Jarred, you are clearly a huge nerd. I'm obviously working with the right people.
I'm pretty much drawing the same conclusions you are about this notebook. While I can't stand Toshiba's finishes, the real problem isn't Toshiba necessarily but that no one seems interested in producing a proper AMD notebook. The best you can do, I think, is custom-order one from HP (where at least you'll get an attractive build) or be prepared to make a lot of compromises.
It leads one to conclude that AMD's poor notebook market share can't solely be attributed to them...if the manufacturers don't make and market compelling machines using the available hardware, what can AMD really do?
Too bad that Toshibia gimped the GPU in this one, and that the CPU still can't keep up. The AMD situtation is a bit of a catch 22: AMD has a (fairly rightly deserved) rumour of bad performance/batterylife, so people aren't willing to spend money on AMD laptops. The manufacturers see this, so they aren't willing to invest money in laptops people won't buy. That leaves us with cheap AMD laptops, or compromised expensive ones, that people won't buy.
"Computer, belay that order." Seriously, we need an edit button.
I really miss the glory days of 16:10 as well. At least the manufacturers haven't gone further... yet. They might though. If they can get away with it, they'll probably go as far as 22:9, or at the very least 25:12 like in the Vaio P.
Personally, I'd pay extra for Intels performance, but that's me.
Toshiba Assistant: "We made $XXXXXXX in profit for Intel notebooks last year and $XXX for AMD." Toshiba Manager: "I guess we need to make better margins (lesser cheaper and charge more) on those AND or AMD or whatever you said that isn't making much money"
The result is us not getting a great well-rounded AMD notebook from any OEM (minus the custom build option mentioned). Shame really, and the 1366x768 on a 16 inch notebook is proof positive of that thought process. It isn't like if they build great AMD notebooks they wouldn't sell, it's just the ones they (the OEM's) make now aren't all that good - which is why they don't sell... and round and round we go...
Seriously, put in a better screen res and better 6 cell (or take a page from ASUS and put in an 8 cell) and sell it for $699 and watch it fly off the shelves.
The real question is why would you evenwant to consider a Phenom II X4 N920 in a laptop in which cost $950 dollars when you can get a Core i7 720QM laptop that cost roughly around the same price that would eat the Phenom II X4 N920 for lunch????? Nevermind the Core i5 series or even the Core i3 series for that matter that can rival the Phenom II X4 N920 in performance and has bettery battery life on avg for a lot less. The Phenom II X4 N920 would be much better suited in the $600 dollar price range where the Core i3's are than in the $900 dollar price range it's in now.
The P920 is a 1.6 ghz AMD Quad Core with a 25w TDP The N930 is a 2.0 ghz AMD Quad Core with a 35w TDP
The N930 is 25% faster and is a much better cpu if you don't mind the extra tdp (which is not necessary the same as battery life). Pretty much the N930 is competitive with intel i line of chips but the P920 is not competitive.
Note the processor is a P920. Also read the first page of the review note Jared said the processor is the P920 at 1.6 Ghz. There is no such thing as a N920 processor from AMD, there is only a P920 and a N930 (which is 25% faster but has a 35w tdp instead of 25w)
The price is 949 which no one disagrees with. The speed sucks compared to the intel which no one disagrees with. The N930 processor speed is comparable to the Core I series of intel processors.
Given the A665D has an MSRP of $899 and sells at Newegg for $799, the real issue is the MSRP; I suspect the retail outlets will carry this notebook for a price closer to $850. It's still too much I think, but some will like the inclusion of ExpressCard/34 perhaps.
The problem is that I figure there's only about $350 in the cost of a quad-core i7-720QM Intel chip (and that's being generous as OEMs probably get it for a lot less--wouldn't be surprised if they pay closer to half that much). But AMD's mobile parts aren't even remotely competitive with 720QM, so let's look at i5-520M. Intel pricing there is $225, and again OEM pricing has to be less than that.
