I Need Help Deciding Between An Asus U52F-BBL9 Or A Dell Inspiron 17R-2950MRB Laptop

Do NOT buy into the bull@&# that is INTEL GRAPHICS. As much as I hesitate to say, get the HP instead of the other choices. Intel and Graphics just don't mix. I wish they'd get out of the market. Their CPUs rock, but it's taken them how many years to get where nVidia and ATI were almost a decade ago? Ugh!
My biggest problem is that the refurbished laptop is the only one (in my price range) that has anything other than the Intel Graphics. I am just very leery about buying a refurbished laptop, especially from Best Buy. I don't know, I keep hearing good things about Dells, I like the HP, but the refurbished thing just keeps bothering me. Do you think that the price on the refurbished laptop is a steal for what I would be getting? If so, then it may be worth it, I don't know. One other thing is that the laptop doesn't have the WiMAX technology built in like the others do.

EDIT:
What do you guys think about this one? It has the ATI Graphics chip, but it has the AMD Phenom II processor and not the Intel Core i5. The only thing about this laptop is that PCMag.com gave it a good rating based on it's entertainment features and not it's application performance, which gives me some cause for concern.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pa...inum/1260564.p?id=1218243758022&skuId=1260564
 
from what i have seen. and read asus scores really high in reliability. but its only a miniscule amount of a difference then dell. its better to buy a computer from the specs over brand. because all teh computers are built in bthe same place china. but i personally have no experience with dell or asus. but i do have experience with acer and toshiba and i am quite impressed with them. in my opinion toshiba is a good reliable company. but like i said its made by the same people in the same country as all the other brands. they just slap the toshiba name on it and sell it. so i think you should go with the one with the higher specs. asus has a faster cpu. so i would get the asus. but the dell has more ram. its up to you but i think you would use the extra cpu more then the extra ram. hope i helped.
 
from what i have seen. and read asus scores really high in reliability. but its only a miniscule amount of a difference then dell. its better to buy a computer from the specs over brand. because all teh computers are built in bthe same place china. but i personally have no experience with dell or asus. but i do have experience with acer and toshiba and i am quite impressed with them. in my opinion toshiba is a good reliable company. but like i said its made by the same people in the same country as all the other brands. they just slap the toshiba name on it and sell it. so i think you should go with the one with the higher specs. asus has a faster cpu. so i would get the asus. but the dell has more ram. its up to you but i think you would use the extra cpu more then the extra ram. hope i helped.
Yeah, I have heard good things about both the Asus and the Dell laptops. I was looking at the HP one because it had a better graphics card in it, but the processor was less powerful. After doing some more research I am even more confused, as there are some experts that say that the AMD Phenom II only performs "slightly" slower than the Intel Core i5. Some guys seem to think that the benchmark tests that PCMag ran are BS, and they showed some other benchmark tests that put the Phenom II in the same category as the Core i5. At the end of the day, I am just not sure if I want to buy an HP laptop, but I am still trying to quickly gather as much info as possible before I make my decision.
 
There's no such thing as an "Athlon Phenom II" ;)

I don't trust PCMag either, for the record. I think they're just a staff of hot air bags who only benchmark according to the curve of who is paying them more in ad fees. among other reasons.

There's nothing wrong with a Phenom II in laptop trim, you just have to ask yourself if a 5-10% performance difference (especially in a laptop) is worth the price premium that Intel commands. I know it's easy to look at benchmark graphs and see "Oh hey, this Intel bar is like a foot longer than the AMD bar" when in reality, the CPU isn't much slower. I like the i5's and i7s these days - the i3's are getting better as well.

You just have to go with what feels right.

For the record, if you can get a warranty on a refurb, they can last just as long as a new unit. I have several Western Digital hard drives at home that are refurbs that have lasted far longer than the originals they replaced. I also have a refurb motherboard running my Windows Server 2008 R2 box at home, and it's as close as I can get to "mission critical" in a home environment. Laptops are similar - we buy refurbs at work and they're great.
 
There's no such thing as an "Athlon Phenom II" ;)

I don't trust PCMag either, for the record. I think they're just a staff of hot air bags who only benchmark according to the curve of who is paying them more in ad fees. among other reasons.

