Opinions on Satellite Pro L650-1CG

Stercus Accidit

http://elara.ie/products/detailsfullat.asp?productcode=ECE2047436

Hey guys,

A while back I had a thread where I was suggested a few laptops, the above is one of them;

Satellite Pro L650-1CG, Core i3-350 2.26Ghz, Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit/XP Professional, 15.6" HD TruBrite, ATI Radeon, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD, DVDSM, 802.11 bgn, Webcam, Bluetooth, Webcam, 1yr Warranty


I have read that the ATI Radeon 5650 is a very capable graphics card, and I do want to be able to do some casual gaming.

Is there any particular spec this machine falls down in? Would I be able to play Fallout 3 and FNV on this machine as I have only been on consoles up until now?

Is there a serious step up in performance with a machine maybe for 50-100 euro more, or is this a decent performer, bearing in mind I am not an absolute graphics junky.

I am hoping to order a machine very soon but am hesitant as I am no expert in PC's and laptops.

All info and opinions welcomed, thanks guys.

dazzday

The HD 5650 is a very capable gpu, in fact the newly released 6000 series equivalent 6650M is pretty much a 50MHz higher clocked version, with only a reported ~10-20% improvement in benchmarks.

Perfectly ideal for the mid-level gamer, as it will play pretty much anything on mid-high settings. Its also an excellent card for overclocking as seen here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/487795-how-overclock-ati-5650-a-19.html

Easily possible to o/c faster then a stock HD5730 with operating temps well within safe limits....pretty impressive!

The i3-350 is also very capable and overclocks quite well. Not too much evidence for thermal throttling during gaming with it.

Make sure you upgrade the RAM though if buying for optimum performance!

Stercus Accidit

Thats what I wanted to hear,

RE: RAM, does the GPU use its own ram and is it similar to the motherboard ram, could you elaborate a little for me?

Thanks.

dazzday

Well the GPU has its own dedicated vRAM which is built into the card and not changeable. The GPU does use system RAM as well, so less RAM can be a performance bottleneck in certain situations.

Win7 will use ~1Gb idle with AV etc installed. I find 3gb optimal for the average user with multiple internet tabs, media player and word running together for example. Using more processes, applications, photoshop etc will warrant the case for 4gb.
Any more is really more useful for dedicated programs such as CS5, CAD etc

Stercus Accidit

Thats great, I'll price some ddr3 RAM to get with the machine.

GarRo247

Fairly decent for the price, id say it will be fairly slow running multiple programs if you don't upgrade the ram to 3GB for general use or 4Gb if you are going to be gaming. But the processor, and graphics card are good for the price, and there usually the most important things because they cant be upgraded in a laptop without a lot of difficulty. For fallout 3 and future games I would recommend 4GB ram. The webcam in it is useless btw.

Stercus Accidit

Dazzday mentioned overclocking, would cooling in a laptop bcome an issue, and would I need to get the duster out regularily to keep the heatsinks cleaned? Are there tips to improve cooling on a laptop generally?

GarRo247

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

Dazzday mentioned overclocking, would cooling in a laptop bcome an issue, and would I need to get the duster out regularily to keep the heatsinks cleaned? Are there tips to improve cooling on a laptop generally?

Overclocking will nearly always damage a laptop as you cannot change the power input and cooling. I'd only ever overclock a desktop. Overclocking wont make much of a difference with that set-up anyway. No you wont need to clean it at all if you don't overclock it, maybe once a year might be a good idea, but it wont be needed. Stock laptops are designed to not let much dust in.

Overclocking could work well in it but it you set it a small big too high could burn out the GPU and because its overclocked it would not be covered by your warranty, and to fix a graphics card in a laptop you would generally have to replace the motherboard.

dazzday

GarRo247 wrote: »

Overclocking will nearly always damage a laptop as you cannot change the power input and cooling. I'd only ever overclock a desktop. Overclocking wont make much of a difference with that set-up anyway. No you wont need to clean it at all if you don't overclock it, maybe once a year might be a good idea, but it wont be needed. Stock laptops are designed to not let much dust in.

Overclocking could work well in it but it you set it a small big too high could burn out the GPU and because its overclocked it would not be covered by your warranty, and to fix a graphics card in a laptop you would generally have to replace the motherboard.

I have disagree here.
The vast majority of horror stories heard are from the Nvidia 8XXX series which had soldering defects, which made them fail well before their thermal limits.

I do agree overclocking needs to be done carefully though. If you test correctly and take your time, the benefits can be extraordinary in terms of gaming and with very little risk to your system.

GarRo247

dazzday wrote: »

I have disagree here.
The vast majority of horror stories heard are from the Nvidia 8XXX series which had soldering defects, which made them fail well before their thermal limits.

