Mobile Platform Wars: AMD vs. Intel
by Jarred Walton on October 5, 2007 9:10 AM EST
HP 6515b Overview
While the primary purpose of this review is to take a look at AMD's Turion X2 TL-66 and their mobile platform, we also wanted to take a brief look at the HP 6515b. There's nothing truly revolutionary about this laptop, but it's a reasonably affordable business offering that would be equally useful in a home or student environment. It comes with all of the standard features users would expect to find in a modern notebook, so here's a quick summary as well as some pictures.
The 6515b is a good midsized laptop offering. The 14" chassis allows for a slightly less cramped keyboard layout relative to 12" laptops, but it still manages to maintain a lightweight profile. Besides all of the standard features - four USB ports, FireWire, PC Card, DVDR, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem - there are only a couple of somewhat noteworthy additions. A fingerprint scanner provides for potentially enhanced (or at least more convenient) security, and the Broadcom wireless adapter provides draft 802.11n support in addition to the usual A/B/G WiFi options. We still don't feel that 802.11n is fully ready for widespread use, but the Broadcom chipset appears to work better with our NETGEAR router, connecting at speeds up to 277 Mbps and achieving actual throughput of more than 11 MBps. That puts this particular wireless configuration roughly at the same level of performance as a 100 Mb network. That may not sound particularly stellar, but it's still more than three times as fast as any 802.11g adapters that we've used (at least under ideal test conditions).
While the primary purpose of this review is to take a look at AMD's Turion X2 TL-66 and their mobile platform, we also wanted to take a brief look at the HP 6515b. There's nothing truly revolutionary about this laptop, but it's a reasonably affordable business offering that would be equally useful in a home or student environment. It comes with all of the standard features users would expect to find in a modern notebook, so here's a quick summary as well as some pictures.
| HP 6515b Features Overview | |
| Processor | AMD Turion X2 TL-50/52/56/58/60/64 |
| Chipset | ATI RS690M/SB600 |
| FSB Speeds | 800MHz HyperTransport |
| Memory Speeds | DDR2-533, DDR2-667 |
| Memory Slots | (2) x SO-DIMM, up to 2GB DDR2, Dual Channel supported |
| Graphics | ATI Radeon X1250 |
| Display | 14" WXGA (1280x800) |
| Expansion Slots | 1x PC Card Type II/III |
| Hard Drive | 80/120/160GB 5400RPM, 80/120GB 7200RPM |
| Optical Drive | 8X DVD-ROM 8X DVDROM/CD-RW Combo Drive 8X DVD+/-RW SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW SuperMulti with LightScribe |
| Networking/Communications | Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet and V.90 56K Modem Broadcom ABG or ABGN Mini PCI Wireless Bluetooth 2.0 |
| Audio | 24-bit High Definition Audio with 2.1 Speakers |
| Left Ports | 2 x USB 2.0 1 x mini-Firewire PC Card type II/III Headphone/Mic Power socket |
| Right Ports | Flash reader (SD, MS/Pro, MMC, XD) 2 x USB2.0 Optical Drive<.br>RJ-11 Modem |
| Front Ports | None |
| Back Ports | 1 x VGA TV-Out RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet |
| Keyboard | 87 Key QWERTY (US) |
| Extras | Fingerprint Reader |
| Battery Options | 6-Cell 55WHr |
| Dimensions | 13.03"x9.57"x1.33" (WxDxH) 5.0 lbs. (6-cell battery) |
| Power Adapter | 90W |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Business 32-bit Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit Windows XP Pro SP2 |
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The 6515b is a good midsized laptop offering. The 14" chassis allows for a slightly less cramped keyboard layout relative to 12" laptops, but it still manages to maintain a lightweight profile. Besides all of the standard features - four USB ports, FireWire, PC Card, DVDR, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem - there are only a couple of somewhat noteworthy additions. A fingerprint scanner provides for potentially enhanced (or at least more convenient) security, and the Broadcom wireless adapter provides draft 802.11n support in addition to the usual A/B/G WiFi options. We still don't feel that 802.11n is fully ready for widespread use, but the Broadcom chipset appears to work better with our NETGEAR router, connecting at speeds up to 277 Mbps and achieving actual throughput of more than 11 MBps. That puts this particular wireless configuration roughly at the same level of performance as a 100 Mb network. That may not sound particularly stellar, but it's still more than three times as fast as any 802.11g adapters that we've used (at least under ideal test conditions).