Motherboards, chipsets, chassis, power, LCD, HDD, etc. are pretty much the same whether you get Intel or AMD. If you put together reasonable costs on all of those, a notebook like the A660 series (Intel or AMD models) costs something like $450-$550 just in materials without a processor. So the bottom line is you're looking at trying to build a laptop where the most money you can easily cut off by switching from Intel to AMD is maybe $100, and possibly not even that. AMD notebook bill of materials comes to perhaps $650 in this case, while the Intel notebook might come to $750 (depending on build order discounts).
If this notebook were priced at $699 as someone suggested above, it would be very close to losing money on each one produced. Though I suppose my math and estimates could be off, but R&D costs money too....
This quad core simply has no logical benefit to it. Who buys a quad core for price and battery life (given Intel's penchant for monopolistic behaviour, if this was a market segment worth worrying about we'd have a dedicated mobile i7 quad die not harvested desktop Lynnfields)
Even in benches where it's sposed to benefit from highly multithreaded workloads - e.g. cinebench multi - it's beaten by a i3. Why would AMD even bother releasing something this poor is beyond me.
AMD notebooks like this don't sell because they don't make sense.
Wow... $950 for this? Amazon's selling the dv6-3050us with the Phenom II N930 for $890 and even cheaper on Newegg - better processor, driver support from AMD, and the GPU has normal clocks. Toshiba must put a premium for an ExpressCard slot or their cheap looking designs... What kinds of stupid thoughts go through the minds of that company's decision makers?
I think it's time AMD started making their own special edition laptops with configurations OEMs aren't willing to put together. Why can't we get a MR HD5870 + Phenom II X920 BE?
That specific model has even been cheaper before. One week on newegg it was 779, and if you did a 50 MIR it was 729 AR. Another week Frys.com had a similar promotion where it was 799 and if you did a 50 MIR it was 749 AR.
Hello. Just a suggestion: check the battery wear level on this notebook (hwmonitor does it well). I just bought an Toshiba L650-10H with an AMD P520 (2.3 Ghz part) and HD5650. The video chip was clocked to 450 Mhz, as far as I remember. Anyway the 48Wh battery came with a silly 20% wear level, leaving around 39Wh for a brand new laptop. I don't know if it is a faulty battery or a "feature" coming straight from the factory, but it is enough for me to drop away toshiba notebooks. Also the display was the worst thing I've ever seen: the Windows 7 loading logo is exposing a really huge dithering problem with colors fading to black.
HWMonitor reports the wear level as 2%, which probably came from me going through 10-12 recharge cycles during testing. Now, I wish I could say as much for another laptop I just got, where the wear level is reporting at 30%. :-\
I'm on an A665 at work, P920, 4GB, 500GB, 16", $799. We've had this for a while now. But whenever I'm in early or need to get online during break, this is the machine I use. Absolutely brilliant on Toshiba's part. It's a shame we don't also sell Sony...
Acer has a P520 with 5650 in a 15.6" for only $599, I'd really like to see a review of that. It looks good to me, if Acer put it together well. I don't think Acer screws up the graphics like Toshiba does.
My Google-Fu was obviously weak. This is the only P520 + 5650 laptop around right now it seems, and we are working with AMD to get one. Acer likely will clock the 5650 at the full 550MHz as well, which would make it a lot more interesting.
Hi, nice review. Glad to see AMD back to the game. Intel need competition these days.
I m sorry for being off-topic here, but I can't find any anandtech official email. I'd like to ask for review for system76, one of few OEM other than Apple to ship consumer laptop other than windows, ubuntu in this case. I want to have references where I can buy laptop without m$ tax other than overpriced Apple.
Nice review btw, I thought it was objectively done. The only important thing I could think of to possibly add would be temp readings under load for cpu and gpu, to make sure the cooling system was up to snuff.
I seriously considered getting one of these laptops about 2 weeks ago, until I realized it didn't have amd's version of turbo boost/core. One quick look at some starcraft cpu benchmarks made me realize I would get half the frame rate of the i7-720qm. I also wasn't sure if toshiba let you use amd's laptop drivers, which you say they don't. I got a gateway one instead for $200 more, but it has the intel quad core and you can use amd's drivers. No regrets. 50% slower frame rates just wasn't worth it.