I do agree overclocking needs to be done carefully though. If you test correctly and take your time, the benefits can be extraordinary in terms of gaming and with very little risk to your system.

You do have to agree though that all graphics cards in laptops are more likely to overheat than in a desktop. I would think its not a good idea to try in a laptop if your not experienced with a desktop. At first it could be a good idea to use the manufacturers clock speed utility. Using the nvidia utility i overclocked my laptops graphics clock speed to 1.5 times what it was and after that it told me not to go higher as there were known issues after that. Where other software wouldn't tell you that.

I read the processor can easily be overclocked to 2.66ghz without any issues

Stercus Accidit

So the GPU driver has a certain level of overclock it can apply itself? I would probably only use that, blistering performance at the cost of reliability isn't my ideal so I will remain within the reccomended limits.

I look forward to getting the new machine now, thanks lads for the help.

Johner

Have a look at this one, great deal with the cashback. It's a bigger screen though.

https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/Toshiba_Satellite_Pro_L670-14L_1035503.html

GarRo247

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

So the GPU driver has a certain level of overclock it can apply itself? I would probably only use that, blistering performance at the cost of reliability isn't my ideal so I will remain within the reccomended limits.

I look forward to getting the new machine now, thanks lads for the help.

Its not the driver that does it, its extra software you can download from the manufacturers website, with ATI I think its called Catalyst Control Centre.

GarRo247

Johner wrote: »

Have a look at this one, great deal with the cashback. It's a bigger screen though.

https://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/Toshiba_Satellite_Pro_L670-14L_1035503.html

The OP's laptop is slightly better than that but for the price I think this one is better, there's not too much of a performance difference but a big difference in price.

I'm not sure about the website though, Comodo says its not safe to buy things from.

Stercus Accidit

GarRo247 wrote: »

Its not the driver that does it, its extra software you can download from the manufacturers website, with ATI I think its called Catalyst Control Centre.

Nice one, I ordered the machine from the first post, I am looking forward to getting it now, that will be one of the first things I download. I will also price some ddr3 ram, I'm considering an SSD also, but would that do any good for games apart from loading times?

Alanstrainor

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

Nice one, I ordered the machine from the first post, I am looking forward to getting it now, that will be one of the first things I download. I will also price some ddr3 ram, I'm considering an SSD also, but would that do any good for games apart from loading times?

Tbh, SSDs are still very expensive for the storage they provide. Maybe if it was a laptop that had space for 2 Hard Drives, i would consider having one SSD and on normal HD, but in the case of that laptop i'd stick with the drive that's in it.

GarRo247

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

Nice one, I ordered the machine from the first post, I am looking forward to getting it now, that will be one of the first things I download. I will also price some ddr3 ram, I'm considering an SSD also, but would that do any good for games apart from loading times?

I don't think a SSD would work in that laptop. They have to be configured differently and its hard to do with a laptop as they are pre configured it would be fairly easy on a desktop. Also a SSD produces more heat then a SATA Drive so the laptop may not be able to handle it. An SSD would give you nearly 2x file access speeds, It does not necessarily increase load times, the CPU and RAM will still decide load times but will be able to access the files it needs faster. And no it wont do much for anything else other than a slight increase in performance and loading times.

While playing a game your CPU and GPU could probably be maxed out so if that is the case how fast they access files wont affect anything if there is already a backlog of files being processed. If you were getting an i7 8 core processor that wont max out, a SSD would make sense.

dazzday

GarRo247 wrote: »

I don't think a SSD would work in that laptop. They have to be configured differently and its hard to do with a laptop as they are pre configured it would be fairly easy on a desktop. Also a SSD produces more heat then a SATA Drive so the laptop may not be able to handle it. An SSD would give you nearly 2x file access speeds, It does not necessarily increase load times, the CPU and RAM will still decide load times but will be able to access the files it needs faster. And no it wont do much for anything else other than a slight increase in performance and loading times.

While playing a game your CPU and GPU could probably be maxed out so if that is the case how fast they access files wont affect anything if there is already a backlog of files being processed. If you were getting an i7 8 core processor that wont max out, a SSD would make sense.

Not too sure where you are getting that info from but its not correct.

SSD produce less heat that a mechanical HDD as they have no moving parts and draw less voltage. Typically will be ~10 degrees lower in operating temps at idle compared to a 5400rpm HDD. As it draws less power it will also have positive effects on battery life, although dont expect more than 5-10mins improvement. Also lighter, quieter and much more durable.

The SSD will have little effect on gaming performance, but will significantly improve loading times.

The HDD is generally the bottleneck for performance is most laptops, and should be one of the first things upgraded if looking to optimize your system. It will significantly decrease boot times, access times and read/write speeds.

Replacing it is the same as any HDD with SATA II connection.

