Gaming Thoughts on AMD Fusion -based notebooks

DiscostewSM

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For the past couple of years, I've stayed away from AMD due to problems I've had with their products, but I keep hearing about them recently involving their Fusion APUs. Right now, I'm in the market for a cheap laptop for my school work, but also for some light-to-moderate gaming (not expecting high-quality visuals) as well as web browsing and streaming like Youtube. I wasn't looking for an extremely powerful laptop (as I don't have that kind of money), so at first I was thinking of going with a cheap Intel-based laptop with their HD Graphics IGP, but supposedly AMD's Fusion beats Intel's IGP graphically (though not in processing). Because of my prior experiences with them before, I'm hesitant to take them up again, but many reviewers are giving props to them for these APUs. I was reading up on a few like the HP dm1z, but like I said, I'm rather hesitant.

I'd just like to know what you all think about their fusion-based products, and whether a laptop utilizing them would be something to look into.
 
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I own a laptop with AMD's A6-3400M, and it's kinda doing most of the things I'm asking for. My parents bought the laptop for me, so I didn't really know what kinda of laptop I was getting until I got back from summer camp. I'd say it's pretty nice for a $500 laptop. The games I've tried to play were Crysis 2, Sonic Generations, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and DiRT 3. They all either play at medium quality to high quality, but I'd say medium quality. Yes, the processing part for the APU's aren't as strong as Intel processors. If you want a laptop that's all-around (not too strong, not too weak), I'd say get a laptop with an APU.

Another thing to note is that my laptop rarely heats up a lot. If anything, I've reached temperatures of at most 60 degrees Celsius when I game all day (3-5 hours straight).

In short, Intel processors can beat the APU's processing part, but AMD's combo of the processor and graphics card is pretty awesome.
 

DiscostewSM

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I own a laptop with AMD's A6-3400M, and it's kinda doing most of the things I'm asking for. My parents bought the laptop for me, so I didn't really know what kinda of laptop I was getting until I got back from summer camp. I'd say it's pretty nice for a $500 laptop. The games I've tried to play were Crysis 2, Sonic Generations, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and DiRT 3. They all either play at medium quality to high quality, but I'd say medium quality. Yes, the processing part for the APU's aren't as strong as Intel processors. If you want a laptop that's all-around (not too strong, not too weak), I'd say get a laptop with an APU.

Another thing to note is that my laptop rarely heats up a lot. If anything, I've reached temperatures of at most 60 degrees Celsius when I game all day (3-5 hours straight).

In short, Intel processors can beat the APU's processing part, but AMD's combo of the processor and graphics card is pretty awesome.

An AMD A6-3400M laptop? At first, I was thinking of getting an HP DM1Z off their website for about $400 (it's a netbook so smaller and weighs less), but checking on Newegg.com, they've got a Lenova IdeaPad Z575 notebook for just $30. It's bigger, weighs a few pounds more, and has a higher TDP rating, but that aside, it seems the jump of $30 may offer quite a bit more.

Good deal?
 

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Really don't have a lot to support my own comment, except for some passing observations, but it seems to be a lot harder to get emulation-specific gaming running smoothly on the new AMD Fusion APUs.

If you're not into emulation, but want broad low-end support for DirectX / PC Games, it's a good deal.
If you're primarily into emulation, especially PCSX2/Dolphin -- you'll probably have your work cut out for you to get realtime speed when things would be easy(er) for an Intel owner.
 

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Really don't have a lot to support my own comment, except for some passing observations, but it seems to be a lot harder to get emulation-specific gaming running smoothly on the new AMD Fusion APUs.

If you're not into emulation, but want broad low-end support for DirectX / PC Games, it's a good deal.
If you're primarily into emulation, especially PCSX2/Dolphin -- you'll probably have your work cut out for you to get realtime speed when things would be easy(er) for an Intel owner.

For the past couple of years, I haven't really done much PS2/GC emulation, even on my very capable desktop computer. I'm more of a retro gamer when it comes to that.
 

exangel

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For the past couple of years, I haven't really done much PS2/GC emulation, even on my very capable desktop computer. I'm more of a retro gamer when it comes to that.

