Help choosing budget laptop

wijcc

wijcc

wijcc

Soldato
Joined
10 Aug 2003
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Location
London
I am trying to decide which of two laptops i should buy.. the specs for the two laptops are below.. which one do you guys think is better?


Acer Aspire 5732Z Value Laptop
========================

Processor

* Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300 2.1GHz
* 800MHz FSB
* 1MB L2 Cache

Memory

* 4GB RAM - DDR3
* Configuration: 2 x 2GB

Hard Drive

* 500GB

Optical Drive

* DVD±RW Dual Layer

Software

* Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64BIT
* Acer Arcade™ Deluxe, featuring Cinema, Album, Music, Acer
* HomeMedia
* Acer eRecovery Management
* Acer GameZone
* Acer GridVista™
* Acer Launch Manager
* Adobe® Reader®
* NTI Media Maker™

Display

* 15.6" HD Acer CineCrystal LCD

Graphics

* UMA - No External Video Memory
* GL40 Chipset

Audio

* Integrated Speakers
* NO MIC

Networking

* Acer Nplify™ 802.11b/g/n

Input Devices

* Keyboard and Touchpad

Power Supply

* 6-cell Li-ion batter
* Up to 2.5 hours battery life

Dimensions

* 372.3 (W) mm
* 246.5 (D) mm
* 26.8/39.6 (H) mm
* Weight: 2.7kg

Interfaces

* External display (VGA) port
* Headphone/speaker/line-out jack
* Microphone-in jack
* Ethernet (RJ-45) port
* DC-in jack for AC adapter
* No Webcam

Expansion

* Multi-in-1 card reader

Warranty

* 1 Year Manufacturer Warranty



Zoostorm Value Laptop
==================

Processor

* Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 2.2GHz
* 2MB Cache

Memory

* 3GB DDR2 800MHz
* 2 x soDIMM slot

Hard Drive

* 320GB SATA II

Optical Drive

* Supermulti DVDRW

Software

* Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32 Bit

Display

* 15.4" TFT

Graphics

* Intel GL40 Graphics Chipset

Audio

* Integrated Speakers

Input Devices

* Keyboard and Touchpad

Networking

* Network Interface: 10/100 LAN
* Wireless Lan 802.11b/g

Power Supply

* 6 Cell Battery

Dimensions

* Depth 268 mm
* Width 359 mm
* Height 37 mm
* Weight 2.5kg

Interfaces

* 3 x USB 2.0 ports
* 1 x VGA port
* 1 x Headphone port
* 1 x Microphone port
* 1 x S/PDIF output port
* 1 x RJ-11 port
* 1 x RJ45 LAN port
* 1 x DC-in jack

Expansion

* 7 in 1 Card Reader

Warranty / Miscellaneous

* 1 Year Manufacturer Warranty
* Webcam 1.3mp


Thanks in advance guys :)
 
How much are they? as there may be better available for the money.

The Zoostorm sounds like junk no-name stuff, so purely on that I would have the Acer.

If you ever wanted parts in the future the Acer stands a much much better chance part availability.
 
The Dell Studio 15 is £429 and is similar to the Acer one but with a decent GPU. You can check it out at dmxdimension.com
 
so the Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 2.2GHz is a much better CPU.. does the zoostorm having DDR2 as opposed to DDR3 memory make it slower?
 
The T6600 isn't a much better CPU. Its marginally faster but will be unnoticeable in real world applications.

The ram will also not much different because the T4300 has an FSB of 800mhz, so the DDR3 ram will be clocked down to meet that speed.
 
I would have to disagree, the t6600 is a lot better, higher clock speed and more importantly twice the cache size. I just paid 70 quid to upgrade fr
om t4300 to t6600 so it had better be better!
 
The T6600 is only 100mhz faster and 1mb more cache, both of which make no difference to real world tasks. The only thing they will affect will be SuperPi numbers and video encoding. If you are using it for video encoding then great, but if not then tbh its £70 better spent else were (like upgrading the screen, backlit keyboard etc).

The T6600 doesn't even have Intel Virtualization Technology, which would have been the only thing that may have been worth the extra.

EDIT: Here's benchs:

psubo.jpg


Little difference in actual benchmarks, so even less in real world tasks.
 
Last edited:
To quote:

"There is a significant difference
The Pentium T4300 has the Same Front side bus as the T6600
This means its amount of data carried per travel, in this case 800mhz (not bad for a mobile)
They do not share the same clock multiplier
How many runs through, the T4300 with 10.5 and the T6600 with 11
The Level 2 cache is also double in the T6600 model instead of 1MB it is 2MB
The more memory in the cache the faster the connection to the motherboard hence, better speeds
also the T6600 features all of these extra features
Stop Grant mode
Sleep mode
Deep Sleep mode
Deeper Sleep mode
Enhanced Deeper Sleep mode
Dynamic Cache sizing"

cpu-world.com

Also in Passmark benchmarks, its about 8% faster.

I don't want to think its a waste of money!
 
But again they are all synthetics. They don't tell anything about real world performance. The difference will not be noticeable for every task that a normal user would do: web, video watching (HD), gaming, word processing, image editing.

The only time the T6600 would be beneficial would be in video encoding where the cache would help, or else with something like Seti@Home where the CPU would crunch faster. But thats it.
 
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