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  • hsew - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link

    Wow, I must have been asleep longer than I thought! Does it support DirectX 47 and come with 24 EB of GDDR29 like they said it would? All while consuming 14nW at full load?
  • JarredWalton - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link

    I could tell you, but then the time travel police would be all over me. Sorry for the spoiler; please check back in 60 years for the full review!
  • hsew - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link

    I second the hopes that you get your hands on a G53SW. Specifically the XN1 model. I am curious as to whether or not it supports dual hard disks.
  • z3r0slugfm - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    The G53SW does support dual hard drives and specifically the XN1 models come with the 2nd hdd caddy already installed.
  • Iketh - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    I've been eyeballing the dell XPS 17" with a GT555M for a few weeks now... you can upgrade to the 2720qm and XFi sound as well as a few other upgrades and it comes out around $1550 (back-lit keyboard is stock)... please, please, PLEASE include results with a GT555M, I'm just not ready to pull the trigger yet (since I'd love to get this laptop with a 6970M instead). Screw optimus...
  • Iketh - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    I'd like to add also that the G73 has superior cooling and may contribute to the higher scores from higher turbo clocks... it vents the entire chassis...
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    True, but in looking at the individual subtest scores, it's the storage benchmarks that are all about twice as fast on the ASUS G73SW and K53E. It makes me wonder if somehow the other laptops are only running the SATA drives in a reduced performance mode. Anyway, nothing I tried improved scores on any of the laptops, but ASUS consistently came out on top. I don't think the U41JF had the same performance benefit, though... I'd have to rerun the tests to verify.
  • DanNeely - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    With the weaker clocks and lower core count the 555 is only going to have above 55-60% of the 560's performance in shader intensive games, and you take a similar sized hit from DDR3. Going the other direction its shading power is only about 20% higher than the 550. On paper it looks rather disappointing.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    I think you got your numbers a bit mixed up, and you're probably talking about the GTX 460M and not a non-existent (an laptops) 560M. Anyway, the GTX 460M has 52.5% more *theoretical* shader performance than the GT 555M, and if you're looking at the GDDR5 model of the 555M, it has 20% more memory bandwidth. Or the reverse is that the 555M has 65% (worst case) of the 460's core performance. In actual games, you can see that the GT 540M (which is another 20% slower than the 555M) does reasonably well at moderate settings.
  • DanNeely - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    I went off of the table in wikipedia, with a bit of extra googling the 560m appears to've paper launched last month with the first laptops using it expected at the end of this month. The main difference appears to be that the 560m will have shaders 100mhz faster.
  • strikeback03 - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - link

    One of the grad students I work with just bought an XPS 17 with the 3GB 555M for doing CUDA work, it has the 144 shader/DDR3 version of the 555M. Also, there don't seem to yet be proper drivers for using CUDA 4.0 with Optimus
  • Bolas - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    I'm waiting for a high end gaming notebook with a sandy bridge core i7 quad core cpu, dual high end gpu's, and a 120 Hz IPS screen. Is that so much to ask?
  • tmacfan4321 - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Is the Alienware M18x not good enough for you?

    BTW, 120Hz IPS displays are rare in monitor form. You're dreaming if you think that laptop manufacturers are going to be able to pull that one off.
  • Bolas - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    and of course, a backlit keyboard.
  • Gnarr - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    holy jeebus MSI GT680R is one ugly computer... :S

    And on that note, I really like the simplistic and clean "no design" of the Cyberpower's case. If they had only skipped the glossy besel and had a backlit keyboard and maybe a little bit bigger touchpad, it would have been a really nice computer.
  • tmacfan4321 - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    If I owned an HM150, I'd probably take out the LCD and sand down the bezel. It would make the laptop a lot more aesthetically pleasing.
  • jefeweiss - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Looks like there's a missing paragraph under the photo gallery on the first page
  • jefeweiss - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Oops, sorry it's on the Doing the time warp page....
  • kevith - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Why is it, that RAID 0 constantly is referred to in reviews like this, when every article or test I have ever read - your own here at Anandtech inclusive -ends up stating, that it has only theoretical effect, if any.
  • tmacfan4321 - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    The Lenovo W520 hits on about all of those features that the author wants in a laptop with the exception of the price and sound quality. I ordered a heavily discounted W520 for $1500. The specs were as follows: i7-2720QM, NVIDIA Quadro 2000M with Optimus (GTX 460M with 128-bit bus), matte FHD screen with 95% color gamut (same panel as the RGB-LED Dell LCD), 4GB of RAM, 500GB 7200RPM HDD.

    The backlit keyboard isn't there, but there is the ThinkLight on the top of the display. The GPU is slightly slower than the GTX 460M because of its 128-bit bus and its Quadro BIOS. The battery life is awesome, due to Optimus. The build quality is stellar because it's a Thinkpad.

