Is this laptop good for SL?

Hi!

I just made an order of HP Pavilion dv7 2080 laptop. Will this be good for SL?

AMD Turion X2 RM-75 -processor
Memory 4096 (2 x 2048 MB)
Memory Max Up to 8 GB
Video Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650
Video Memory Up to 2815 MB (1024 MB dedicated)
Hard Drive 500 GB (2 x 250 GB) (5400 rpm)
Display 17.3” Diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)
Windows vista 32 bits

Thanks for the help!

In my opinion, it's less than ideal, but my standards are high. It should work, just not incredibly well.


Here would be my hesitations. Some people might not care about this stuff, but I do:


1. From what I've read, the Radeon HD 4600 series uses standard DDR2 or DDR3 memory instead of GDDR2 or GDDR3. Standard RAM is ridiculously slow at processing video, compared to actual graphics RAM. As a result, your framerates in SL will probably be pretty low. As far as I'm concerned, this is a showstopper. All my other points after this will be minor, by comparison. A real graphics card with real graphics memory is the number one requirement for SL if you want good performance.

2. I try to steer clear of ATI hardware. ATI graphics cards don't work nearly as well with SL as nVidia graphics cards do. If you do get this machine, make sure to turn off vertex buffer objects in your SL graphics hardware options, so you don't end up with big triangles all over the screen. ATI cards don't have the first clue how to process VBO's correctly.

3. The display is only 900 pixels tall. If you plan on doing any texture work, this can be a hindrance. You won't be able to see a 1024x1024 texture at full magnification, ever. You also won't be able to watch HD movies at full magnification either, if that matters to you. Those are 1920x1080.

4. On a 17.3" screen, 1600x900 is low resolution for a laptop. Unless you need large pixels due to poor eyesight, the screen won't look nearly as sharp to you as it would on most other 17" laptops. Although a lot of manufacturers have been cheaping out lately with lower resolution panels, the standard for a 17" laptop is supposed to be 1920x1200.

5. The 32-bit OS that's installed won't be able to use all 4GB of RAM that are in the machine. At most, it will only be able to use 3GB, since you've got a 1GB video card in there. I'd recommend you upgrade to a 64-bit OS as soon as you can. That will allow you to use all 4GB of memory, and will make your system much speedier, and more stable. Once you go 64-bit, you never go back.


If it were me, I wouldn't get this machine. But of course, I'm not you. Your needs might differ from mine enough that it will work for you just fine.

Out of curiosity, what does this model cost? I can't seem to find a US listing for it. I'm guessing you're in Europe?

Thank you for the answer. Yes, I´m in Europe and it costs about 1000 euros. I made some searching and this is the best quality for this price range. I´ve read, the games designed for 32 bit won´t work in 64 bit. I mean these older games which would be played with the laptop.
I appreciate your warning but I guess I´ll get this anyway. Unless you don´t find a better one with this price for me I´m not a heavy user, a game once in a while would be nice, but if I can use internet etc. is okay... I hope SL will work better with this than with my current laptop.

Take a look at what Asus has to offer. 1000 euros is around 1425 US dollars. In the US, Asus has a bunch of laptops withe better specs in that price range. I'd imagine the same is probably true in Europe.

As for 32-bit games not working under 64-bit Windows, I've never experienced that. I have yet to find a program that won't run. Perhaps you're thinking of XP x64, which had limited driver support. Vista doesn't suffer from that problem.