Got myself a Samsung NP355V5C S01UK (AMD A10 4600M + HD7670M 1GB)

The family laptop has been in a bit of a state for a while so I've got a new one, with the following spec

A10 4600M quad core CPU with 7660G graphics
HD7670M 1GB DDR3 GPU
8GB RAM
1TB HDD (though only 5400rpm)
15.6" matte screen (though only 1366*768)

The screen and hard drive are distinctly average, but this isn't for any serious work so forgivable. Overall first impressions are very good. De-crapwared it in no time at all and set it up how I like, it's very snappy and the battery is pretty good by the looks of it. I've been browsing etc for 2 hours and it's showing 3 hours remaining (from first part charge) with decent screen brightness and High Performance selected in Windows. The lack of shiny tat is nice, there isn't any fingering magnet surfaces to be seen inside the machine at all which is nice. The lid is gloss, though it has a nice brushed metal effect that doesn't offend too much. Keyboard wise, I'm a Thinkpad/oldschool Latitude man, the island keyboard here is quiet in operation but the keys don't have much travel and seem small and far apart to me. Time will tell but I reckon it's a 6/10. There is a numerical keypad on it, which is as expected and a welcome addition to a 15.6 incher.

Of course it isn't a serious gaming machine but I've dropped Steam and Origin on there and a smattering of games. Every game I've had the brief time to test works to some extent at the native res, even BF3 is playable in multiplayer. The laptop palmrest does become quite warm while gaming/benchmarking, not eyebrow raising hot, but noticeable.

The AMD Catalyst Control Center (or whatever they want to call it these days) is quite spartan, bar some initially confusing performance and dual graphics settings. Not sure what driver version it's running just yet (8.944.2.1000) or what the craic is with what version I can use, will look into it. Going to be playing about with it and benchmarking as time permits. I'll add benchmarks and pics as and when I can

All in all very happy with it so far

Heaven 3.0, native res (1366x768), high settings, stock Samsung driver (8.944.2.1000 whatever that is?)

No tessellation


Moderate tessellation


Normal tessellation


DiRT 3, native res, all high, 4 x MSAA



Street Fighter IV Benchmark, all high, native res

Im looking for a new laptop, and this is right in my price range, Could you please, download and run minecraft at default settings and tell me what fps you get (press f3 to see) also could you do the same with leauge of legends and battlefield 3 and finally world of warcraft, Thanks a lot.
If you dont own minecraft (since you can do a trial of wow and LoL is free) just google it, If you know what I mean

Thanks very much.

BF3 is actually smoother with dual graphics disabled. I'm hoping the next official driver for the APU+7670M sorts it as there is loads of potential (the auto detect tool doesn't even recognise the hardware yet). On a mix of high/medium with no AA it runs between 20-50FPS depending on what you're looking at/explosions etc. There is some extreme dips but not many. I haven't done extensive testing/tweaking yet though. It's about the same with dual graphics switched off but noticeably smoother in feel.

Race Driver GRID and DIRT2/3 run very well, as does Deus Ex HR , Sonic Generations, Portal 2, Renegade Ops, all of the above at native res. I actually do have a Minecraft account, haven't played fo ages as it's a complete time sink. I'll give it a bash later for you, LoL I can't guarantee

Just had a quick go on Minecraft. Using the built in APU graphics adapter (7660G) it gets a rough average of 38-45fps flying high above the ground with loads in view, the level was still building I think too. AFAIK Crossfire doesn't work in windowed mode, or at least historically it hasn't. I might get a chance to play a bit more later today and see what it can do full screen

Here's some snaps. According to the client I have Java 32bit installed and the 64bit Java increases performance with Far draw distance somewhat







Edit: With the 64bit Java installed Minecraft is distinctly quicker. Hovers around 60 now, with dips to 45 occasionally

Thanks a lot, this laptops a serious contender now, especcially as it can run the latests games pretty well.