    Normally that config will run you around $2000. That's the only problem.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Yeah, the price is the big sticking point, plus I'd still rather have a GeForce 460M + Optimus instead of the Quadro 2000M. I'm not sure why NVIDIA doesn't use GDDR5 for the Quadro 2000M, since that's the only major bottleneck it has. Maybe VRAM bandwidth isn't that critical for Quadro's normal use cases?
  • chrnochime - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    You can't have everything on your laundry list of requirements and still want them to charge the same amount of money as these ones you're offering. Pony up the money or put up with the compromises.
  • chrnochime - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Dammit I mean "these ones you're reviewing."
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Take the P151HM, which you can get as configured for about $1300. Now add in Optimus and spend $200 improving the keyboard and chassis. Are you saying that's not possible? Because $200 would go a long way towards fixing the few complaints I had with that design -- I figure $50 for a new keyboard layout with backlighting, and the remaining $150 can be put towards a magnesium alloy chassis. Add in maybe $25 extra to do Optimus (there's no additional hardware required, just enable the feature in the BIOS AFAIK) and you'd have my $1500 "dream" laptop.

    The fact that Lenovo's W520 can be purchased on sale for $1500 with nearly everything in my list proves it can be done--and Lenovo would still make money if they sold every W520 at that price, but they want to make more money.
  • DanNeely - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    I heard about them a few years ago with the 1st generation MSI wind netbooks. The reason they have the retarded tap the corner to scroll instead of the more common swipe the edge behavior is that Synaptics has a patent on the latter. I don't know if they refuse to license it or if Sentelic is just too cheap; although the fact that Synaptic has a stranglehold on the touchpad market makes me suspect the former.
  • yyrkoon - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Jarred, I am very glad you seemed to take to heart one of the points I made in my last bitch session of a laptop review. Well, at least you seemed to mirror one of my beliefs( in text ).

    Still, I think you would do very well, to educate your readers further. At first, I thought about Anand's comprehensive SSD write up in this context, but I am not sure how that might work in this case. On another semi related point. I still see no mention of driver support. This is very important.

    Passed that, I think most readers understand how you feel about certain aspect of different laptops. Personally though, I would rather not read two or more sentences about how you feel about black glossy plastic. In my case, it is a waste of your time to elaborate any further passed " it has a black glossy shell" or whatever. I do not like black glossy plastic either. but guess what ? My own personal laptop is gloss black . . . We never get exactly what we want.

    A companies case build policies to me, is something you should be taking up with them, and not us. Not to mention that this kind of "thought" in a review can be construed as being biased against the company. Whether truly fact, or not. Now, if the case felt flimsy, or like the screen might snap off in a short period of time of use . . .then sure thats something we should know.

    I can say that my personal use case for a laptop is completely different from yours most of the time. Which in of its self is something to consider. For you, and myself both. This is to say, several of the things that are important to you, are not important to me. Maybe there is some way to format different aspects in a way, where readers can easily take notice, and just skip altogether ? Just a thought. E.g. keyboard, and trackpad functionality are nearly irrelevant. For me, if they work, that is good enough. If I need to do any serious typing, or have need for accurate cursor placement, I *will* use external input devices. No mater where I am, or where I am going with my laptop.

    Anyhow, I felt like this was a decent review, although I care about neither product. I have always liked your reviews Jarred, because for the most part I feel when you review a product you are mostly thorough. Take my niggles for what they're worth, but do please seriously consider adding in driver support/stability comments. I am sure many readers of yours would appreciate that.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Driver support is generally fine on any NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel graphics card these days. The reference drivers from all three companies work with the vast majority of notebooks. If there's a problem (e.g. Toshiba opting out of AMD's mobile driver program), I'll make a note of it, but otherwise I haven't seen anything with respect to drivers that concerns me. Granted, if you want to be able to go to, say, MSI and grab all the latest drivers, that might be a bigger problem. I usually go directly to the component manufacturer, so NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Realtek, etc. sites are where I check. Not sure if that answers your question -- is there something specific you want me to comment on? Stability, incidentally, was top notch on both notebooks, with no crashes or unexpected reboots.
  • bhima - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link

    Well balanced review overall. I decided to pick up a clevo based laptop as well, but one with Optimus. The main reason I picked a clevo over the Dell was because I could configure the clevo with a 96% RGB color gamut matte screen (the exact same one that is offered as an upgrade to the W series ThinkPads). Dell glossy screens have a habit of being really "glossy" and I just can't take it anymore. Just like glossy plastic is going out of style, I hope glossy screens for laptops do as well.
  • Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link

    I agree with your summation. The Clevo seems like the best of the offerings but has flaws I don't want to live with. I really really wish you could get the G53SW in for review, as as long as the screen is good I'd take it. I agree with your wish for a laptop that doesn't exist too; except I don't care much about the speakers. I'd rather the price not get over 1200 than have uber speakers inside my laptop. If I really care I'll use headsets or external speakers or Logitech's clip on speaker. I could live with the 555M GPU as well, as long as it doesn't cost more than 1200. Laptop guys, DO NOT include Blu Ray; that's literally worth nothing to me. Discs are so last decade.

