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Hey, college student here with a very small budget looking for a decent laptop with a dedicated graphics card. (I so enjoy a little bit of CoD 4/MW2/MW3 in my free time, but I can't afford both a desktop with a laptop. Besides, my dorm room will be smaller than the average jail cell)
I've been trying around the upgrades options via the HP/Dell sites, but upgrades via OEM are RIPOFFS. Sony tries to charge $70 to put in a second 4 GB RAM slot to upgrade it to 8. Really? I can buy 4GB RAM with lifetime warranty for $22 on Newegg. So instead I've been looking at Newegg.com's selection of laptops, and I've narrowed it down to these two:
Lenovo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246328
Acer: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215408
All I want is something that can run the CoD series on medium (Right now I'm running an Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB with an Athlon II X2 215 desktop so either of them would be an improvement). The Acer does have a 2 GB card, but from what I hear, the card will probably never use that much so I checked the stats of the 1 GB NVidia 630M vs AMD Radeon HD 6650. The Radeon wins by about 9% according to various tests (that's not even counting the fact that I can Crossfire the APU with the Radeon card). The Acer also has 4 GB less RAM, but I'm fine with shelling out $22 for another 4 GB stick (though I am using 3 GB right now and it seems sufficient for everything). The main sticking point is the processor. The i5 is obvious much faster than the A6, but I'm wondering if the A6-3420M will be enough. I have seen the posts and I know that it suffers from a weird bug, but that's fine, I'm planning on undervolting/overclocking it if I do buy it. However, 1.5 GHz base seems quite low, it's a quad and benchmarks around 2200. My current Athlon is a dual is pulls 1500. I'm afraid that the single thread performance will be low and the CPU might not even be enough to run the CoD series even when overclocked, or I'd just suffer from lag in my normal day to day tasks.
Advice? Like I said, both GPUs are miles ahead of my current one (I have to disable lighting effects via hacks when I play CoD so I can get above 25 FPS). The Acer is another $120 (plus the extra $20 for the RAM I'll have to buy) over the Lenovo, but I'm just not sure if the A6-3420M will cut it for me. On the other hand, I keep thinking that for $620, I can go build a great desktop running an i5-2500k overclocked plus a Radeon 6750. I find my current Athlon enough for everything (programming is 90% of what I use my computer for and it really doesn't require much power). Have any of use actually used the A6-3420M? Is it fast enough for general every day use without lag and CoD?
I've been trying around the upgrades options via the HP/Dell sites, but upgrades via OEM are RIPOFFS. Sony tries to charge $70 to put in a second 4 GB RAM slot to upgrade it to 8. Really? I can buy 4GB RAM with lifetime warranty for $22 on Newegg. So instead I've been looking at Newegg.com's selection of laptops, and I've narrowed it down to these two:
Lenovo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246328
Acer: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215408
All I want is something that can run the CoD series on medium (Right now I'm running an Radeon X1300 Pro 256 MB with an Athlon II X2 215 desktop so either of them would be an improvement). The Acer does have a 2 GB card, but from what I hear, the card will probably never use that much so I checked the stats of the 1 GB NVidia 630M vs AMD Radeon HD 6650. The Radeon wins by about 9% according to various tests (that's not even counting the fact that I can Crossfire the APU with the Radeon card). The Acer also has 4 GB less RAM, but I'm fine with shelling out $22 for another 4 GB stick (though I am using 3 GB right now and it seems sufficient for everything). The main sticking point is the processor. The i5 is obvious much faster than the A6, but I'm wondering if the A6-3420M will be enough. I have seen the posts and I know that it suffers from a weird bug, but that's fine, I'm planning on undervolting/overclocking it if I do buy it. However, 1.5 GHz base seems quite low, it's a quad and benchmarks around 2200. My current Athlon is a dual is pulls 1500. I'm afraid that the single thread performance will be low and the CPU might not even be enough to run the CoD series even when overclocked, or I'd just suffer from lag in my normal day to day tasks.
Advice? Like I said, both GPUs are miles ahead of my current one (I have to disable lighting effects via hacks when I play CoD so I can get above 25 FPS). The Acer is another $120 (plus the extra $20 for the RAM I'll have to buy) over the Lenovo, but I'm just not sure if the A6-3420M will cut it for me. On the other hand, I keep thinking that for $620, I can go build a great desktop running an i5-2500k overclocked plus a Radeon 6750. I find my current Athlon enough for everything (programming is 90% of what I use my computer for and it really doesn't require much power). Have any of use actually used the A6-3420M? Is it fast enough for general every day use without lag and CoD?
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