Dell Studio 17 with 5650 or 4670?

Hi forum

New user here. I've decided to replace my dinosaur of a desktop with a laptop and after some searching, the Dell Studio 17 seems to be the best bang for buck.

So the question is which of the two to buy.

#1
$2000 (NZD)
CPU: Intel i5 2.5ghz
GPU: Radeon 5650 1gb

#2
$2500 (NZD)
CPU: Intel i7 1.6ghz
GPU: Radeon 4670 1gb

Option 1 has the better GFX but worse CPU and option 2 vice versa.
Which one would end up with better game performance?
The main games I would expect to play are Bioshock 1 + 2, Mass effect 1 + 2, Starcraft 2.

Thanks!

 

Im going to say the 5650.

Do to the fact it has more pipelines then the 4670. 320 vs 400.

Plus the 4670 uses twice the power (watts) than the 5650.That means alot in a notebook.

less heat and more battery life.

As for the i7 vs i5.Gaming wise I think the i5 would be better because of the faster clock speed in dual core.

 

I agree.
But if you can afford it, you can go for the i7 620M dual core in combination with the HD5650. It is a very powerful rig.

 

Thanks for the replies.

I did think about getting the i7 with 5650, but strangely there's no option to upgrade it.
The i5 build is the only one that has a 5650.

Anyway, the i5 should be enough for my needs because I'm still on a Pentium 4... Yeah, go head, have a laugh.

 

I've placed my order for it. Now for a few sleep nights...
This will be my first ever laptop purchase, hopefully it won't disappoint!

 

Congratz with your choise.
Compared to your P4 this rig will be extremely powerful.

I like the JBL sound system with sub-woofer. I whish I could have opted for the US backlit keyboard. Now I'm forced to search for it aftermarket.

 

You're not going to see a huge improvement performance wise with the 5650 going from the 4650 like the 4650 did with the 3650 (which was garbage), but you will get a mild performance bump and lower thermals (albeit the 4650 runs pretty cool as is in the Studio 17). All things being equal, get the 5650 unless you want a Quad Core and 1333 memory then go with the 4650.

I agree, the JBL sound system is very nice and compared to your P4 you are in for a very nice performance bump.

 

I've just received my laptop, yay!

It's all beautiful and everything but there's a problem...
EDIT: Made new thread for this.

 

Hi!
Planning to buy the same thing. Hows the heat and noise of the thingy while playing games?

 

^ I've yet to try any games on it.
Despite what people have said about a noisy fan, there's very little noise at all.

 

Off topic:
How you'll experience the noise level is very relative. It's just the fan characteristics what's annoying.
In a normal situation you have a step controller, or even better a modulating controller, with a max temp set-point. It goes to far to explain how it works, but you can imagine that the fan controller can turn on the fan at the lowest step to keep the temperature as stable as possible. In our situation the fan does nothing till the CPU reaches its max temperature and kicks in with level 2 or 3 fan-speed and will turn off after the temperature decreases 3-4 degrees. This is repeating all the time. It's just ridiculous.

This controller behavior could be programmed by a 6 year old boy!
If you want to dim the light in the house you're also not standing next to the switch and turning it on and of continuous all the time, don't ya?

On topic:
And no, as far as I know this notebook has no heat issues and the speaker system is kinda cool. The HD 5650 I like most.

 

Yeah I just finally admitted to that fact, figure it must just be me they couldn't be that stupid right? lol
I called Dell said I upgraded to a bigger chip for gaming (which their site ACTUALLY recommends) and downgrade my graphics so I can't game lol

I need it for vmware and other stuff mostly actually.

Anyway I'm about to order the hp dv6tse same specs as the studio 17 but a 15.6 screen and they'll give me the i7 w/ 5650