AMD would be competive to Intel if it had turbo and powergating.
For example the best 35w AMD processors that AMD currently has are these three models AMD Phenom II x4 n930 at 4x2.0 ghz AMD Phenom II x3 n830 at 3x2.1 ghz AMD Phenom II x2 n620 at 2x2.8 ghz
Now compare that to intel i7 720qm which works as follows with turbo (note this is a 45w processor) 1.6 ghz Quad Core no turbo 1.73 ghz Quad Core with turbo 2.40 ghz Dual Core with turbo 2.80 ghz Single Core with turbo
If AMD had turbo and power gating it would not be unreasonable that the n930 could act as a 2.0 ghz quad core and a 2.8 ghz dual core. Thus if we are comparing straight ghz amd would possess 25% more ghz as a quad core with no turbo, 16% more ghz as a quad core, and 16% more ghz as a dual core. Now comparing ghz from different architectures is foolish for they are not the same thing, that said intel i7 mobile has a higher ipc than the phenom II mobile (which is a variant of the Athlon IIx4 of Desktops). That said the higher ipc of intel vs the higher ghz of AMD would put them real close in final speed (intel may win the benchmarks, but ask a person to "feel the difference in speed" and they would be hard pressed to differentiate.)
Sadly AMD has no turbo or powergating thus it won't be comparable. Rumors say llano will have these features, thus that is good news for AMD, but then AMD will be competing against mobile Sandybridge which will be 10-30% faster compared to Nehalem.
I own and operate a laptop repair business and after reading months of comments in various articles where folks are trying to justify AMD's recent poor performance, I thought I would throw in my two cents. Over the past 2-3 years I observed (and fixed) a 12 to 1 ratio of AMD based failures to Intel...mostly because of over-heating and chipset failures (HP's DV series is a great example). Seems like the vendors are trying to make AMD products compete at the mid to higher levels in thermal packaging which can't hold up much past the limited 12 month warranty. Guess this is why you can't find a ThinkPad (T-Series) with an AMD solution inside it. Unfortunately the consumers purchasing the Toshibas and HPs in this price range are really the ultimate loosers. It would be interesting for this forum to take a look at longivity in addition to speed. A fast laptop that lasts 12.5 months is a bad investment regardless of how many frames per second it can do!!!
Can you specify the most common AMD CPUs? I have an HP L2005CM with a Turion 64 that's still running after 4 years with the first 2 years seeing heavy use. Curious if my CPU is part of that or if it's more with the Turion Ultras that came out after.
In most cases it is a HP, Compaq, or Toshiba with Turion 64 based system with Nvidia chipset...best examples are HP DV2000,DV6000,DV9000,Compaq F500/700 series etc. But in general it is in the retail packaging versions commonly seen and sold at local retailers in the $450-800 price range. When you get inside them the quality, fit, finish - especially with the heatsink/fan and venting, point out obvious issues. Little foam pads to make up for poorly fitting heatsinks, etc. The really sad part is that if you had an unmarked Acxx or Asxx open next to a Tosxxx or Hxx (any model except their commercial machines), you would wonder what happened to American and Japanese quality. Sort of reminds you of when Honda and Toyota taught GM and Ford what quality meant. You can observe the same issues when you lay a ThinkPad or Sony heatsink/fan assembly down next to a Dell Inspiron/XPS counterpart. After the 12 month warranty is gone, you really find out that "you get what you paid for"!! I just finished taking a CQ62 apart to remove a piece of tape that was supposed to hold the wires away from the fan, instead it was acting like a mini noise maker when the fan ran....they used to route those wires in a channel so this would not happen...now it's scotch tape. Guess this site caters to "gamers" who are only concerned about how fast it will run Crysis for the next 6 months....but then again, high failure rates in the 12-20 month range is great for my business.
But yeah, it's always sucked that manufacturers include weak GPUS with AMD processors. It really reflects badly upon AMD.