These aren't gaming laptops by any stretch, but having the ability to play the odd game here and there is nice AA kills framerate in nearly every game, memory bandwidth I believe



GRID at max settings, native res, no AA. ~30 something is as low as it gets, with lots going on on-screen

BF3 is only causing ~30-40% load on the 7670m. MSI Afterburner isn't fully aware of the hardware either, it thinks there is 4 GPUs and can't show memory usage. Lowering settings in game don't improve performance much at all, hopefully it means a driver update might drastically improve dual graphics performance

DiRT3






Appalling quality YT vid of said benchmark. Recording at decent quality really saps the performance

Max settings, no AA, native res. Very playable and looks LOADS better than XBOX lol


Also poor quality capture of gameplay

Max settings, this time with 4 x MSAA, native res. Very playable even while recording

Just realised I was uploading a YT vid while benching

Crysis Warhead runs very well in a mix of Gamer and Enthusiast settings, which is pretty impressive considering what it does to desktop systems. Makes good use of both GPUs and really gets them hot - 70c, the highest I've seen

What's the speed of your ram?

It's 2 x 4GB 1600MHz

Went for the Samsung NP350V5C couple of days ago - i5 with just HD4000, don't need anything better graphics wise. Love the machine, but wow is there a lot of preloaded crap! I'm guessing the AMD had something similiar? Task manager on first boot was showing over 88 processes - sure it has a lot of Intel stuff listed but the amount of junk Samsung wants you running - got rid of quite a lot but still seriously tempted to clean install Windows.

Aye, usual Norton virus needed removed (not a typo), Norton Online Backup For Retards, a load of Samsung backup programs and a few other items. Took no time at all. This one is getting the 128GB M4 SSD out of my other laptop next week I think, and I stick this 1TB drive in an optical SATA HDD caddy. The hard drive is fairly quick for a 5400rpm affair but it is definitely a bottleneck

Installed CAP 12.7 and saw a substantial increase in BF3 performance. Still just a little shy of fully playable in 64 man multi, it dips to sub 25 fps right when you don't need it

This looks a pretty nice laptop for the price.
What's the sound quality like from it's speakers? Any use?

Haven't really had them on full song. I'll try tomorrow sometime. Also, found the 12.8 beta drivers, BF3 is now passable on 64 man servers. Mostly low settings mind, I'd rather have less eye candy and not die because I couldn't move

Been playing Radio 1 at full blast, it's a bit tinny if you know what I mean. Not bad and doesn't distort

Another DiRT vid


What does everyone use to recode videos for Youtube? 5 minutes comes to about 4.5GB recording full frame. Using the AMD video encoder reduces it to 300MB MPEG1, but the quality is a bit naff

d_brennen said:

What does everyone use to recode videos for Youtube? 5 minutes comes to about 4.5GB recording full frame. Using the AMD video encoder reduces it to 300MB MPEG1, but the quality is a bit naff

Click to expand...

MSI afterburner has a decent recording tool included with it, it also does sound as of a few versions ago. It's arguably the best piece of free recording software, since it takes advantage of multi core CPU and GPU to generate the recorded frames. I don't get much of an FPS drop compared to FRAPS for example.

This is a serious contender for my new laptop, only want something that'll play WoW at reasonable framerates and general internet use.

Can you say how quiet it is at Idle, are there any fans running etc?

Cheers.

Idle it is silent, there is a silent running mode that puts the CPU into it's lowest power state and turns off the dGPU and fan. Does WoW support CF? The 7670M is in between the GT630 and 640 according to NoteBookCheck on it's own

Reading up on if WoW supports Crossfire, which I automatically thought it did, is that WoW doesn't support it but AMD code a profile into the CAP's - still a bit iffy though.

It maybe a deal breaker unless I can find out definitively one way or the other.

Thanks for the info on the noise of the thing - cheers.

wow has never supported sli or crossfire, Its quite easy to make it work though, So its fine, But this is a laptop were talking about, so I dont your going to be added 1/2 more screens to it.