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Question concerning mid-range laptops (esp. Lenovo IdeaPad Z575)
Clifford1987
Member Posts: 29
Hi again everyone, sorry for my numerous threads, I'm just trying to find the right choice for myself, I just have one last query!
I believe I might purchase a mid-range laptop in order to play Star Wars: The Old Republic after all. All I require is that I can play the game on mid -> high settings and a stable fps. I will require a laptop next year for work anyway, so I may as well combine my needs for a portable word processor and casual MMO gaming.
I have heard people mention the Lenovo IdeaPad Z575 as a good choice (I believe Quizzical has mentioned it before) and is currently number 1 on my shortlist.
However after searching for the lowest possible price, most seem to be around £600, I appear to have found the same spec model with slight variations with the GPU, so my question is which version/website has the best possible GPU on offer out of these three? From what I can gather the £579.97 appears to offer the best, dedicated GPU and for the lowest price! So I gather I must be missing something..?
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/Lenovo_IdeaPad_Z575_1147675.html?gclid=CMLLrJ2yp60CFUUPfAodYFhsmg
Dedicated (AMD Radeon HD 6650M with 2GB Dedicated DDR RAM) = £579.97
http://www.ebuyer.com/288852-lenovo-ideapad-z575-laptop-m75d7uk
AMD Radeon HD 6620G (2GB) = £634.60
http://shop.lenovo.com/gbweb/gb/en/laptops/ideapad/z-series/z575
Radeon HD6740G2 2GB = £599.99
I have no idea which one offers the better GPU or if there even is much variation between the three.
Also, would I be able to hook this laptop up to a 5 year old 32" Panasonic LCD HDTV? Would the laptop be able to display games this way?
Thanks in advance!
Edit: After some additional researching from what I can gather the £579.97 option is a dedicated GPU, the £634.60 an on-board GPU and the £599.99 is a cross-fire GPU. So my question still stands, which would be best for playing Star Wars: TOR and general use?
Comments
I wasn't saying to get a Lenovo Z575 in particular. I was just trying to find something that had a Llano A8 APU in it and was available in Britain.
I realize that the second link is the one I linked yesterday. But I'm going to say: don't get that, as you've found some better deals.
The other two laptops have the same processor, but also have a discrete card. The first one has a Radeon HD 6650M as the discrete card, and the last one has a Radeon HD 6730M as the discrete card. Those are actually the same card, but at different clock speeds.
Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics has 5 SIMD engines clocked at 444 MHz. Radeon HD 6650M has 6 SIMD engines clocked at 500 MHz. Radeon HD 6730M has 6 SIMD engines clocked at 725 MHz. So the last link, from Lenovo's site, will be the fastest, and by a significant margin.
Now, there are drawbacks to having a discrete video card, too. It tends to add cost (though it mysteriously doesn't here) and weight. It will make the laptop run hotter while you're using the discrete card.
In many laptops with a discrete card, the laptop vendor has to make a choice of whether to keep the discrete card on all of the time, or to shut it off while idle to save on power consumption. The former kills your battery life by making the laptop use quite a bit of power at idle. The latter means that you have to switch back and forth between the integrated graphics and the discrete card, and it might not switch properly.
Worse, if you're switching between Intel integrated graphics and an AMD or Nvidia discrete card, you need two video drivers, and you need them to play nicely together. That's a tall order, when you consider that Intel has never had video drivers that played nicely with Intel's own hardware, let alone anything else. So there's a serious risk of driver problems.
You can avoid that by having all AMD graphics, with both the integrated graphics and the discrete card from AMD. That way, you get a unified video driver that knows what to do with both GPUs, and can get unified video driver updates from AMD alone without having to rely on Intel for anything.
That will give you the choice of whether to run the integrated graphics alone (which avoids the heat and power issues of a discrete card), the discrete card alone, or both GPUs at once in "asynchronous crossfire". The third option seems to be the default that Lenovo lists, but it's definitely the wrong option, as asynchronous crossfire only makes sense at all when the integrated graphics is about as fast as the discrete card, and often gives negative scaling (meaning, both at once is slower than one GPU alone). You'll probably want to use the integrated graphics for most things (most things mainly because it includes everything except gaming), and the discrete card for any games where you'd like more performance than the integrated graphics offers.