Also Toshiba fail for not offering DisplayPort. No DisplayPort means you can only use two displays at once. Anything with Evergreen and DisplayPort should allow three displays at once.
DP->VGA adapters are a mere 25 bucks, and the single-link DP->DVI adapters should be 30, soon.
The problems we encountered on the early samples of the A665D have been fixed in the retail A660D—sony vgp-bpl9 battery and presumably the A665D as well—so unless you really want to spend $150 for the upgrade to a 7200RPM drive there's no reason to choose the more expensive model.
How'd you force the 1600x900 resolution? It used to be easy to do in Catalyst Control Center, under XP, but now I have 7 and the option just doesn't seem to be there; to set your own resolutions I mean. I get the feeling I'm missing something really obvious, someone help.
Also, I do not understand your fixation with 16:10 screens. They make black bars, I HATE black bars. 16:9 gets rid of them on most video content unless it's a movie like Star Wars that insists on using an absurd aspect ratio like 2.32:1. Granted most movies today do that, but why have black bars on tv shows and youtube content as well as old movies and modern movies like Sherlock Holmes if you don't have to? The answer is don't. AHHHH, I just HATE black bars on the screen SO MUCH. Really, aspect ratio just needs to get standardized at something widescreen and that's what EVERYTHING should be produced at.
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Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Jarred, you are clearly a huge nerd. I'm obviously working with the right people.I'm pretty much drawing the same conclusions you are about this notebook. While I can't stand Toshiba's finishes, the real problem isn't Toshiba necessarily but that no one seems interested in producing a proper AMD notebook. The best you can do, I think, is custom-order one from HP (where at least you'll get an attractive build) or be prepared to make a lot of compromises.
It leads one to conclude that AMD's poor notebook market share can't solely be attributed to them...if the manufacturers don't make and market compelling machines using the available hardware, what can AMD really do?
Goty - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Sue Intel? Oh, wait, they did that already.Should be interesting to see the designs that come out with Bobcat.
fabarati - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Haha, Jared really is a big nerd.Too bad that Toshibia gimped the GPU in this one, and that the CPU still can't keep up. The AMD situtation is a bit of a catch 22: AMD has a (fairly rightly deserved) rumour of bad performance/batterylife, so people aren't willing to spend money on AMD laptops. The manufacturers see this, so they aren't willing to invest money in laptops people won't buy. That leaves us with cheap AMD laptops, or compromised expensive ones, that people won't buy.
fabarati - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
"Computer, belay that order." Seriously, we need an edit button.I really miss the glory days of 16:10 as well. At least the manufacturers haven't gone further... yet. They might though. If they can get away with it, they'll probably go as far as 22:9, or at the very least 25:12 like in the Vaio P.
Personally, I'd pay extra for Intels performance, but that's me.
anactoraaron - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I think this is the thought process...Toshiba Assistant: "We made $XXXXXXX in profit for Intel notebooks last year and $XXX for AMD."
Toshiba Manager: "I guess we need to make better margins (lesser cheaper and charge more) on those AND or AMD or whatever you said that isn't making much money"
The result is us not getting a great well-rounded AMD notebook from any OEM (minus the custom build option mentioned). Shame really, and the 1366x768 on a 16 inch notebook is proof positive of that thought process. It isn't like if they build great AMD notebooks they wouldn't sell, it's just the ones they (the OEM's) make now aren't all that good - which is why they don't sell... and round and round we go...
Seriously, put in a better screen res and better 6 cell (or take a page from ASUS and put in an 8 cell) and sell it for $699 and watch it fly off the shelves.
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
The real question is why would you evenwant to consider a Phenom II X4 N920 in a laptop in which cost $950 dollars when you can get a Core i7 720QM laptop that cost roughly around the same price that would eat the Phenom II X4 N920 for lunch????? Nevermind the Core i5 series or even the Core i3 series for that matter that can rival the Phenom II X4 N920 in performance and has bettery battery life on avg for a lot less. The Phenom II X4 N920 would be much better suited in the $600 dollar price range where the Core i3's are than in the $900 dollar price range it's in now.Roland00 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
You are mixing your model numbers up.The P920 is a 1.6 ghz AMD Quad Core with a 25w TDP
The N930 is a 2.0 ghz AMD Quad Core with a 35w TDP
The N930 is 25% faster and is a much better cpu if you don't mind the extra tdp (which is not necessary the same as battery life). Pretty much the N930 is competitive with intel i line of chips but the P920 is not competitive.
