New Lappy!

Well, at least for me. :-o

Bought it after reviewing and comparing everything in it's price range and thought it was the best deal.

HP Envy 15z-j000


CPU: A10-5750M
GPU: Radeon HD 8650G
RAM: 8G DDR3-1600
HDD: 1TB @5400 RPM

I went with AMD over Intel because of the graphics. I want to play games and the Intel HD integrated is beyond pathetic. I'm planning to upgrade the RAM to 16G on the hopes that it'll improve the graphics memory allotment.

This dude reviews the almost exact same one I have:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LayLrGwDtow

As for my older lappy's? The masochistic one (vintage 2001 Gateway running XP) is still operable. My eMachines E-528 at one time dual booted between Win 7 and Ubuntu but I became temporarily stupid and wiped the drive. But before my stupid I was able to get the Widows 8 $15 upgrade for it so Windows 8 was installed. Two words: too slow. Two more words: and derpy.

So I got this one. And wiped the eMachines again and installed Mint. Gave it to the wife for her to complain about even though it runs 10 times better than the gen 1 or 2 netbook she was using. rolleyes

 

Not to take away from your machine, but iris pro 5200 (Intel HD 5200) is faster than that GPU.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html

Still, nice machine. I'd upgrade the HDD to an SSD though. That's a major bottleneck.

 

Looked into it a bit further. Taking PassMark scores:

The i7 offered in HP Envy's have HD 4600, not HD 5200. Even if it did, the PassMark score is 777. The HD 4600's score is 631.

When I compared before I bought, I was judging between the i5 and the A10. And the A10's HD 8650g blew the i5's HD 4000's score of 457 away.

The HD 8650g's score? 875

Overall, although it won't compete with the nVidia GTX 760 (score of 4997) card I just bought my son or even the nVidia GTX 550ti (score 1931) it replaced, I think I made the best choice for the value.

TL;DR Apples vs oranges... i7 would be at least $100 more with a minimal improvement. I can finally play games with my boys. Good enough for me!

And I agree with the SSD, though HP apparently has a problem restoring/moving Windows to smaller drives:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLIxdw1-uxU

 

I still have an Envy :-D

Intel i7-2670QM
16gb DDR3-1333
128GB Crucial M4 Sata III SSD
15.6in 1080p display
Windows 8.1 Pro

 

Welcome back PapaDuke!
Nice machine.

Cheers..