New laptop advice

Timmy_Magic

Hi

My old laptop has given up the ghost and I am after buying a new one.

I would like it for internet, watching films and playing some games on.

I have a budget of around £700 and have been recommended this one from a guy who works in PC World.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-dv6-3060sa-06474390-pdt.html

Could someone please give me some advice on this one.

Many many thanks

millwalll

What sort of games do you like to play ?

Timmy_Magic

Well, initially Football Manager and then maybe more later.

Knarf44

The HP Pavilion DV series are certainly attractive and capable laptops. My MIL has the 17" C2D version of the DV6 and build quality wise I can't fault it. Her only criticism of it is the battery barely lasts 2 hours but that is not uncommon with 17" laptops. In my opinion the only negative to the DV6 you linked to is the Graphics card. The Radeon HD5470 only benchmarks a score of 312 which is ok for general everyday use and should play FM ok on low settings but if you intend to play more intensive games later then you'll want something with a better graphics capability.

As an alternative, you may wish to consider something like the Toshiba L650D-11R. It's not an i5 laptop but does have a Phenom Triple-core processor which is no slouch in itself. Graphics wise it has the Radeon HD5650 which benchmarks at 612, which is slightly better than the DV6 but still not that great for playing graphics intensive games. The price of this laptop is £679 at Amazon.

There are laptops available with enough dedicated graphics capacity to play the more intensive games but obviously they come at a much higher price. For watching DVDs both will be fine. What you need to ask yourself is how important is (or will) using the laptop for games be to you. Remember that the majority of affordable laptops in the £500 to £800 range will play games but not on their highest settings. Also, these laptops will not really be capable of giving you the benefit of the sound stage these games have, in fact most laptops have pretty poor sound quality, not surprising when you see how small the speakers are.

Timmy_Magic

Cheers mate. Appreciated