if anything. In January we're going to see even faster GPU's released so that will push the 5650 down even lower.synaesthetic - Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - link
For the most part I agree with this... the lack of GDDR5 is a problem with these midrange mobile GPUs... even the desktop 5750 has a gig of GDDR5.At stock clocks the 5650 isn't very impressive, but if you get a good one it can OC like a champ. My 5650 running at 850/900 clocks can give the Mobility Radeon 5830 a run for its money (10k 3dmark06). Yeah, I know benchmarks mean mostly jack, but this chip is great for the price, especially if you're a light game such as myself.
bennyg - Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - link
I agree - the GTX 260M is a cut-down high-end GPU, kind of the low end of the high end. Kind of the "4830" concept rather than "4670"... I am of course referring to a very short space of time when number names had some kind of internal consistency with the product-space-concept the product was occupying :/The core of the issue I think is the challenge to compare technology from different generations or model years - there is relative performance at release (where the 55nm G92b derivative chips were king), then there is relative performance right now (where they're still more powerful than 40nm midrange from both camps but not by very much), after it's been superceeded by a generation or two.
All I know as an individual, my (un-underclocked...) GTX260M runs the games I play at 1080p with good enough quality to keep me happy.
frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - link
A decent system, but the 1199.00 price is way out of line. For this, you can get the Asus G73 model at Best buy, and that has a mobility HD5870 and a 1.73Ghz quad core in a 17 inch chasis.If the NBLB2 is available for 899.00 as the artice stated it might be, then I would consider it.
warisz00r - Wednesday, December 22, 2010 - link
Would you be able to get the G73 with a 1080p panel at the same price? No? I guess as much.