eMachines G520

eMachines G620

eMachines G520

Cheaper one of two notebooks, that we tested, has new Intel X4500 chipset with integrated graphics card and Celeron CPU at 2GHz. Because of these features this model presents absolute bottom when it comes to notebook performances because only netbooks are slower than this model. Celeron CPUs cannot change frequency in real-time so effects on autonomy will be shown in results. Model G520 has one interesting option in BIOS that allows you to set amount of memory that will be dedicated to integrated graphics card (from 32 to 128MB) but no matter how much memory you set aside for your video card performances in games will be the same. Same option is present on the other model (G620) and, of course, with same results. BIOS also has option for setting IDE or AHCI disk mode so even Windows XP can be installed without problems with disk controller drivers during installation.


eMachines G620

Slightly pricier, model G620 has AMD Athlon X2 CPU and NVIDIA chip set with integrated GeForce 9100M graphics card. Advantages of dual core CPU are easily noticeable so this notebook has significantly better performances than G520. Thanks to NVIDIA graphics card this notebook can be used for playing older games on low detail settings. Intel chipset had better hard disk performances but those differences are too small to be noticed. Heating up of this model is almost unnoticeable which is expected for a model with relatively big chassis and integrated graphics card.

Both models came with Windows Vista Basic OS which was pleasant surprise. In this price range most other manufacturers offer Linux or FreeDOS OS. Hidden hard disk partition has OS image with additional applications that can be used for recovery in just few minutes. Bear in mind that this procedure will erase all data that was present before on system partition so our recommendation is to store all vital data (favorites, mail, music, etc) on D partition.