GX620-038US & GT627-218US - Need Info

Buying 1 of these 2 laptops.

MSI GX620-038US - around $1,200

or

MSI GT627-218US - around $1,450+

Basically same specs just that the GT627 has a Geforce 9800GS 1GB DDR3, Blue Ray and a 9 cell battery.
Is this worth the extra money?
How much more power will having the 9800GS consume over the 9600GT?
Notebookcheck has the 9800 at 60 watt consumption and the 9600 at 23 watt. Would this make a big difference in battery life? And if it does would the 9 cell bat of the gt627 over the 6 cell of the gx620 compensate for this?
Can anyone can give me an educated estimate on battery life of these 2?
If i could please get info on this it would be awsome.


Aslo...I seen alot of sites advertise the GX620 as having a 9600 with DDR2 ram instead of DDR3, is this a misprint?

 

I was getting with:
1651
P8600
9600M GT 512MB GDDR3
WSXGA+ 1680x1050 LCD Panel
6cell battery

around 2h 30-45m on battery, WiFi on, web surfing, some minor document editing, i.e. nothing overly CPU/GPU taxing.

One of the smaller vendor sites(maybe xoticpc) listed the 218US as having >2h battery runtime, so in the end with a 9cell battery offsetting the greater GPU power usage, I'd not be surprised if it got around 2h or a little more on batteries under light loads, much less of course if you are taxing the GPU and/or CPU though...

(There's a 1651 thread around here somewhere from Nov/Dec with battery runtimes and temps that you might want to try to dig up for more 1651 battery runtime results. No field results for the 627 yet as they just became available and, apparently, noone here has one yet.)

If battery runtime is your primary concern though, the GX620/1651 would be the obvious choice. (There are 9 cell batteries available for this model too, but they were c. $140 when I checked. No idea how much battery runtime would be extended by their use though.) The 9600M was able to run several games, including the nearly entirely unoptimized STALKER: SoC engine at reasonable frame rates @ 1280x1024 and fairly high settings.

That said if gaming or demanding graphical/3D apps are your desire there's no question that the 627 or maybe even 725 would be the way to go.

[EDIT]
9600M GT with GDDR2. No idea as when I originally had my 1651 and had been looking around they ALL had GDDR3. It's entirely possible that MSI released a GDDR2 model to reduce costs, but I find that to be highly unlikely. Best source of info would be the MSI global site, and then the MSI USA site for particular US model variations.

Also if the site in question is Frosty's Computers, then it's even more likely that his specs are wrong, since he doesn't really seem to have a clue about anything beyond shipment dates. (He had incorrect GX620 specs back in OCT/Nov when I was looking for a 620/1651... and now has confused 627/725 specs...)
[/EDIT]

 

the 9800gs has 64 shaders vs the 32 shaders in 9600gt, the difference is night and day.

 

Alright thanks both of you.
lol about frosty. I seen him mess up the specs in a youtube vid before.
Leaning towards the gt627. Have to make a choice soon.
Also yesterday I could have bought the gx620-038us for $999 from ebay. Just wasnt sure if I was getting 9600 DDR2 instead of DDR3. Also the no warranty I think.

 

Newegg had the gx620 for 949$ awhile ago (not sure if it's still on,) are you not in the states?

edit: looks it's the one with an 8400 cpu i guess that makes sense, us-001 or something

 

Yeah im in the US.

Also wondering if the GT627 has the same chasis as the GX620 would it get hotter than the GX620 because of the 9800GS card? And if so would it be bearable?
Lastly I dont know how hot the GX620 gets with the 9600GT. If that is even a problem.

 

Heat issue is definitely not a problem with the GX620. Unless the heatsink got redesigned for the GT627, it will definitely get hotter, but I don't think it's going to be bad. The ASUS G50Vt's heatsink design is very similar to the GX620, and it handles the 9800M GS pretty well.

 

Alright thanks.
I just purchased the GT627 earlier today.
Seems I will be very happy with this laptop. Unless issues im unaware of pop up. Ill cross my fingers

 

...BUT the G50VT is a MUCH larger chassis, and probably has additional fans as it DOES support multiple hdds in that case. The thing's more like a large 17" than a 15.4" nb...

I prefer the MSI design though, just wish that they wouldn't use that hideous coloring scheme, or make it optional. The MSI full size kb is better too if you use the numeric keypad at all, as it's almost the same as a desktop numeric pad whereas ASUS moved around alot of the keys, and are missing a couple(doubled up the arrow keys functionality like on Apple nbs and older nbs w/o keypad).

 

No it doesn't. The G50VT's heatsink is only centered around a single fan, and has two heatpipes running into it. Very similar to the 1651. Heatsink is pretty much the same size, there's nothing special about it. The only reason why it's so large is because it can encase two hard drives, not because of a huge heatsink or fans. Dimension-wise, it's big, but it's closer in size to a 16" notebook like the Sony FW series (Length and width).

 

Hmmm... I would've thought that since they had the extra space that they'd add extra fans and maybe larger ones... Guess it goes to show where they control costs though...

w T F do you have so many nbs?

Also get back to fabricating your jury-rigged heatsink on that x1900...

 

Alright so i just got the GX620. This is my first laptop and my first experiance with Vista I've been an XP guy.
I guess i have to burn a msi recovery disc.
Should I uninstall unnessesary stuff and optimize vista with settings and update drivers before I do this?
And if so what steps would i have to take with Vista?

 

Sorry can't help, as I've never used Vista yet either considering the problems of the original release and the fact that win2k/XP still run everything.

Best bet would be to try the larger GX620/1651 threads for specifics, and maybe hunt down some general Vista threads here or in the Windows forum. There's supposed to be a thread kicking around that forum(I think) that has a list of recommended Vista tweaks.

(Chicken! Now we've got no one yet to do a first unboxing in the GT627 Owner's thread... good deal though, plus you save shipping... What I said above still stand as well, if you wanted more battery life while still having decent performance this model was the better choice anyways, plus now you can spring for an extra 9 cell battery and get really long battery runtime...)

 

lol

I wanted a GT627, but saving around $500 was just too good of a deal!!!
Plus I got a GX620-098US, which is not one of the lower end models.
Ill just be missing, blueray(no biggie), 9cell bat., 9800GS GPU, and the 7200rpm HD.
It has a (1680X1050) Screen, same as the gt627
I had more than enough left over to get a nice carring case and a logitech VX nano mouse.


Also adding to my previous set of questions...
How would I go about upgrading to vista 64? Does the version of 32 that comes with the gx620 let you uprage free? or a fee? And are all the drivers available for vista 64?