AMD and Intel Mobile Rematch: Gateway NV5933u vs. Acer 5542
by Jarred Walton on June 18, 2010 1:14 AM ESTGaming Performance in Perspective
We tested nine moderately recent releases, and here the performance comparison between AMD and Intel change somewhat. Where AMD leads at 800x600, Intel takes the lead in every title at 1366x768, with the exception of Bad Company 2 where Intel's drivers still need updating. Our best guess is that the AMD platform is becoming bandwidth limited. The Tigris notebooks use DDR2-800 memory, which in dual-channel configurations is good for 12.8GB/s of bandwidth shared between the CPU and GPU. Intel is using DDR3-1066, which bumps the total bandwidth up to 17.1GB/s, and in certain titles (FEAR2 for example) the extra bandwidth appears to help quite a bit.
Of course, looking at the frame rates only two of the nine titles are playable at these settings: Empire: Total War and STALKER: Call of Pripyat. They also look more like 2006/2007 titles at minimum detail, which is in line with our recommendation of gaming potential for these systems. Older titles and casual games are okay on current IGPs (Sims 2/3 and Spore all run fine at low/medium detail and 1366x768), but anything more demanding pushes the hardware too far. Sandy Bridge and Fusion can't come fast enough.
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Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Athlon II P320 15" notebook on newegg for $400. No rebates. The deal expired quickly, but there will be more. I think it is a safe bet that AMD 25W dual core notebooks are going to be easily found all summer long for $400, and probably $300 by the time back-to-school starts. And I predict that next you will compare a P320 to a i330 that still costs twice as much.Roland00 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
While the p320 is a better battery life processor. Newegg also has the lenovo g555 (same laptop as the fry's ad) for $379.99 with free shipping (and no tax in most states).Only 3gb of memory and 160gb harddrive, but still $379.99
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Next up is a Toshiba with Phenom II P920 quad-core (25W) with switchable HD 5650 graphics. I'm not sure it's the best option out there for AMD, but it's what AMD is sending me. It will at least be interesting to see how performance compares against i5-430M with the same GPU, and I'm told that the HD 4200 mode with the P920 will actually deliver better battery life than the M600/M300 stuff. We shall see.Personally, I would *love* to get one of the $400 P320 laptops for testing, but that's not happening yet unless I go and buy one. And we might just do that....
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, June 24, 2010 - link
Wow a 1.6GHz quad core with 512k cache? I can already see that thing getting walloped by a SU7300 in everything except video encoding. (And who would do that on a notebook?)Has it occured to you that Intel makes backroom deals with companies to get them to send reviewers only these oddball AMD notebook configurations specifically to make AMD look bad? Despite losing a billion dollars by engaging in these tactics, I am sure that Intel regards it as merely a cost of doing business. No doubt they've made $10 billion through these shady tactics.
Roland00 - Thursday, June 24, 2010 - link
512k cache per core. 2mb total cache. AMD processors have each individual core possessing their own l2 cache. The new Core I series is the same way from intel. The old Intel Core2Duos and Core2Quads shared their l2 cache between 2 of the cores.Regardless 25w for 4 cores is extremely good energy wise per core. That is 6.5w per a 1.6 ghz single core or pretty much atom territory. Sadly the p520 (2.3 ghz dual core, 1 mb l2 cache per core, 2 mb l2 cache total) is going to be faster in most things, for not enough things are coded for quad cores yet.
JarredWalton - Thursday, June 24, 2010 - link
Actually, AMD sent this laptop after buying it from the manufacturer, so unless Toshiba somehow convinced AMD to send the A665, I doubt Intel had anything to do with the choice. It's doing okay on battery life (226 minutes idle with a 48Wh battery). Unfortunately, the notebook just died this morning (after less than 24 hours) while I was trying to watch the World Cup online (Flash video).I don't know if the laptop was just banged around in shipping, or if the GPU had a glitch, or what, but I do know that it is dead. It locked, I force restarted, and now the fans turn on and nothing ever shows up on the LCD. Weird. But a replacement is on the way, so the review should still come in the next 10 days or so.
Hrel - Thursday, June 24, 2010 - link
If someone could do a review on the laptop that I currently suspect is the best "bang for your buck" out there. It's made by compal, and available on Cyberpower.com who's machines you've reviewed before. If you'd like it configured like I did, which I think is the best bang for buck, do this: Go to the website. mouse over 15.6" Laptops and click on the $999 Xplorer X6-8500. It has a 1080p screen. (I'm not sure why the people who run this site do this, but even though the other configurations use the same chassis when personalized they come out to cost more than this one; annoying since it makes me configure all 3 or 4 machines built on the same base chassis to figure out which one is cheapest/best for me.) Then I configured it with the Core i7-620M CPU. (to get it over 1K so I can take advantage of the 5% off.) 4GB 0DDR3-1333, hopefully 7-7-7-21, probably not, but hopefully. ATI MR HD5650 1GB GDDR3 320GB 7200rpm HDD (I did this cause I'm gonna take that HDD out and use the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB, thanks for that review!!) Everything else on that page I left untouched. The only thing I did on page 2 was switch to Intel wifi with bluetooth; Though I'm curious if the MSI option is equal/better; 17 bucks isn't nothing. It has HDMI out and a fingerprint reader. This page says 3 USB ports, the specs sheet says 4USB ports; not sure which is true. (I do wish they were USB 3.0 ports, but I was hoping you guys would test some stuff and tell me if that even matters for use with an external hard drive, mechanical disk 7200rpm. Transferring large files like movies and games mostly.) On page 3 I select "none, format only" for the OS. And select "LCD perfect assurance" cause even 1 dead pixel is unacceptable to me. This brings the total to $1008.90 after 5% off, or $992.75 if you get the MSI network card. So yeah, I really hope you guys can get a hold of one of these for review; as a loner or given as a review unit or maybe someone will just buy one and review it cause it's really tempting me right now... like a lot! If you're review is good I'm gonna start saving up and hopefully be able to buy it around Christmas. Thanks guys! A loyal reader. - Brianshady28 - Sunday, June 27, 2010 - link
I went looking for a p920 review (quad core Phenom II for laptops) and all I'm seeing is a comparison of Intel's latest i3/i5 vs 2 year old Turion Ultra CPUs. I have a laptop I bought almost 2 years ago that is a Turion Ultra / 2.2Ghz with ATI 3200 video that is just as good as the AMD system in this comparison.
These quad core Phenoms are showing up for $700 at Wal-Mart with ATI 4250 GPUs. Wouldn't that be a more interesting comparison???