AMD's drivers will probably let you manually switch between the integrated graphics and the discrete card. However, what you'd really like is to be able to tell the drivers, use the discrete card for this list of games, and the integrated graphics for everything else. AMD's drivers don't allow that yet, but will do so starting with Catalyst 12.1 or 12.2, which will release early next year. (AMD's driver verson convention is year.month.)
To give you some idea of the performance you can expect, for the GPU, a Radeon HD 6730M is a little faster than a Radeon HD 5570:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/star-wars-gaming-tests-review,3087-4.html
For the processor, an A8-3500M GPU is maybe equivalent to a 2.3 GHz Phenom II X4:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/star-wars-gaming-tests-review,3087-8.html
The laptop uses a very low 1366x768 monitor resolution, so if Tom's Hardware is to be believed, you can expect about 50 frames per second with bloom off, low shaders, no AA, and everything else maxed. And then you can probably turn graphical settings up from there a ways, and figure out where your preferred balance between nice graphics and smooth frame rates is.
Furthermore, because you can turn the discrete card off entirely, the laptop should get you pretty good battery life. So I'm going to say, if that's your budget, then go ahead and get that. If you had £1000 to spend, then I'd argue that you should definitely get both a gaming desktop and a cheap laptop.
One thing I should warn you about is that a Llano processor will not perform well in single-threaded programs. Taking better advantage of more cores is definitely the way of the future, and having four cores available for that means that most future games should run for the next few years. But some won't, and even some older games will struggle. If you want to fire up EverQuest II, for example, then you'll have to turn settings down a ways because of a processor bottleneck.
It was good to hear a detailed breakdown of the pros, cons and general information about the different GPU laptops. The 6370M cross-fire from Levono themselves it is then
I wish I did have a £1000 budget and if so I would definitely take the route you mentioned and get two separate machines. Unfortunately I can currently only afford £600 at a major push, so as you mentioned I think this laptop is currently my best option.
I didn't know about its performance on single threaded programmes. Software wise I should be using standard, office packages and not much else. Gaming wise, other than TOR, the only old game I would be interested in are Rome: Total War, which I'm guessing is made for single threaded processors? But that's not a major make or break.
As to the Catalyst 12.1 or 12.2 released by AMD next year, would I be able to download those drivers onto the system, when released, and take advantage of listing programmes for onboard or discrete GPU use?
I didn't know you could manually turn the discrete GPU on or off, that's great news. I thought it would constantly be swopping between the two at will, which I thought might have caused some problems performance wise, glad I can manually tweak that
Yes, you can and should periodically update your video drivers--and should make sure you have the latest drivers as one of the first things you do on the new computer. You don't necessarily need to grab every single monthly update, but if the graphics aren't working the way you think they ought to, then getting the latest drivers is often one of the first things you should do.
Drivers for AMD graphics can be downloaded for free from AMD's web site. You implicitly pay for them when you buy AMD hardware, as it's understood that AMD will continue working on their drivers to improve performance, fix bugs, and so forth for the next few years. Well, I guess you can download them even if you don't have AMD hardware, but they'd be useless to people without the hardware. Nvidia does the same thing, of course. Intel should, but doesn't, which is one of the reasons why Intel graphics are so awful.
One more quick question. Occasionally I would like to hook up my laptop to my 5 year old 32" Panasonic LCD HDTV, would the laptop GPU be able to handle playing games through a screen of that increased size? I generally only use 720p resolution.
For performance, it's pixels that matter, not inches. 720p is a lower resolution than the laptop's built in monitor, so if anything, frame rates would tend to be higher, not lower.
As for plugging it into the laptop, you'd need to make sure that both the TV and laptop have an HDMI port, and that you have an HDMI cable to connect them. Televisions can sometimes be finicky if you try to use them as computer monitors, but it can usually be made to work.
