GX620 vs GX630

This is my first post here. I'm looking for a 15" laptop that can do moderate gaming in addition to my school work. Due to personal preference I've narrowed it down to the MSI GX line. My question is for the $100 difference between the two, what type of performance increase will I see with the 620 over the 630?

Specs:
GX630:
CPU Type: AMD Athlon X2 QL-62(2.0GHz)
Screen: 15.4" WXGA
Memory Size: 4GB DDR2
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT

GX620:
CPU Type: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26G
Screen: 15.4" WXGA
Memory Size: 4GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT


The difference in HDD space is irrelevant because either one I'll be buying a 500GB for. The only appreciable difference that I can see is the CPU. For the $100 difference in price, would I get my money's worth with the P8400?

Thanks for you help!

 

yes .

 

go with the gx620 it is probably id say 2 times faster as i remember a T5800 was faster the a Athlon x2

 

For 100$ I'd say it's worth it to upgrade to a P8400. It is slightly more powerful and far more efficient than the Athlon QL-62. Therefore, overlal machine efficiency will increase, battery life will lengthen a bit and heat will be reduced.

 

Take a quick look at some benchmarks. AMD has ALWAYS had underperforming mobile processors even when their desktop/server CPUs were top dogs, their mobile CPUs blew chunks.

If it were $200 or more difference, I'd take a long hard look at the benches for what you want it for, but for $100 go for the Core 2.

 

always underperfoming is actually untrue i remember not that long ago reading that the Athlon/turion X2 were much better then the Core Duo but when Core 2 duo came out well it spanked them bad i can find it if you want me too.....

 

I know this thread is old but I was going to post one with the same title.


For gaming, will you really notice a difference framerate wise with a P8400 vs the Athlon QL-62?

I'm not looking to multi task, just game, and not even current games like Crysis, but games like C&C3:KW and TFD, Halo, BF2 etc., so pretty much 2007 or earlier.

 

go for the 8400

 

IF the game IS CPU INTENSIVE, you WILL notice a difference. If it's mainly GPU bound then there will NOT be much of a difference. Still at this point I'd go with Intel.

Turion: I don't remember ANY AMD CPU being able to beat Pentium M's (basis of the core arch) and beyond.

 

Well if we're speaking of the GX620 and the GX630 at Newegg, I'd say the 100$ difference is definitely worth it .

The P8400 is more powerful and far more efficient than the QL-62. You'll get reduced heat(which is good considering the presence of a 9600M GT) and more battery life with the P8400, something which IMO justifies the 100$ .

Still though, as others have said, some of the games you listed are somewhat CPU intensive(notably C&C3 which is a RTS) so the P8400 will perform better. In the other games though you won't notice much of a difference if any.

 

How can you tell if its CPU or GPU?

I imagine Crysis would be more GPU?

Is the newegg GX630 any different form the Aamazon 630?

Well, I will mostly be using my laptop plugged in, so battery life is not important to me.

But more cooling power is always good.

[/quote]Still though, as others have said, some of the games you listed are somewhat CPU intensive(notably C&C3 which is a RTS) so the P8400 will perform better. In the other games though you won't notice much of a difference if any.[/QUOTE]

I see. Thanks.

 

Well the manual way is to minimize the window while playing a game, and open the task manager(or another similar program) and checking the CPU load. If it's a high percentage(75%+), then chances are it's CPU intensives.

Rule of thumb, mostly RTS(Real Time Strategy) games are CPU intensive since you need to process the data of all the units on the map. Also, any game which has a lot of physics(such as dynamic lightning/shading) to process(Crysis & GTA 4) will be CPU intensive as well.

They should be, you can just check for yourself here.

Well it's also a question of performance. The P8400 is a significantly more powerful processor than the QL-62, which is both more efficient(draws less juice for better performance) and more performing. If you plan on playing other RTS games or games which are somewhat CPU intensive, I'd suggest the P8400.

Anyways, I hope that helped a bit and good luck with your purchase

 

Interesting, thanks.

Oh, trust me, I already have.

I asked because there's some descrpencies between the newegg specs and amazon specs, and I wasn't sure if it was because they were selling a different , but then I realized the numbers were the same. Just amazon doing a poor job of describing their product I guess.

Thanks!

 

If you get with the GX630 (MS-1652) go with the ZM-86 CPU, not the QL-62.

ZM is a turion Ultra CPU and has 2MB L2 cache (QL has 1MB), CPU is 2.4Ghz, you can also move down to the ZM-84, ZM-82 also with 2MB L2. All are better performing and higher clock speed than the QL.