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tomycs - Sunday, December 9, 2007 - link
Since we talk about bargains i guess a comparison between the previous generation mid-range (Geforce 7600, ATI X1600) and the entry level graphic chips (Geforce 8400, AMD/ATI HD2300) would have been nice.I find myself choosing between 2 HP's almost equal specs (almost no differences between AMDX2 TL60 and Intel T5500) but one with ATI X1600 and the other with the 8400GS. I'm almost sure i will takle the X1600 because of build quality and screen, but i would have liked some numbers regarding 3D performance.
mobileuser2007 - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
Nice summary Jarred.I was a little surprised to not see anything about video quality. I, for one, don't do any gaming on my notebook but I do watch DVD movies while traveling. It seems the only way AT measures the success of "graphics" is how well they play games. Any thoughts on comparing systems on other visual aspects?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - link
I guess the real problem is that I think most laptop LCDs suck, which means that even if the video card does an excellent job at decoding DVDs or whatever, the display quality makes this a moot point. I didn't think the 6515b was any better or worse than the dv6500t (or any other notebook, really) when it comes to DVD playback. Of course, you can always just get a different DVD decoder application that can make a big difference. DVD decoding is now at the point where the CPU can do all the work and still only put a moderate load on a CPU, even with higher complexity decoding algorithms that improve image quality.Maybe I didn't pay enough attention, though, so I'll see if I can notice any difference with additional testing.
magao - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
Thank you very much for this article.I've been looking for a new laptop for the several months, and have almost settled on one of the 6515b, 6510b (if I can find one in Australia) or (most likely) the 6710b.
I've been searching for months trying to find comparisons of the laptops with anything near the configuration I'm looking at (T7100/GMA X3100, or Turion X2/X1250). The 6515b is pretty much out of contention though since to get an X2 you have to go above the price of the T7100 in the 6710b (the cheap 6515b comes with an MK-38).
It's not going to be a desktop replacement, but it needs to be grunty enough for serious work, and needs good enough graphics to play things up to the level of Guild Wars at native resolution (1280x800). I had a work laptop recently with a T5500 and GMA 950, and GW was playable (but not great - 20-30 FPS most of the time), so I have reasonable expectations of the 6710b. Interestingly, my home server (E2140 with G33/GMA 3000 graphics) has worse GW performance than the GMA 950 - my understanding was that GMA 3000 is basically an upgraded GMA 950, but there appear to be significant differences (GW detects the GMA 3000 as DX8 but GMA 950 as DX9, even when both have the 14.31.1 driver).
I'll be *very* interested in the X3100 results you get under XP (with the 14.31.1 drivers).
BTW, one of the reasons I've settled on the HP laptops is their look and feel. They are simple-looking, no-nonsense designs, that aren't going to show marks, the keyboards feel very nice, the screens are good and the sound is quite good for a laptop.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
I'll spoil the results a bit and say that under XP, GMA X3100 appears to best X1250 across the board. Shockingly (pardon the pun), it even runs Bioshock - okay, so it's at about 20FPS at 800x600 (minimum detail), but at least that proves it's mostly drivers under Vista keeping it from running the latest titles. I should have the final article done next week, showing X3100 XP results. Still, for $80 more you can get HD 2300 which remains about 2-3 times as fast, or 8400 GS which is also around 2-3 times as fast.yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
I honestly think your time would have been better spent covering some other aspect in the industry. Everyone knows that AMD is in a "rutt' at the moment, and this article really only tells us what we could have guesses on our own. Reasons for an article of this type in my own opinion would be; ground breaking news, or at the very elast a much shorter article just covering the import stuff such as AMDs mobile graphics superiority.There are lots of people out there, with myself included that would like to see you guys do an article on something like SAS IN DEPTH, or SATA Port Multipliers, with benchmarks, implementation, etc.
Also, just going from past experience of reading your articles, I cannot help but wonder why you guys do not have any how-to's such as 'how-to overclock an Intel core 2 CPU . . ', or 'how-to build a cheap storage solution with SAS/HPM technology . . ' , etc. I honestly think filling content with things such as the above mentioned how-to's, would be far more benificial to your readers, than the obvious re-iteration of things we already know.
zsdersw - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
Oh? So that's the only thing that's important? It's dubious that you'd pick one of the few bright spots in the article for AMD and tout it as "the important stuff".
yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
How would it be dubious that I do not care to hear about the same thing I have been hearing about for the last several months ?zsdersw - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
What you do and do not care about is not what's dubious. What's dubious is that the only thing you supposedly regard as "the important stuff" just happens to be the one area of mobile platforms where AMD generally fares better than Intel (mobile graphics chipsets).yyrkoon - Monday, October 8, 2007 - link
Look guy, if you're going to call me an AMD Nazi, fanboi, or whatever, why dont you just come out and say so, instead of making stupid comments that MAY imply *something*. You would be wrong by the way.