I believe the laptop has a HDMI port, but if not I currently have a VGA to HDMI converter cable attached from my PC to the HDTV that works perfectly, so I can use that if need be
Thanks again Quizzical, you've been a great help and enabled me to pick the right hardware choice available for myself, without the help I'd have been completely lost. I'd have probably bought another shitty Dell that would have run the game on low settings, which wouldn't have been a great new years gift to myself!
I have two final warnings about the laptop before you get it:
First, the monitor resolution is 1366x768. 1366 pixels wide isn't a problem, but 768 high is awkward for some purposes, including many games. (720 pixels high on your television is even worse.) The resolution is pretty typical for budget laptops, and you might even be used to dealing with it. But it would be nice to have more vertical pixels.
Second, the hard drive is only 5400 RPM. That will make the laptop generally sluggish, and things will take a while to load. You might be used to slow hard drives like that, so that nothing will seem wrong, but it will be slower than some alternatives. Unfortunately, people who are clueless about computers can understand the difference between 750 GB and 500 GB, but not between 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM, so such people will usually prefer a 750 GB 5400 RPM hard drive over a 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drive--even though 90%+ of the general public would be better off with the latter. Laptop vendors have learned to sell what clueless customers will buy, rather than what they would buy if they knew what they were getting, so 5400 RPM hard drives are ubiquitous in laptops.
Now, neither of those are "you should buy something else" type of flaws. Rather, they're basically what you get on your budget. They're likely flaws that you can deal with, but you should be aware of them before buying the laptop. If you think the laptop is going to be super awesome, then, well, no, it's not. Super awesome doesn't fit in your budget.
You can check out how some games run on my ideapad Y460 on my channel at http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer.
I would fully recommend the Y series to you, one of my favorite laptops, Iv owned my Y for about a year now, in fact my year warranty just expired about 20 days ago, enjoyed every minute with it.
I havent payed much attension to the Z series cause its a 15.6 inch laptop, the Y series has a 14 inch laptop in it, the one i got, but it also has 15.6 inch as well.
If you would like some suggestions on running your game, especially SWTOR, which im currently enjoying, iv got 20 hours or so logged in, I got some helpfull tips. Using software to overclock your gpu like AMD GPU tools(its the actual name of the software), gamebooster 3.0(helps free up a bit of memory that doesnt need to be used while gaming along with some applications that bog down your processor), Fraps for fps counter and HwMonitor for watching your temps while you game are just a few of the things I do on a regular basis when ever I turn my Lenovo on to game.
You will definitely want to overclock your graphics processor for some gain with a game like SWTOR, so using AMD GPU Tools is probably the one you would most want to give a shot at trying out. It takes me 3dmark06 score from 7400 to around 8100 when I overclock it. With my graphics processor at least, the core is at 550 and the memory is at 800, I found not going over 700 with the core and 830 with the memory is as far as it will go so keep that in mind when you are overclocking. Also watching temps would be a must also when ever you game on any laptop, so using HWMonitor is an absolute must. I usually need to keep a fan circulating air in my room when I game heavily on my Ideapad as well as keep the bottom of it tiled up to allow the inlets to suck in air from the air thats being circulated. It keeps my temps 25 degrees cooler celcius so its a big gain. Also dont over heat your gaming room when you play also, electronics dont like furnaces.
Thanks for the advice eycel!
However I can't find any UK retailers selling the Y460 unfortunately and the Y series seems to be hard to track down. Even the UK Lenovo site does not sell any Y series laptops, very strange. What price range is the Y460 and general Y series?
From a specification breakdown, is there much difference between the Y460 and the Z575 I am looking at? What are the exact specs of your laptop? After having a look at your vidoes on youtube, if I could achieve similar/near to the graphics standard you have achieved in games I would be extremely happy! However I have no idea how the two compare and contrast.
