Gaming Buying a new computer - are the specifications fine?

[Akeno Hayashi]

I bought this was 2 weeks ago and i love it
http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-dv6-1149wm/16662285

 

[Originality]

I bought this was 2 weeks ago and i love it
http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-dv6-1149wm/16662285

It's better than the Dell laptop, but costs more. For another $100 or so more, you can a laptop with real dedicated graphics, rather than another all-in-one APU (CPU and GPU sandwiched into one chip).

 

[Mazor]

Having a random optical drive instead of an SSD seems like a waste with those specs.
Rawr that irks me! The average person does not need a SSD! An SSD can half the boot time of Windows and make programs snappy and make games load fast, but the cost of SSDs make their value to most consumers terrible.

Interesting that you would say so after labeling this computer with an i3 and 6GB RAM "perfect" for the same average person. I would argue a generally _much_ lower spec'd machine would do just fine and then there would be much less of a reason to use an SSD. Again, my reasoning here is that the hard drive does not scale with what you get out of the rest of the components.

QUOTE(Originality @ Sep 7 2011, 10:30 PM)

In addition, optical (disc) drives currently refer to one if four commercially available types of media: CD, DVD, HD-DVD and Bluray. What you meant to say was mechanical (hard disk) drive.

No excuses there, that was a blatant misuse of terminology by me. There's not really anything even remotely optical about a mechanical drive when you spend more than half a second thinking about it.

 

[Originality]

The OS isn't coded well enough to properly take advantage of SSD speeds in it's operations. That's rumoured to be changed in Windows 8. And I said "perfect" because it has a dual-core sandy-bridge CPU, plenty of RAM (double what he needs, but RAM is very cheap these days so I don't mark it down), a high battery life and a good price for it all (the rest is average so I don't think anything of it). This is everything the average person needs if their main concern is work and gaming is secondary.

Sure, Dell is known for cutting corners (and HP is known for overheating issues), but so long as the doesn't break down in the first year (while it's under warranty) then it should do just fine. Sure, some things could be better (spec-wise) but at that price it's everything I would expect.

 

[Mazor]

The OS isn't coded well enough to properly take advantage of SSD speeds in it's operations.

Still, the difference in performance is remarkable as any youtube video (of most interest ones that don't only show boot time) will show.

 

[trumpet-205]

The OS isn't coded well enough to properly take advantage of SSD speeds in it's operations.

Still, the difference in performance is remarkable as any youtube video (of most interest ones that don't only show boot time) will show.

SSD is luxury, not necessities. I run PC using WD Caviar Blue as boot drive and it boots less than 15 seconds.

 

[clegion]

SSD is never a necessity for laptops anyway, since you could only keep one physical HDD. SSD is expensive to say the least, and doesn't increase that much performance with lesser HDD space, I like not having to reach for my external HDD everytime

 

[Magsor]

I really recommend to buy from costco. They have a 90 days no questions-asked refund policy so basically if you find a better deal(or not!?!?) within 3 months you just take the comp back and buy the new one.
And they have a 2 years warranty included; ask best buy how much their waranty cost...
50$ for membership well worth it to buy a computer...
check also online often they change often their stock and prices.