Got a call from my sister that I have not spoken to in ages.
You guessed it, "My son needs a laptop for school, what should I get him?"
She has no idea what he needs to run on it but does not want to spend more than $1000

I know he loves games so it will need some power in the graphics department.

Started with Dell as the first port of call

The Inspiron M501R and Inspiron M15R are both $948.99

Both have 500G HD, 15.6" screen, 4Gb RAM and Windows7

M501R AMD Turion II Dual-Core P520 (2.3GHz, 2M, 3.6GT/s), ATI Mobility Radeon HD 550V 1GB
M15R Intel Core i3-330M (2,1GHz, 4 threads, 3M cache), ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 1GB

Which one is likely to have more grunt?
Or what is a better option out there. He will be taking the laptop to school quite a bit.

go the intel

The 550v is faster but only DX10.1 the 5470 is slower but DX11

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-550v.31270.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5470.23698.0.html

Tough choice!

Tough choice hey?

...... I think I've found a solution! :

1. While covering your eyes
   
2. Recite "eeny meeny miney moe"
   
3. Begin moving your finger back and forth between your choices
   
4. Pick one
   
5. Do the happy happy dance of joy, as your search is now over.
   
6. Begin to stress that you didnt pick the right one
   
7. Take that phone call from your sister asking why she now has 500Gb of something called "battlefield" on her sons notebook
   
8. Take the time to patiently explain that battlefield RULES
   
9. Then give her the cold shoulder until the next blue moon shows up
   

PERFECT!


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Sound advice from Lylow yet again!

Lmfao here too! Just shows what trouble I could get myself into. I didn't read the fine print. You sneaky bastard Lylow!

The lists I've seen seem to show the 5470 a cut above the 550V.

Guess I'll just do some searching around for a system compared to this 5470 one then.

From the website in Chooks GPU links.
The Intel CPU comes in at position 52 in the list and the AMD comes in at position 81

So in KP's words, go Intel will be my thinking.