    Since I'm wishing, Asus, or whoever, put your chassis on cyberpower.com as a whitebox or at the very least with the option to not include the OS. I have my own thanks.
  • Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link

    Id like to see a review of the gt540 1080p laptop cyberpower has now.
  • Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link

    Made by Compal
  • Larries - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link

    How about the HP Envy with 6850M? Is that any good for gaming?

    Thanks.
  • Hrel - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link

    6850M should be better than the GTX460, so yeah, it's good for gaming.
  • JarredWalton - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link

    I disagree. The 6870M would probably be close, but remember that the 6870M is actually slightly slower than the 5870M, and there are plenty of cases where the GTX 460M already beats the 5870M. (Note: yes, I know 5870M isn't the official name.) The 6850M will probably be similar to the 5850M in performance, which we have results on several of the gaming tests using the Envy 17. The HD 6950M would be the better chip compared to 460M, but I don't know of anyone using it yet.
  • aguilpa1 - Sunday, May 15, 2011 - link

    my kingdom for a real gaming laptop that sports a 6970m or equal.. I just looked at the new Alienware 18" and it used to be that brand had choices of GPU now you only get one, the tired old 460m, whatever, like a fighting bull with no balls.
  • Rumpelstiltstein - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link

    Just get rid of the damn glossy bezel and 10-key and you actually have something.
  • littlemaddystar - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link

    um, wel, i kinda have no clue about what you guys are talking about, but Anand was in my teasting booklet. I read about him. And I had to awnser questions. I have to say that his company, (if that's what you want to call it,) is very impressive. And I just wanted to say something. :) sorry to bother your techy conversation. continue as if I never said anything.
  • Zoolookuk - Monday, May 16, 2011 - link

    What a fugly laptop!
  • toschek - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link

    I've been using one of these (Sager branded) since late Feb. and I really love it.

    I don't give 2 solid shits about the speakers since I use this as my music production workstation and everything goes through an external audio card, but I can see how you might ding it for that. What's more annoying to me is the soft-touch rubbery trackpad and overall the finish seems to get pet hair stuck to it quite easily.

    Overall for a desktop replacement it's working out great for me and all the complaints I have are extremely minor.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - link

    Wait, so you got a P151HM and it has the soft-touch plastic coating? Because the P150HM I tested had that but the P151HM is straight up ABS plastic with no coating whatsoever. I suppose there are probably P150HM with the all-plastic shell and P151HM with the soft-coating, then.
  • Hrel - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - link

    So, you want a GT555M? Me too! Check this out: SAGER NP5165 (Clevo W150HR)
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - link

    No, I want at least the performance level of GTX 460M, but with Optimus enabled. :-)
  • zappb - Saturday, May 21, 2011 - link

    Jarred - great review as usual - thank you, appreciate your work.

    I've been looking for a new work machine for awhile with a good screen being the priority - After reading your review, I called the Cyberpower people in the UK - http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/ and am looking to order the X6 - 9300 shortly.

    The guy in Cyberpower said that the model has refreshed in the UK with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M 2GB GDDR5 instead of the 460. I'm still not sure if it has Optimus enabled, but it should be fairly efficient even without it. I'm hoping this model will also have a lower fan noise because of the slower gfx card.

    Apart from the look of the bezel - Assuming the fan noise isn't so bad - then the only real problem in my eyes is the very poor keyboard (which is a problem, but the screen compensates a good deal) - For the price you get a good panel, probably not that far away from a HP Dreamcolour, the 95% FHD display of the W510 / W520 or the Dell M4600 IPS (which is a 400 euro upgrade).

    So would the keyboard drive you mad long term?

    I was also waiting to see a review of the new M4600 - Have you got your hands on the precision M4600 yet? Insterested in that screen (And the precision will probably have a fantastic keyboard as well) but the price is the problem - probably a net 1k difference in both laptops (of course very different target market and build quality.)

    I know it's very strange to bring up the x6 - 9300 vs the Dell M4600 - but I am also so fed up with the quality of laptop screens over the last 6 years, I just want a laptop with a great screen above everything else, followed by price. I will do very little gaming on the x6 - 9300.

    Thanks again,
    Paul.
  • JarredWalton - Monday, May 23, 2011 - link

    I can live with the Clevo keyboard; I just have to "remap" my brain to using the number keypad for the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys. I'm pretty sure the notebook model you're looking at is the Clevo W150HRQ (seen here: http://www.avadirect.com/gaming-laptop-configurato... so it supports Optimus, which means better battery life. The only real question is what LCD they're using -- AVADirect says "glossy", where the P150/P151HM that I've tested both had matte LCDs (neither one from AVADirect, though). If it's the same matte LCD as the P151HM (X6-9300) reviewed here, I'd probably go for it. It's a little slower on the GPU, but better battery life and presumably a slightly lower price.

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