lenovo IdeaPad Z575 (12992KU) Notebook AMD A-Series A8-3520M(1.6GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory DDR3 1333 500GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW AMD Radeon HD 6620G $429 newegg

Dam good deal, lowest price for this laptop yet, 450 was its lowest for about 3-4 months. A8 quad core, with an intergrated graphic that is far better than intel second generation sandy bridge hd 3000. Would jump on this if I havent bought myself a ideapad z575 A6 with dedicated graphic for 480 2 week ago at newegg that is now oos. I have to say, this 575 have great build quality, keyboard, and a nice looking metal finish. The brown/purple color is also very stylish imo.

wish it had backlit keyboard

How much faster is A8 3520M 1.6GHz than A6 3420M 1.5GHz on the CPU?

Also remember if you apps don't run well at multi cores, having two cores is better than trying to make the apps run at quad cores. I have A6 quadcore and I can tell you older non-multi cpu apps often run on one of the core. With quad core CPU, you get less performance out than dual core CPU on Intel.

But quad core is great if you have small single core app and run multi copies of the app on each core.

The graphics is actually quite powerful. However, AMD is for some reason (intentionally crippling?) installing mismatched or single pairs of RAM so memory isn't running at dual channel bandwidth.

Normally, this doesn't make a difference at all. But because of the way the integrated graphics card interacts with the CPU in this computer, it greatly diminishes gaming performance by as much as 10-15 fps (which is, in the world of gaming, a massive difference).

If you plan on gaming, the fix is pretty simple. You either have to get one 2GB memory stick, or one 4GB memory stick and match it to the existing RAM in the computer. (A 2GB stick gets you 4GB total, the 4GB option gets you 8GB total.)

Thinking about getting it for school. Would this laptop be good for watching movies and listening to music on? Gaming isn't that important since I have a gaming rig at home already. Should I wait on it in hopes of a better deal or hop on this one? Thanks!

Quote from Trance530 : lenovo IdeaPad Z575 (12992KU) Notebook AMD A-Series A8-3520M(1.6GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory DDR3 1333 500GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW AMD Radeon HD 6620G I just bought this laptop last week when it was on sale for $450 now it's $429, it's a great laptop, plays world of warcraft well on high settings, even has gamer setting in the Amd control center. [/url]

OP, how is the processor? I realize it is quad core, but with base speed of 1.6 GHz, it looks slow compare to other processors.

My brother recent bought a Lenovo Ideapad Z580-2151-28U with i5-3210M 2.5GHz and it takes ~ 90 seconds to boot and connect to wifi. How long does your laptop take?

Tx for answering my question and for posting.

Quote from saltysailor : OP, how is the processor? I realize it is quad core, but with base speed of 1.6 GHz, it looks slow compare to other processors. My brother recent bought a Lenovo Ideapad Z580-2151-28U with i5-3210M 2.5GHz and it takes ~ 90 seconds to boot and connected to wifi. How long does your laptop take? Tx for answering my question and for posting.

Dang really? 1000 rpm HDD?

To me... this WOULD BE SLICK IF... the price was $375.00 or less.

Quote from saltysailor : OP, how is the processor? I realize it is quad core, but with base speed of 1.6 GHz, it looks slow compare to other processors. My brother recent bought a Lenovo Ideapad Z580-2151-28U with i5-3210M 2.5GHz and it takes ~ 90 seconds to boot and connect to wifi. How long does your laptop take? Tx for answering my question and for posting.

This laptop will play games WAY better then your brother's BUT it may take 7 seconds longer to start up... maybe twelve seconds longer!!!

The i5 is way more powerful BUT for almost all tasks this A8 should do PLUS it does play games pretty darn well!!!!

If you are doing video editing, video conversion, 3d auto cad, etc... you would want a i7.... but if you were doing that stuff you would have known this. Personally, cause I like games I would get a A8 cause I think it is the BEST BANG for the BUCK.

If you do not play games and know that you never will then I would look for a i3 or i5.

p.s.
Does you brother have a second or third generation i5?

Quote from saltysailor : OP, how is the processor? I realize it is quad core, but with base speed of 1.6 GHz, it looks slow compare to other processors. My brother recent bought a Lenovo Ideapad Z580-2151-28U with i5-3210M 2.5GHz and it takes ~ 90 seconds to boot and connect to wifi. How long does your laptop take? Tx for answering my question and for posting.

CPU clock isn't any way to measure real performance for a long time. That is why Intel is clever in separating each "gen" by i3, i5, etc. You'll find similar clock between gen but they don't performance the same.

One thing about AMD is the 1.6GHz is the normal clock speed but it has turbo mode that occurs for a second or two when the machine is under heavy load. I'm guessing this A8 processor can go to around 2.5GHz in turbo mode.

Remember since AMD is quad core, the apps you use better know how to use multi cores well or if the app is stuck running at one core, you are probably going to get slower performance compared to Intel dual core processors. It's a decades old problem but there is no magic in turning single core apps to magically efficiently run on multi cores. Windows 7 tries to spare out some less capable multi cores apps but that doesn't mean they run efficiently. With most today's apps, it's still more "efficient" to run on faster dual core processors on Intel.

As for time to boot, that is all dependent total startup apps you have installed. What I usually do after installing apps is check the startup script (usually hidden from Startup folder) and disable any startup apps that I don't need. Msconfig is a very handy tool. If you want to show off the speed your laptop can boot to desktop, disable every startup app. Some apps may not work properly if you do that but you can at least show off the booting speed to the desktop. Second quick boot up time to desktop can be "faked" by designing certain startup app to only load a small piece of the app during the boot up and then boot the rest later. To me, how quick Windows can boot to the desktop is all illusion like the laptop is super fast because apps can be faked to only load a small piece of the code and less startup apps attached to the boot up. Lastly, if you seriously want to show off super fast booting, boot with Shift-F5 because Windows will only load the core drivers and skip every startup apps. Of course, your laptop will be quite useless booting up like this.

Quote from saltysailor : OP, how is the processor? I realize it is quad core, but with base speed of 1.6 GHz, it looks slow compare to other processors. My brother recent bought a Lenovo Ideapad Z580-2151-28U with i5-3210M 2.5GHz and it takes ~ 90 seconds to boot and connect to wifi. How long does your laptop take? Tx for answering my question and for posting.

Mine boots up between 45-55 seconds and it has a boot optimizer I havent used yet, my last laptop was dual core 2.3 in some tasks this computer is a hair slower, but the new AMD integrated graphichs make this one way better for gaming, although it is true not a lot of games are taking advantage of the quad cores, but the computer has a setting to turn everything on max for gaming mode, over clocking to that max 2.5ghz I guess, I'm really happy with the speed and capablitites, the sound and keyboard are both the nicest Ive ever seen on a laptop, I not an expert by any means but I've owned a lot of laptops, and this one is fast, and capably handles anything I've thrown at it, and seems very solidly constructed, not flimsy, plastic and cheap feeling as others Ive owned have felt, Lenovo has been named 2nd to Apple in 2012 overall quality by a number of sites comparing manufacturers. The windows score reads processor 6.8 Ram7.3 Graphics 5.9 Gaming graphics6.5Hard drive5.9 out of the box, if that helps, I'm going to update drivers today, but havent seen a need for it, so far I've been gaming, video chatting, watching moves, everything just great from the get go.

Quote from joshuaNH : To me... this WOULD BE SLICK IF... the price was $375.00 or less.

Still trollin' after all this time, eh?