From what I can gather the Y460 can switch between a Radeon HD 5650 and an Intel on-board GPU, does the fact that you have to switch between AMD and Intel cause any problems? Is the Radeon HD 5650 much more powerful than the Radeon HD 6740G2 (which is apparently a combination of Radeon HD 6730M and an integrated AMD AMD GPU)? I see they both have 8GB DDR3 RAM and a 5400rpm HDD, but other than that I am not sure about the differences.
Why have you skipped on a 15.6" screen over a 14"? Does that make a difference when it comes to gaming?
Thanks again for the input, its greatly appreciated.
Quizzical - Thanks for the final warnings. Having checked my current PC, I have a 5400rpm HDD and I am used to playing games at 720p, so I shall be used to those poor settings! I had a look around and most similar prices laptops also offer only 5400rpm sadly. I do not expect an amazing gaming laptop out of the Z575 and understand that it will have various limitations, but all I am really after is casual MMO and strategy gameplay from the machine, so hopefully this laptop will do the trick
Eycel - Thanks for all the advice in order to get the maximum out of the system. I'm guessing most of those techniques will work for the Z series as well? If so they will be great additions
"However I can't find any UK retailers selling the Y460 unfortunately and the Y series seems to be hard to track down. Even the UK Lenovo site does not sell any Y series laptops, very strange. What price range is the Y460 and general Y series?"
I'd hope that the Y460 is off the market by now, as the hardware is rather dated. Its successor seems to be the Y460p.
"From a specification breakdown, is there much difference between the Y460 and the Z575 I am looking at? What are the exact specs of your laptop?"
As compared to the Z575 that you're looking at, the Y460p offers a slower processor, a much slower video card, more probable video driver problems, and probably a similar price tag.
"From what I can gather the Y460 can switch between a Radeon HD 5650 and an Intel on-board GPU, does the fact that you have to switch between AMD and Intel cause any problems?"
Yep. It's not that switching between the graphics intrinsically has to cause problems, but there is a much greater risk of driver problems when switching between GPUs from two different vendors. It's also much harder to fix driver problems, since you can't just grab AMD's monthly driver updates. It's much easier for AMD to make drivers work right if the AMD drivers can see exactly what is going on in both GPU chips, rather than having to guess about an Intel GPU chip that doesn't entirely work right.
"s the Radeon HD 5650 much more powerful than the Radeon HD 6740G2 (which is apparently a combination of Radeon HD 6730M and an integrated AMD AMD GPU)?"
No. A Radeon HD 6730M is much faster than a Mobility Radeon HD 5650. It's a difference between 6 SIMD engines clocked at 725 MHz versus 5 SIMD engines clocked at 450 MHz. The 6730M is also a generation later, which made some architectural tweaks to further improve performance.
"Why have you skipped on a 15.6" screen over a 14"?"
Because that's the whole point of the Y460. You should understand that Eycel and I come in with different biases about what is important in a gaming laptop. I look for performance, price, reliability, and power consumption, but don't place much value on the form factor. Eycel puts a huge weight on having a smaller form factor, even if it means getting a laptop that is somewhat worse in every other conceivable way. Now, Eycel doesn't value form factor only, to the exclusion of all else; people who do that would get a Mac, or maybe one of Intel's horrible "ultrabooks"; he does want something that at least works for modest gaming.
There are industry standard form factors, and in order to have a "normal" discrete video card, a laptop must be 15.6" or larger. It's possible to put a "discrete" card in a smaller laptop by ditching the normal form factor and soldering some things directly onto the motherboard, so that all the hardware of the discrete card is present, except for the separate PCB. It works, but it's also cost++; which is why such laptops will lose badly as compared to what you can get in a 15.6" form factor if you compare purely on a price/performance/reliability basis.
If you have reason to strongly prefer a 14" form factor over 15.6", then you consider stuff like the Y460p or Y470. But unless you really need 14" as opposed to 15.6", there's no reason to even look at 14" laptops unless you're going integrated graphics only.