SteelCity1981 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Um not i'm not. the Toshiba Satellite A660D-ST2G01 cost $950 with the N920 cpu.Roland00 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Here is the direct link of the model on toshiba websitehttp://laptops.toshiba.com/laptops/satellite/A660/...
Note the processor is a P920. Also read the first page of the review note Jared said the processor is the P920 at 1.6 Ghz. There is no such thing as a N920 processor from AMD, there is only a P920 and a N930 (which is 25% faster but has a 35w tdp instead of 25w)
The price is 949 which no one disagrees with. The speed sucks compared to the intel which no one disagrees with. The N930 processor speed is comparable to the Core I series of intel processors.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
Given the A665D has an MSRP of $899 and sells at Newegg for $799, the real issue is the MSRP; I suspect the retail outlets will carry this notebook for a price closer to $850. It's still too much I think, but some will like the inclusion of ExpressCard/34 perhaps.The problem is that I figure there's only about $350 in the cost of a quad-core i7-720QM Intel chip (and that's being generous as OEMs probably get it for a lot less--wouldn't be surprised if they pay closer to half that much). But AMD's mobile parts aren't even remotely competitive with 720QM, so let's look at i5-520M. Intel pricing there is $225, and again OEM pricing has to be less than that.
Motherboards, chipsets, chassis, power, LCD, HDD, etc. are pretty much the same whether you get Intel or AMD. If you put together reasonable costs on all of those, a notebook like the A660 series (Intel or AMD models) costs something like $450-$550 just in materials without a processor. So the bottom line is you're looking at trying to build a laptop where the most money you can easily cut off by switching from Intel to AMD is maybe $100, and possibly not even that. AMD notebook bill of materials comes to perhaps $650 in this case, while the Intel notebook might come to $750 (depending on build order discounts).
If this notebook were priced at $699 as someone suggested above, it would be very close to losing money on each one produced. Though I suppose my math and estimates could be off, but R&D costs money too....
bennyg - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
This quad core simply has no logical benefit to it. Who buys a quad core for price and battery life (given Intel's penchant for monopolistic behaviour, if this was a market segment worth worrying about we'd have a dedicated mobile i7 quad die not harvested desktop Lynnfields)Even in benches where it's sposed to benefit from highly multithreaded workloads - e.g. cinebench multi - it's beaten by a i3. Why would AMD even bother releasing something this poor is beyond me.
AMD notebooks like this don't sell because they don't make sense.
The Crying Man - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Wow... $950 for this? Amazon's selling the dv6-3050us with the Phenom II N930 for $890 and even cheaper on Newegg - better processor, driver support from AMD, and the GPU has normal clocks. Toshiba must put a premium for an ExpressCard slot or their cheap looking designs... What kinds of stupid thoughts go through the minds of that company's decision makers?I think it's time AMD started making their own special edition laptops with configurations OEMs aren't willing to put together. Why can't we get a MR HD5870 + Phenom II X920 BE?
Roland00 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
That specific model has even been cheaper before. One week on newegg it was 779, and if you did a 50 MIR it was 729 AR. Another week Frys.com had a similar promotion where it was 799 and if you did a 50 MIR it was 749 AR.The Crying Man - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Yep, bought mine way back in July on Amazon when it was $775.blackshard - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Hello. Just a suggestion: check the battery wear level on this notebook (hwmonitor does it well). I just bought an Toshiba L650-10H with an AMD P520 (2.3 Ghz part) and HD5650. The video chip was clocked to 450 Mhz, as far as I remember. Anyway the 48Wh battery came with a silly 20% wear level, leaving around 39Wh for a brand new laptop. I don't know if it is a faulty battery or a "feature" coming straight from the factory, but it is enough for me to drop away toshiba notebooks.Also the display was the worst thing I've ever seen: the Windows 7 loading logo is exposing a really huge dithering problem with colors fading to black.
