Okay so I went and ordered a laptop this week since I needed one for work and though I would prefer to use my desktop I can’t lug it around with me when I travel.
Ever since AMD announced their Fusion lineup of CPU/GPU’s I’ve been waiting for OEM’s to come out with competitively priced laptops that were capable of decent gaming but Fusion was slow in coming and the initial Brazos lineup just wasn’t beefy enough for my tastes since I the CPU/GPU was geared towards battery life rather than performance.
On paper they sounded great! Long battery life and discrete graphics level APU’s for games and videos from an entry level laptop who wouldn’t want that right?
Initially the first Fusion laptop that came out in Japan was HP’s G6 for around 40,000yen.
It only had the HD 6480G graphics chip and the A4 3300 which is a dual core APU not a Quad like the A6 or A8.
This didn’t appeal to me very much so I passed on this one, another factor was that the keyboard for the entry level laptops from HP just felt very flimsy and had lots of flex which didn’t inspire much confidence.
A week ago I saw Lenovo had started selling Fusion based laptops and checked those out too and they had two systems one for around 40k and the other for 60k.
The lower priced one was a no go for me because the APU was a bit slower and the GPU was again a 6480G, the higher priced one was attractive but a tad bit above what I wanted to pay for.
So I looked around again and came across the Asus K53TA selling for around 40k which I thought was a good deal.
Looking at the specs it stated that it had crossfire between the APU and the discreet GPU which I had to double check to be sure they hadn’t made a mistake and sure enough it wasn’t at typo.
The GPU on the APU side is a 6520G and the dedicated GPU is a 6650G and you can switch between crossfire or choose either GPU which is called switchable graphics so you can either save power or have max performance depending on what you need in a given scenario.
This was probably the biggest reason I chose particular laptop as it seemed to have the best gaming performance in its class and after reading some reviews on a laptop forum it seemed to also be a pretty good overclocker to boot.
The laptop arrived this morning and here are my initial thoughts on it.
Pros:
The keyboard is pretty sturdy and doesn’t flex like the el cheapo Dell’s or HP’s.
Good 3D performance. I was able to play a game of COD4 without stuttering with the texture settings on high and the other settings turned on low.
SC2 was playable on the single player campaign with the graphics turned down quite a bit, the average FPS seemed to be around 24 FPS according to the in game menu though I don’t know just how reliable it is. With some tweaking I don’t see why I couldn’t get around 35 FPS out of it.
The Altec lansing speakers are decent enough and sound probably just as good as say a Macbook’s but they do lack some in volume. I’m not really an audiophile so I probably am not the best person to judge audio clarity but most people don’t expect great sound from laptops anyway as they are often tinny and lack any bass.
I was expecting this to be quite loud but I was pleasantly surprised with how quiet it was, now keep in mind it is Autumn and temps are around 20 to 24c’s but I have seen laptops (Dell Turion comes to mind) sound like a hairdryer in winter. Not the case with this one.
Now on to the Cons:
As so often is with the case with budget laptops the Screen isn’t the greatest but for the price I can’t complain. If I were to fiddle with some of the color settings I might be able to make it look a bit better but I just got this so haven’t gotten around to it.
I’ve noticed some other reviews that said there was a bit of screen flex but it seemed ok to me, it really shouldn’t be an issue unless you’re intentionally trying to break it.
The hinges don’t seem to be very sturdily built but this is something that will have to be proven over time, it may not be an issue.
The CPU’s at 1.4ghz won’t break any speed records but they get the job done, overclocking will help a lot but I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet and everything is at stock clocks.
The design of the laptop is pretty simple, again for the price I don’t think we can expect something like the Macbook.
I don’t know if all the fans on this series sound this way but the CPU fan sounds a little rattly at full speed, I’m not sure how to explain it but it does concern me. It doesn’t sound very smooth is the best way to describe it.
I still haven’t used this laptop too much so that’s all I can say about it for now.
If anyone is looking for a budget laptop on the cheap well look no further, ASUS is as far as I know the only company offering crossfire cards on their laptops and at around the 40k price range it is an absolute steal.
This is exactly what I had hoped for with Fusion and with AMD improving on their APU’s I think we can expect to see improved GPU’s and power efficiency in the coming years.
AMD is headed down the right path of making gaming affordable for everyone and hopefully we will see more Fusion systems in the market as there don’t seem to be too many OEM’s taking advantage of it right now.
Let’s hope that this changes.
Edit:
As of today May 23 2012 nothing has broken down yet, the screen hinges have held up just fine and none of the keys have fallen off yet so the durability is quite good.
The CPU fan is a bit noisy though but that could be do to dirt stuck in the cooling fins or on the fan itself. I’m hesitant to open this up to void the warranty but in a few months I’ll be taking it apart to clean the cooling fins and possibly reapply thermal paste.
Tags: AMD, Budget, Fusion. Asus, Gaming, Japan, K53TA, Laptop, Llano
