Help with Lenovo/ASUS/Dell please

DerTierarzt

1) What is your budget?
€300-500

2) What size notebook would you prefer?
c. Thin and Light; 13" - 14" screen
d. Mainstream; 15" - 16" screen

3) Where will you buying this notebook? You can select the flag of your country as an indicator.
Ireland

4) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
a. Like: Lenovo, Asus
b. Dislike:

5) Would you consider laptops that are refurbished/redistributed?
Yes

6) What are the primary tasks will you be performing with this notebook?
Normal college work, web surfing, video editing

7) Will you be taking the notebook with you to different places, leaving it on your desk or both?
Both

8) Will you be playing games on your notebook? If so, please state which games or types of games?
Maybe some games, wouldn't mind the likes of Battlefield

9) How many hours of battery life do you need?
Not that important to me.

10) Would you prefer to see the notebooks you're considering before purchasing it or buying a notebook on-line without seeing it is OK?
I'll buy online, yeah.

11) What OS do you prefer? Windows (XP or Vista or Windows 7), Mac OS, Linux, etc.
Windows 7 I guess.

Screen Specifics

12) From the choices below, what screen resolution(s) would you prefer? Keep in mind screen size in conjunction with resolution will play a large role in overall viewing comfort level. Everyone is different. Some like really small text, while others like their text big and easy to read. Click here for Screen resolution information.
Widescreen HD or full HD

13) Do you want a Glossy/reflective screen or a Matte/non-glossy screen?
Glossy

Build Quality and Design

14) Are the notebook's looks and stylishness important to you?
Nope.

15) When are you buying this laptop?
This weekend

16) How long do you want this laptop to last?
5 years.

Notebook Components

17) How much hard drive space do you need; 80GB to 640GB? Do you want a SSD drive?
Not important, have a 1TB ext. HDD

18) Do you need an optical drive? If yes, a CDRW/DVD-ROM, DVD Burner or Blu-Ray drive?
DVD re-writer would be nice

DerTierarzt

DerTierarzt wrote: »

1) What is your budget?
€300-500

2) What size notebook would you prefer?
c. Thin and Light; 13" - 14" screen
d. Mainstream; 15" - 16" screen

3) Where will you buying this notebook? You can select the flag of your country as an indicator.
Ireland

4) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
a. Like: Lenovo, Asus
b. Dislike:

5) Would you consider laptops that are refurbished/redistributed?
Yes

6) What are the primary tasks will you be performing with this notebook?
Normal college work, web surfing, video editing

7) Will you be taking the notebook with you to different places, leaving it on your desk or both?
Both

8) Will you be playing games on your notebook? If so, please state which games or types of games?
Maybe some games, wouldn't mind the likes of Battlefield

9) How many hours of battery life do you need?
Not that important to me.

10) Would you prefer to see the notebooks you're considering before purchasing it or buying a notebook on-line without seeing it is OK?
I'll buy online, yeah.

11) What OS do you prefer? Windows (XP or Vista or Windows 7), Mac OS, Linux, etc.
Windows 7 I guess.

Screen Specifics

12) From the choices below, what screen resolution(s) would you prefer? Keep in mind screen size in conjunction with resolution will play a large role in overall viewing comfort level. Everyone is different. Some like really small text, while others like their text big and easy to read. Click here for Screen resolution information.
Widescreen HD or full HD

13) Do you want a Glossy/reflective screen or a Matte/non-glossy screen?
Glossy

Build Quality and Design

14) Are the notebook's looks and stylishness important to you?
Nope.

15) When are you buying this laptop?
This weekend

16) How long do you want this laptop to last?
5 years.

Notebook Components

17) How much hard drive space do you need; 80GB to 640GB? Do you want a SSD drive?
Not important, have a 1TB ext. HDD

18) Do you need an optical drive? If yes, a CDRW/DVD-ROM, DVD Burner or Blu-Ray drive?
DVD re-writer would be nice

Okay, I've done some research and discovered the following options, all with just the 1 year warranty as standard.

1) Asus K53 - €580
i5 2430, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GT520 1GB graphics card, 500GB HDD 5,200rpm

2) Asus K53 - €595
i5 2430, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GT520MX 1GB graphics card, 500GB HDD ?rpm

3) Asus K53 - €655
i5 2430, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GT520MX 1GB graphics card, 500GB HDD ?rpm

4) Lenovo B570 - €620
i5 2410, 8GB RAM, Nvidia 410M 1GB graphics card, 750GB HDD ?rpm

5) Lenovo IdeaPad G570 - €655
i5 2410, 6GB RAM, Nvidia 520M 1GB graphics card, 750GB HDD ?rpm

6) Dell XPS 15 - €620
i5 2410, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GT525M 1GB graphics card, 640GB HDD 7,200rpm

Which of these seems like the best deal, considering price?

Also, what is the noticeable difference between an i5 2410 and an i5 2430? Is it worth shelling out more for GBs of RAM? What is the noticeable difference between the Nvidia graphics cards mentioned? When I don't mention the HDD rpm, I assume it's 5,400rpm, should I be looking for 7,200rpm all of the time?

Thanks.

partyatmygaff

7200RPM is a must on anything but the lightest of ultraportables imo.

Out of that selection i'd go for the XPS 15. The 525M is quite a bit better than the 520. It would be even better if you could find one with the gorgeous 1080P RGB screen.