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 2, 2010 - link
HWMonitor reports the wear level as 2%, which probably came from me going through 10-12 recharge cycles during testing. Now, I wish I could say as much for another laptop I just got, where the wear level is reporting at 30%. :-\larson0699 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I'm on an A665 at work, P920, 4GB, 500GB, 16", $799. We've had this for a while now. But whenever I'm in early or need to get online during break, this is the machine I use. Absolutely brilliant on Toshiba's part. It's a shame we don't also sell Sony...hgd - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
<quote>On the other hand, AMD specs the P920 for 25W compared to 35W on the 720QM,
</quote>
Doesn't 720QM have 45W TDP?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Correct. Fixed.Cal123 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Acer has a P520 with 5650 in a 15.6" for only $599, I'd really like to see a review of that. It looks good to me, if Acer put it together well. I don't think Acer screws up the graphics like Toshiba does.Aspire 5551G-4591
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results....
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
My Google-Fu was obviously weak. This is the only P520 + 5650 laptop around right now it seems, and we are working with AMD to get one. Acer likely will clock the 5650 at the full 550MHz as well, which would make it a lot more interesting.silentim - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Hi, nice review. Glad to see AMD back to the game. Intel need competition these days.I m sorry for being off-topic here, but I can't find any anandtech official email. I'd like to ask for review for system76, one of few OEM other than Apple to ship consumer laptop other than windows, ubuntu in this case. I want to have references where I can buy laptop without m$ tax other than overpriced Apple.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
jarred.[email protected][email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
ryan.[email protected]
One of those should work. ;-)
Cal123 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
Nice review btw, I thought it was objectively done. The only important thing I could think of to possibly add would be temp readings under load for cpu and gpu, to make sure the cooling system was up to snuff.andrewaggb - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I seriously considered getting one of these laptops about 2 weeks ago, until I realized it didn't have amd's version of turbo boost/core. One quick look at some starcraft cpu benchmarks made me realize I would get half the frame rate of the i7-720qm. I also wasn't sure if toshiba let you use amd's laptop drivers, which you say they don't. I got a gateway one instead for $200 more, but it has the intel quad core and you can use amd's drivers. No regrets. 50% slower frame rates just wasn't worth it.Roland00 - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
AMD would be competive to Intel if it had turbo and powergating.For example the best 35w AMD processors that AMD currently has are these three models
AMD Phenom II x4 n930 at 4x2.0 ghz
AMD Phenom II x3 n830 at 3x2.1 ghz
AMD Phenom II x2 n620 at 2x2.8 ghz
Now compare that to intel i7 720qm which works as follows with turbo (note this is a 45w processor)
1.6 ghz Quad Core no turbo
1.73 ghz Quad Core with turbo
2.40 ghz Dual Core with turbo
2.80 ghz Single Core with turbo
If AMD had turbo and power gating it would not be unreasonable that the n930 could act as a 2.0 ghz quad core and a 2.8 ghz dual core. Thus if we are comparing straight ghz amd would possess 25% more ghz as a quad core with no turbo, 16% more ghz as a quad core, and 16% more ghz as a dual core. Now comparing ghz from different architectures is foolish for they are not the same thing, that said intel i7 mobile has a higher ipc than the phenom II mobile (which is a variant of the Athlon IIx4 of Desktops). That said the higher ipc of intel vs the higher ghz of AMD would put them real close in final speed (intel may win the benchmarks, but ask a person to "feel the difference in speed" and they would be hard pressed to differentiate.)
Sadly AMD has no turbo or powergating thus it won't be comparable. Rumors say llano will have these features, thus that is good news for AMD, but then AMD will be competing against mobile Sandybridge which will be 10-30% faster compared to Nehalem.
