Many of notebooks in this test have same or very similar specifications. We will emphasize components that are characteristic for specific series: built quality of chassis, keyboard quality, heating up, autonomy etc. As you can already assume, same CPU in different models offers same performances despite the fact that notebook is signed by Acer, Dell, HP or whoever. Small differences can occur because of different motherboard and chipset that is used but in most cases those differences cannot be that important.

CPUs

Intel is more successful on desktop market compared to AMD, and on mobile market that difference is even larger. Intel Core 2 Duo is predominant on mobile market. Pentium Dual Core is positioned much lower with AMD Athlon X2 and Turion X2 following. At the bottom of this list is Intel Celeron that has only one core. We know that there are dual core Celerons also (one model on our test is powered by one of those) but they are pretty scarce (rare). One of the reasons why Intel CPUs are more popular is their lower power consumption. This means that models with Intel CPUs has longer autonomy which is very important factor when it comes to portable notebooks. One side effect of lower power consumption is lower heat dissipation. Don’t get us wrong, AMD mobile CPUs are very good and stable products that shouldn’t be avoided at any cost, especially because price tags on AMD based notebooks can be significantly lower. AMD based notebooks with non-integrated graphics card are in most cases described as “hot” because of heat dissipation but, there are models that have good cooling system that are very pleasant to use even during prolonged periods of time.

Basic parameter when comparing CPU performances is its frequency, where amount of L2 cache and FSB are not that important. CPU frequency is very important fact especially if your work consists of using software for modeling, rendering and video compression. If you intend to use notebook for surfing, work in Office Suite, watching movies and listening to music you shouldn’t worry too much about CPU frequency, because any dual core CPU will satisfy your needs.

Graphics Cards

In price range below 500€ dominate integrated graphics cards, with all their advantages and disadvantages. Among disadvantages are lower performance levels compared to non-integrated graphics card solutions and usage of system RAM. Main advantage is low power consumption that results in lower heat dissipation and prolonged autonomy.
Intel also dominates when it comes to mobile integrated graphics cards, but this time it is not consequence of superior quality but simply consequence of the fact that Intel integrated graphics cards are integrated into chipset which makes them easy to implement. Intel GMA X3100 is slowest graphics card in current lineup with X4500 being slightly better solution with support for HD video reproduction.
ATI (AMD) made a huge success with its HD3200 integrated graphics card. This was for some time fastest available integrated graphics solution that even could be compared to some non-integrated solution when it comes to performances. Unmatched by any Intel solution it present even today good choice in this category although, these days exist good alternatives.
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M silently and unnoticed entered the mobile market, although it does deserve much more attention. This is fastest integrated graphics card at the moment with performances close to ATI Radeon HD 3470 non-integrated (discrete) card. NVIDIA also has few other models like GeForce 8200 that are slightly below ATI HD 3200 when it comes to performance levels.

When it comes to discrete mobile graphics cards Intel has nothing to offer, so ATI and NVIDIA are only contestants in this battle. AMD has better new generation GPUs, but in lower segment NVIDIA is more popular. Although mobile discrete graphics cards are marked like desktop variants, don’t expect same performance levels. Because of inability to use advanced cooling solutions in notebooks, mobile GPUs must operate at lower frequencies which results in lower performances. Beside GPU itself, memory also plays a significant role when it comes to performances of graphics cards. When it comes to cheapest mobile graphics cards amount of memory is close to irrelevant so don’t be fooled by marketing tricks and such graphics cards with large amount of video memory (512MB or even 1GB). In most cases this amount of memory is actually sum of memory present on graphics card itself and system memory that will be used. That amount of “borrowed” memory is actually pretty useless in real environment. It is much more important what type of video memory is used: DDR2 or DDR3. DDR3 is much faster and more efficient when paired with modern GPUs. Manufacturers are free to set frequencies of GPU and memory so it may occur that two notebooks with same graphics card perform quite different. Problem is that those frequencies are hard to determine before you make a purchase.

All aboard?

All readers that already took a peek at specifications and results noticed that there are no MSI models. This is not consequence of the fact that we don’t like them or something like that, but simply because MSI, with its new product lineup, doesn’t have 15 inch models. Because of this we decided to review these models, and models of other manufacturers that did the same, latter in separate review. Other significant “players” are present.