Fluffy88

The difference between the 2410 and the 2430 is just a slightly higher clock frequency, they are essentially the same CPU.
In normal usage you won't notice a difference, so if there is a big difference in price between the two go with the 2410, if it's only a few €'s the 2430 is a better option.

Anything above 4GB of RAM won't make any difference at all for the tasks you listed.
If you can get 6/8GB for free then do, otherwise not worth wasting money on.

EDIT: Forgot to say, none of these will play Battlefield 3 well. It's a very demanding game!

DerTierarzt

partyatmygaff wrote: »

7200RPM is a must on anything but the lightest of ultraportables imo.

Out of that selection i'd go for the XPS 15. The 525M is quite a bit better than the 520. It would be even better if you could find one with the gorgeous 1080P RGB screen.

Just wondering, would you have any reservations about the i5 2410M on it as opposed to the i5 2430M on the Asus?

DerTierarzt

Fluffy88 wrote: »

The difference between the 2410 and the 2430 is just a slightly higher clock frequency, they are essentially the same CPU.
In normal usage you won't notice a difference, so if there is a big difference in price between the two go with the 2410, if it's only a few €'s the 2430 is a better option.

Anything above 4GB of RAM won't make any difference at all for the tasks you listed.
If you can get 6/8GB for free then do, otherwise not worth wasting money on.

EDIT: Forgot to say, none of these will play Battlefield 3 well. It's a very demanding game!

Is it worth spending an extra €60 to up the RAM from 4GB to 8GB? Or should I concentrate more on the fact that the Dell XPS 15 has a slightly worse processor, but superior HDD rpm and graphics card than the others?

Fluffy88

Actually just re-read your requirements, for some reason I picked up video editing as gaming.
If you do a lot of video editing of large HD files then the extra RAM might help a bit,
but a faster HDD and a better graphics card would add more performance to your system than extra RAM.

DerTierarzt

Fluffy88 wrote: »

Actually just re-read your requirements, for some reason I picked up video editing as gaming.
If you do a lot of video editing of large HD files then the extra RAM might help a bit,
but a faster HDD and a better graphics card would add more performance to your system than extra RAM.

What if I told you the slightly better spec. Dell XPS 15 was a refurbished one?

Fluffy88

Doesn't Dell offer the same warranty on it's refurbished laptops or are you buying from somewhere else?

Personally I would prefer a new laptop, but I don't think you should have much issue with a refurbished one once you get a good warranty with it in case it goes bad within the first few weeks

Fluffy88

EDIT: broked internet

DerTierarzt

What's more important, RAM, graphics card or processor? Rated one to three?

Fluffy88

The world would be a much simpler place if we could answer that questions :P

A balanced system is more important than anyone component.
But I would rank them,
1. Processor
2. Graphics card
3. RAM

Of course though, if you had 512MB of RAM with a Intel Core i7 2920XM and two nVidia GeForce GTX 580M your laptop would be crap even though you spent €3,000 on it.

In general once you have 2GB of RAM it won't make any difference. After that both CPU and GPU will make all the difference. Again though, if you want to game having a killer CPU with a crap GPU means you won't have a good gaming machine.

What I'm trying to say is, it all depends!!

For you what I said about the RAM doesn't hold for example because video editing isn't general use.
For video editing more RAM will make all the difference since it uses a lot of it but CPU power will also make a huge difference for video encoding and of course if your graphics card supports CUDA then it will also make a big difference to video encoding.

Hope that helps :P

Jaafa

I disagree, These days 4gb of ram is best. You can get by on 2, but really 4 should be what you aim for. With just a few tabs open on my browser and nothing else my laptop is using 40% of my 4GB of ram.

Fluffy88

Jaafa wrote: »

I disagree, These days 4gb of ram is best. You can get by on 2, but really 4 should be what you aim for. With just a few tabs open on my browser and nothing else my laptop is using 40% of my 4GB of ram.

If your only using 40% during "normal usage" doesn't that mean that 2GB would be perfect :P

I do agree with you though, I would recommend 4GB too and it's pretty much the standard now anyway.
I was just saying that, that extra 2GB won't actually improve performance since "normal usage" won't need more than 2GB.

Jaafa

Fluffy88 wrote: »

If your only using 40% during "normal usage" doesn't that mean that 2GB would be perfect :P

I do agree with you though, I would recommend 4GB too and it's pretty much the standard now anyway.
I was just saying that, that extra 2GB won't actually improve performance since "normal usage" won't need more than 2GB.

Yeah but 40% on 4GB. Scale it up, 80% on 2Gb, just browsing the interwebz. If you even want to play music on top of that you'd be pushing it.

partyatmygaff

To be honest 4GB should be the bare minimum these days.

If you've ever looked at Firefox's memory usage you'd know just how important RAM can be. For all it's good points it's a serious memory hog.

Fluffy88

Running on Windows Vista,
Firefox 8.0 with 12 tabs opened
Eclipse with a few Java projects opened
Outlook open
I've got another 12 programs running in the background(not including the normal windows stuff)
Only using 1.6GB of RAM
I think in-fairness that is well above the "average" use of a laptop these days

But like I said 4GB would be my recommended amount since it's so cheap.
My point is though, once you have enough RAM any extra won't give any performance gain.