LaptopDoctor - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
I own and operate a laptop repair business and after reading months of comments in various articles where folks are trying to justify AMD's recent poor performance, I thought I would throw in my two cents. Over the past 2-3 years I observed (and fixed) a 12 to 1 ratio of AMD based failures to Intel...mostly because of over-heating and chipset failures (HP's DV series is a great example). Seems like the vendors are trying to make AMD products compete at the mid to higher levels in thermal packaging which can't hold up much past the limited 12 month warranty. Guess this is why you can't find a ThinkPad (T-Series) with an AMD solution inside it. Unfortunately the consumers purchasing the Toshibas and HPs in this price range are really the ultimate loosers. It would be interesting for this forum to take a look at longivity in addition to speed. A fast laptop that lasts 12.5 months is a bad investment regardless of how many frames per second it can do!!!The Crying Man - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
Can you specify the most common AMD CPUs? I have an HP L2005CM with a Turion 64 that's still running after 4 years with the first 2 years seeing heavy use. Curious if my CPU is part of that or if it's more with the Turion Ultras that came out after.LaptopDoctor - Thursday, September 2, 2010 - link
In most cases it is a HP, Compaq, or Toshiba with Turion 64 based system with Nvidia chipset...best examples are HP DV2000,DV6000,DV9000,Compaq F500/700 series etc. But in general it is in the retail packaging versions commonly seen and sold at local retailers in the $450-800 price range. When you get inside them the quality, fit, finish - especially with the heatsink/fan and venting, point out obvious issues. Little foam pads to make up for poorly fitting heatsinks, etc. The really sad part is that if you had an unmarked Acxx or Asxx open next to a Tosxxx or Hxx (any model except their commercial machines), you would wonder what happened to American and Japanese quality. Sort of reminds you of when Honda and Toyota taught GM and Ford what quality meant. You can observe the same issues when you lay a ThinkPad or Sony heatsink/fan assembly down next to a Dell Inspiron/XPS counterpart. After the 12 month warranty is gone, you really find out that "you get what you paid for"!! I just finished taking a CQ62 apart to remove a piece of tape that was supposed to hold the wires away from the fan, instead it was acting like a mini noise maker when the fan ran....they used to route those wires in a channel so this would not happen...now it's scotch tape. Guess this site caters to "gamers" who are only concerned about how fast it will run Crysis for the next 6 months....but then again, high failure rates in the 12-20 month range is great for my business.DanaG - Thursday, September 2, 2010 - link
"Nvidia chipset" -- remember nvidia's bumpgate fiasco?But yeah, it's always sucked that manufacturers include weak GPUS with AMD processors. It really reflects badly upon AMD.
Also Toshiba fail for not offering DisplayPort. No DisplayPort means you can only use two displays at once.
Anything with Evergreen and DisplayPort should allow three displays at once.
DP->VGA adapters are a mere 25 bucks, and the single-link DP->DVI adapters should be 30, soon.
annyhaiyan - Thursday, September 2, 2010 - link
The problems we encountered on the early samples of the A665D have been fixed in the retail A660D—sony vgp-bpl9 battery and presumably the A665D as well—so unless you really want to spend $150 for the upgrade to a 7200RPM drive there's no reason to choose the more expensive model.Cal123 - Thursday, September 2, 2010 - link
No informed person would buy a HP/Compaq with a Nvidia chipset considering the overheating reputations of those companies.Hrel - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
How'd you force the 1600x900 resolution? It used to be easy to do in Catalyst Control Center, under XP, but now I have 7 and the option just doesn't seem to be there; to set your own resolutions I mean. I get the feeling I'm missing something really obvious, someone help.Also, I do not understand your fixation with 16:10 screens. They make black bars, I HATE black bars. 16:9 gets rid of them on most video content unless it's a movie like Star Wars that insists on using an absurd aspect ratio like 2.32:1. Granted most movies today do that, but why have black bars on tv shows and youtube content as well as old movies and modern movies like Sherlock Holmes if you don't have to? The answer is don't. AHHHH, I just HATE black bars on the screen SO MUCH. Really, aspect ratio just needs to get standardized at something widescreen and that's what EVERYTHING should be produced at.
OCD makes life frustrating sometimes.