If I can spare the money for a Wii controller anytime soon, I'm going to be using Dolphin for Wii emulation.
I've never attempted to emulate GC at all, but I've already gauged the capability of my own system for Wii emulation ^_^
 
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I own a laptop with AMD's A6-3400M, and it's kinda doing most of the things I'm asking for. My parents bought the laptop for me, so I didn't really know what kinda of laptop I was getting until I got back from summer camp. I'd say it's pretty nice for a $500 laptop. The games I've tried to play were Crysis 2, Sonic Generations, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and DiRT 3. They all either play at medium quality to high quality, but I'd say medium quality. Yes, the processing part for the APU's aren't as strong as Intel processors. If you want a laptop that's all-around (not too strong, not too weak), I'd say get a laptop with an APU.

Another thing to note is that my laptop rarely heats up a lot. If anything, I've reached temperatures of at most 60 degrees Celsius when I game all day (3-5 hours straight).

In short, Intel processors can beat the APU's processing part, but AMD's combo of the processor and graphics card is pretty awesome.

An AMD A6-3400M laptop? At first, I was thinking of getting an HP DM1Z off their website for about $400 (it's a netbook so smaller and weighs less), but checking on Newegg.com, they've got a Lenova IdeaPad Z575 notebook for just $30. It's bigger, weighs a few pounds more, and has a higher TDP rating, but that aside, it seems the jump of $30 may offer quite a bit more.

Good deal?

That laptop's specs are almost EXACTLY the same as my laptop's specs. That's actually a great deal to begin with. I know that some people may be a bit skeptical with the APU because it's clocked at 1.4 GHz per core, but it's not that bad.

A side note is that I overclocked my A6-3400M to 2.4 GHz per core but don't see any changes. If anything, maybe slight changes.

I have tried using a PS2 emulator to play some PS2 games, but it didn't exactly do what I expected it to do. I don't think the APUs are good at emulation either.
 

DiscostewSM

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I own a laptop with AMD's A6-3400M, and it's kinda doing most of the things I'm asking for. My parents bought the laptop for me, so I didn't really know what kinda of laptop I was getting until I got back from summer camp. I'd say it's pretty nice for a $500 laptop. The games I've tried to play were Crysis 2, Sonic Generations, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and DiRT 3. They all either play at medium quality to high quality, but I'd say medium quality. Yes, the processing part for the APU's aren't as strong as Intel processors. If you want a laptop that's all-around (not too strong, not too weak), I'd say get a laptop with an APU.

Another thing to note is that my laptop rarely heats up a lot. If anything, I've reached temperatures of at most 60 degrees Celsius when I game all day (3-5 hours straight).

In short, Intel processors can beat the APU's processing part, but AMD's combo of the processor and graphics card is pretty awesome.

An AMD A6-3400M laptop? At first, I was thinking of getting an HP DM1Z off their website for about $400 (it's a netbook so smaller and weighs less), but checking on Newegg.com, they've got a Lenova IdeaPad Z575 notebook for just $30. It's bigger, weighs a few pounds more, and has a higher TDP rating, but that aside, it seems the jump of $30 may offer quite a bit more.

Good deal?

That laptop's specs are almost EXACTLY the same as my laptop's specs. That's actually a great deal to begin with. I know that some people may be a bit skeptical with the APU because it's clocked at 1.4 GHz per core, but it's not that bad.

A side note is that I overclocked my A6-3400M to 2.4 GHz per core but don't see any changes. If anything, maybe slight changes.

I have tried using a PS2 emulator to play some PS2 games, but it didn't exactly do what I expected it to do. I don't think the APUs are good at emulation either.

Yeah, emulation (even with dynamic recompilation) is still more CPU-involved than most programs. I'm not too worried about not being able to run PS2 games on the laptop anyways. Games and applications nowadays have been moving much of their processing that can be done by GPUs to them, which in turn doesn't require as hearty a CPU as before.
 

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