-----
As for Eycel's advice:
"Using software to overclock your gpu like AMD GPU tools"
You should note that there's a huge difference between overclocking a desktop and overclocking a laptop. On the one hand, in a desktop, you have to worry about electromigration frying parts, even if you can keep them cool. Regardless of temperature, chips can only handle so much clock speed and voltage without failing. That's much less of a concern in a laptop, because the same chips that go in desktops are clocked much lower. If a Mobility Radeon HD 5650 clocks a "Redwood" GPU chip at 450 MHz and a (desktop) Radeon HD 5670 clocks the same GPU chip at 775 MHz, then you could bump the laptop chip to anything up to 775 MHz without having to meaningfully worry about electromigration. Maybe higher than that, even, as the laptop chip probably has a lower voltage, though that will leave you a lower cap on how high you can clock it and keep it stable.
On the other hand, you should also stop to consider that the laptop card was clocked lower for a reason. In a desktop, you can easily stick a heatsink an inch thick on a card, with a good sized fan for plenty of airflow. In a laptop, you just can't do that, as it won't physically fit. The laptop can't safely dissipate nearly as much heat as the desktop. Furthermore, even if a given overclock is perfectly safe in one game that doesn't push the video card that hard, it could cause overheating and eventually kill the laptop in another game.
If Eycel overclocked his video card from 450 MHz to 650 MHz, that's probably not that dangerous so long as he's watching temperatures--and in particular, monitoring them very, very closely for a while every single time he picks up a new game. But with a Radeon HD 6730M starting at 725 MHz right out of the box, I'd advise against overclocking that further.
"gamebooster 3.0(helps free up a bit of memory that doesnt need to be used while gaming along with some applications that bog down your processor),"
That can help out if you're trying to run a laptop that only has 2 GB of memory or so, and struggling to find enough. But freeing up a bit of memory doesn't matter much when you've got 8 GB. The real solution is a clean install of the OS to get rid of bloatware that could bog down the system.
"Fraps for fps counter"
Not sure why you'd need an external program to track your frame rates. A lot of games have built-in ways to do that. And even if one doesn't, then what really matters is not the number that the software displays, but how smooth the game looks to you.
"HwMonitor for watching your temps while you game"
Check Catalyst Control Center first. Only if it won't show you the data there do you need to look for external programs. Obviously, AMD's drivers wouldn't be able to monitor an Intel processor, which is why Eycel would need an external program.
I see, that makes sense as to why I can't find that model anymore then! Looking at the results eycel has got from his laptop (thanks very much again eycel for posting your youtube videos, it was great to see SWTOR running on a laptop and the results possible) I am impressed, I would be very happy with those graphical standards, so if the Z575 packs a bit more of a punch I will be extremely content
Thanks for allaying my worries and after all the information you have given me + positive reviews I have found about the Levono IdeaPad Z575, I shall be ordering one in the next couple of days.
It meets all the standards I require and it will provide all the necessary features I need + it is the best laptop I think I can get in my budget range. Perfect option for me.
Thanks a lot for all the tips concerning whether to overclock or not, very useful information. I have appreciated all the detailed explanations, its great to hear why a certain piece of technology is considered worthy of purchasing or not, instead of just being told that something is merely "good or bad".
I shall make sure I monitor the hardware temperatures, hopefully the Catalyst Control comes with a monitoring system. The last thing I want to do is fry the new hardware.
Switchable graphics doesnt have anything to do with gaming, the only time I use the integrated processor is when I use "super energy saver" which is an option in window's 7 power management. That option uses the integrated processor, none of the other power management options does. I do use it alot though when running battery, so its nice having the integrated processor for when you need to get more battery life out of your laptop.
As for why I didnt go for a larger machine, Iv already got a 16.1 inch alienware laptop, also Im really into the 13.3-14.5 inch laptops now, there some of the best bang for your buck, but having a smaller laptop is what I wanted. Also one killer laptop to look at is the new Asus U46 laptop, that thing is slick and Im sure its available where you live, although its a bit more expensive you can probably find a good deal on it if you look, it is 14 inch laptop also though. Remember, if you really want a larger screen, every laptop that I know of comes with some kinda external monitor support, mostly HDMI but some come with displayport as well. My laptop works great on the 42 inch Sony Bravio LCD tv, I have a video of it on my channel if you want to see how that works as well here.