There's nothing wrong with a Phenom II in laptop trim, you just have to ask yourself if a 5-10% performance difference (especially in a laptop) is worth the price premium that Intel commands. I know it's easy to look at benchmark graphs and see "Oh hey, this Intel bar is like a foot longer than the AMD bar" when in reality, the CPU isn't much slower. I like the i5's and i7s these days - the i3's are getting better as well.

You just have to go with what feels right.

For the record, if you can get a warranty on a refurb, they can last just as long as a new unit. I have several Western Digital hard drives at home that are refurbs that have lasted far longer than the originals they replaced. I also have a refurb motherboard running my Windows Server 2008 R2 box at home, and it's as close as I can get to "mission critical" in a home environment. Laptops are similar - we buy refurbs at work and they're great.
LOL, sorry about that. I meant AMD Phenom II, but I typed Athlon Phenom II. Thanks for your input, that was really helpful. The more I read up on the Phenon II chip, the more I feel like it isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. In your opinion, if I will be doing Photoshop and possibly some 3D work, would it be better for me to get a CPU with Intel Graphics and an i5 processor or go with the Phenom II and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 graphics card?
 
LOL No worries. I just wanted to be sure. Misinformation spreads FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and I hate that stuff. ;) When it comes to Photoshop, especially the later editions that utilize GPU acceleration, you want something OTHER than the Intel GMAs. The Intel GMA chips are fine for people who just surf the web and do some light casual gaming (read: Farmville, etc) but for more high end stuff, you'll want something made by nVidia or ATI. I'm not too picky on either one - mobile offerings on the mainstream laptops are lots better than the Intel ones (the other reason I tend to shy away from Intel GMA/Video is that Intel has a nasty habit of dropping driver support after only a couple years - I can still get Radeon drivers for my old HP single core notebook today, and it's almost 5 years old)

Here's a good chart on what kind of performance to expect from a Phenom II in photoshop: AMD Phenom II X4 940 & 920: A True Return to Competition - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News though it doesn't show the i5 you're considering in that chart, you get an overall idea - and the Phenom II is no slouch.

In all honesty, save for the really high end Intel parts, AMD and Intel at the mainstream are surprisingly close in performance. You just have to pick the one with the better value. If it were me, and I had a choice between the AMD and Intel, as long as the Intel had something OTHER than the Intel video, and was clocked high enough, I'd go that route, but because the Intel units you're considering don't have nVidia or ATI, that automatically swings me to the AMD offering. I'm not entirely AMD biased, just when it comes to performance of that damn Intel video crap. /types this on an i7 920 at work
 
That's kind of what I have been thinking. Maybe I need to go the route of having a better balanced CPU rather than having one with great CPU speeds but very poor 3D/video performance. I realize that the ATI chip that will come with my CPU won't be stellar, but it will give me better performance than the Intel Graphics chips will. The laptop that I am looking at getting has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 graphics card, an AMD Phenom II N850 triple-core processor, and 4GB of RAM. The Intel laptop had an Intel Core i5 processor, Intel HD Graphics, and 4GB of RAM. Again, maybe I need to sacrifice a little processing speed for a better overall laptop.
 
rather than speed, since all processors these days feature in the 2-3GHz mark, look at the cache, number of cores, threads and steppings of the CPUs if you can, since a slower clock doesnt always mean a slower processor.
The Intel chip is showing a 3MB cache, dual core (with 4-way processing) and a 2.53Ghz clock, and the AMD Phenom II is showing 3 cores, 2.2Ghz clock and 512 KB of L2 cache for each of it's cores. I'm not sure if that helps, I haven't been able to locate anything about the steppings and threads for the AMD chip.
 
You won't find anything on that unless you look on a forum where someone already owns the laptop. Steppings is a moot point, I never shop for a CPU based on its stepping. It's a superficial shopping point unless you're an overclocker.

The Intel chip is a dual core with hyperthreading (thus why it says dual core with 4-way processing) So you actually do get one extra "real" core compared to the Intel chip.

The AMD solution just keeps looking better.
 
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