The big question though is price. at ~$2 per Gb its not cheap. For decent size it really can get costly and hard to justify.
In my acer 5920g i replaced the ODD with a 64gb SSD for the OS and some of the more frequent programs i use, with a 640gb HDD for data and such. I have found the response times in boot, load, access are exceptionally fast, and the system itself just feels snappier. Easily one of the best upgrades ive done.

My recommendation is the middle ground of the hybrid drive like the seagate momentus XT, with 500gb HDD and 4gb SSD. The SSD cleverly "caches" your most frequent applications giving excellent performance boots in my most common programs. I have one installed in my 3820tg and it really has excelled itself.

GarRo247

dazzday wrote: »

Not too sure where you are getting that info from but its not correct.

SSD produce less heat that a mechanical HDD as they have no moving parts and draw less voltage. Typically will be ~10 degrees lower in operating temps at idle compared to a 5400rpm HDD. As it draws less power it will also have positive effects on battery life, although dont expect more than 5-10mins improvement. Also lighter, quieter and much more durable.

I got the info from PC Advisor magazine, and under normal operating a SSD will have a lower temperature (as you said at idle), but under constant use the SSD will have a higher maximum temprature.

Boot times are the only time a SSD will make a real difference, with recorded improvements of over 50% opening times of programs will be faster, but the speed of programs in use will only improve by between 5% and 15%.

SSDs are more durable but not in the long run. If you drop them they are less likely to break, but a SSD has a limited number of times it can write. So if you maybe filled and erased your whole drive 1,000 times it will not be able to write any more (it seems like a lot but if you use it a lot could be maybe 3 years of use), where a HDD can write infinite times but may randomly fail.

In my opnion is hardly worth the money for the improvement, if you were doing it anyway I would say using the a combination of a SSD and HDD is the best.

dazzday

GarRo247 wrote: »

I got the info from PC Advisor magazine, and under normal operating a SSD will have a lower temperature (as you said at idle), but under constant use the SSD will have a higher maximum temprature.

Boot times are the only time a SSD will make a real difference, with recorded improvements of over 50% opening times of programs will be faster, but the speed of programs in use will only improve by between 5% and 15%.

Figures!

http://www.missingremote.com/blog/look-solid-state-drives-ssd-v-hard-drives-hd

In 99% of cases, program "speed" shouldnt be influence by the hard-drive. Dependent on the program, a combination of RAM (eg photoshop), CPU (Matlab)or the GPU (gaming) will be the determining factor.

GarRo247

dazzday wrote: »

Figures!

http://www.missingremote.com/blog/look-solid-state-drives-ssd-v-hard-drives-hd

In 99% of cases, program "speed" shouldnt be influence by the hard-drive. Dependent on the program, a combination of RAM (eg photoshop), CPU (Matlab)or the GPU (gaming) will be the determining factor.

Thats interesting, I must update my sources so.:rolleyes:

Stercus Accidit

I have seen pure SSD performance on a high spec gaming rig, a friend was testing them for his work (sys admin) and he said the same, super quick read, write and seek speeds with programs and the OS booting in seconds.

I like the idea of the hybrid drive also, I see they are cheap enough too.

Where would be the best place to look at SSD's and hybribs, elara.ie?

Any tips for this machines specs?

dazzday

http://www.google.ie/search?q=momentus+xt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=momentus+xt&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=iac&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivsl&source=lnt&tbs=ctr:countryIE&cr=countryIE&sa=X&ei=PBb4TK2jFIuxhQeJ2ZCDAQ&ved=0CAoQpwU&fp=1e1bec2137be78a3

Plenty of Irish options to get the hybrid

Stercus Accidit

Delivered today!

Right now I am clearing the garbage off it, trial runs of this and that crap and so on.

I have decided to try Microsoft Security Essentials as my AV as AVG was always annoying me, and its scan every file as its read or written facility destroyed any speed my old machine had, which I disabled but really said a lot to me.

So MSE, any reccomended firewall or does win 7 or MSE have something built in that is good?

I will get the control for the ATI radeon as well, so any suggestions as I set it up welcomed, gotta make it feel like home yekno

dazzday

Windows inbuilt firewall is pretty good and complements well with MSE. Comodo is a good option if you want a 3rd party firewall.

MSE is an excellent AV, runs very few resources...easily on par with the best.
Malwarebytes would be my recommendation for anti-spyware to run with it.

I recommend Revo uninstaller for removing bloatware or a fresh reinstall if you are going the whole hog.

Stercus Accidit

The bloatware came with the installed OS, I made my own dvds of the OS in case I have to re-install but they include the garbage, I will look up that program, I hate junk in my memory stealing my rams.

Gonna get CCleaner again, it has a removal tool, I dont know if it is as good as the one you mentioned.