Most the time In the US at least, the Y series is probably the best deal you can find anywhere for a brand new laptop with dedicated gaming graphics. A lot of the time you can get a full configured one for around 649.00$ before tax/shipping.
Here is a few details on that graphics card option your refering too, there saying a few thinngs like driver support and microstutering. I cant say for sure how it would work out for you since I never used the crossfire enabled G2 cards, I wouldnt mind having one though although for the beginer it might be best to go with a single card and the seperate integrated.
"Switchable graphics doesnt have anything to do with gaming,"
Only in the sense that trying to update your video drivers doesn't have anything to do with gaming.
"the only time I use the integrated processor is when I use "super engergy saver" which is an option in windowes 7 power management."
I guess that one way around the awfulness of Intel graphics is to never use them. That will kill your battery life, though.
You know what's better than having a discrete card? Not needing one. Everything except games will run very well on Llano's integrated graphics. Some games will, too, if they're light on hardware use. I wouldn't try it with SWTOR in particular, unless you need to game on the battery for some reason.
"Also one killer laptop to look at is the new Asus U46 laptop,"
Unless, of course, you want to play games, in which case the Intel graphics in some models will be a big problem. The ones with a GeForce GT 540M may dodge that bullet, but if you're going to pay the same price tag as the Lenovo Ideapad Z575, then there's no need to settle for 2/3 of the performance.
"Most the time In the US at least, the Y series is probably the best deal you can find anywhere for a brand new laptop with dedicated gaming graphics."
Unless, of course, you want to consider price/performance.
But if it's not going to perform much better than integrated graphics, why bother with the discrete card?
"I cant say for sure how it would work out for you since I never used the crossfire enabled G2 cards, I wouldnt mind having one though although for the beginer it might be best to go with a single card and the seperate integrated."
There's no real drawback to having asynchronous crossfire as an option. It's easy enough to turn it off--which you should, by the way.
Thanks for all your help and advice.
Unfortunately the price on the official site has risen an incredible amount since New Year (increased over £200!) so I bought the same model from another site:
http://www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk/catalogue/item/P120761P
It has the same manufacture/model number along with the AMD Radeon HD 6740G2 GPU. And it was only £30 more than the price I was initially going to pay, so it didn't turn out too bad.
As far as I am aware they are the exact same model? The specs looked identical so I didn't hesitate and purchased the laptop. But I just had a sudden slight worry that the laptop I purchased may differ from the one on the official site. Are they the exact same laptop?
Looks the same to me.
Apparently that laptop has a blu-ray drive, too, which adds to the cost of building it. It looks like the discrete card has 2 GB of video memory, which is rather dumb for that level of performance and monitor resolution. 2 GB of DDR3 isn't nearly so bad as 2 GB of GDDR5, though, since DDR3 doesn't put out very much heat. The extra GB of DDR3 might only add $5 or so to the cost of building.
Now, as a consumer, you could argue that you only care about how much you have to pay, and not what it costs to build the machine. But those are inexorably related in the long run. What we really need is a way to get the same sort of customization in laptops that you can get in desktops.
Yeah its a shame you cannot choose customization options for laptops. A few alterations would have been nice, but hopefully this piece of hardware should do the trick!
Hey, just a quick update about the laptop!
I have had the Laptop a couple of days now and it performs even better than I would have expected!! Thank you very much everyone for all your help and advice (a big shout to Quizzical!)
I haven't got SWTOR yet, I have just started a new job this week and I would prefer to become integrated before I get stuck into the world of MMO (I know first hand the addictive nature of these games!). I will pick it up in a few weeks or so.
I have however installed Shogun 2: Total War and it performs amazingly well! I was expecting to run the game on low settings, but with various tweaks to the hardware management I have managed to run it on high settings with various features turned down to medium (and shadows low). It performs smoothly with solid fps, I couldn't have asked for more.
So I'm sure SWTOR will run with no problems
Thanks again everyone!