Emachines M6811 Review
I have been looking for a notebook computer for nearly 6 months now to use as a desktop replacement for business & pleasure, but for the most part a notebook PC with my specks come with a near $3000.00 or more price tag or could not handle the challenge of what I was looking for, till now.
My requirements for a notebook are:
3.0gig processor or faster
512mb DDR-ram min.
80gig hard drive min.
DVD/RW drive
Wireless 802.11g
Graphics with non shared ram.
These requirements are mainly because I plan to totally replace my desktop machine & a lesser machine doesn't make since to me with all that I do.
In came the Emachines 6811.
First off the specks on this machine are impressive for a $1600.00 notebook.
Specifications
Display:15.4" Widescreen TFT LCD WXGA (1280 x 800 max. resolution)
Operating System:Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition 1
CPU:Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64 3400+ Processor
64-bit Architecture operates at 2.20 GHz
System Bus uses HyperTransport™
Technology operating at 1600 MHz
1 MB L2 Cache
Memory:512 MB DDR SODIMM (PC 2700)
Hard Drive:80 GB HDD 2
Optical Drives:DVD +/- RW Drive (Write Max: 2.4x DVD+R/RW, 2x DVD-R/RW, 6x CD-R, 10x CD-RW; Reads 24x CD, 8x DVD)
Media Reader:6-in-1 Digital Media Manger (Compact Flash, Micro Drive, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro)
Video:ATI® Mobility RADEON™ 9600 with 64 MB Video RAM
Sound:PC2001 Compliant AC '97 Audio
Built-in Stereo Speakers
Modem:56K ITU V.92 Fax/Modem
Network:802.11g Built-in Wireless (up to 54Mbps)
10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet
Pointing Device:Touchpad with Vertical Scroll Zone
Battery:8-cell Lithium-ion (Li-ion)
Dimensions:1.6"h x 14.0"w x 10.4"d
Weight:7.5 lbs. (8.65 total travel weight) 3
Ports/Other:4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 IEEE 1394, 1 VGA External Connector, 1 S-Video Out, Microphone In, Headphone/Audio Out, 1 PCMCIA Slot (Card Bus type I or type II)
Pre-Installed Software:Microsoft Works 7.0 1, Microsoft Money 2004, Microsoft Picture It! Standard Edition, Encarta Online, Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™, Microsoft Media Player, Real Player, PowerDVD, Internet Explorer, BigFix®, CompuServe®, Norton AntiVirus 2004 (90 day complimentary subscription)
Specks were copied off of Emachines web sight
After some research, reading reviews & reading several users of the M6805, M6809, & the M6810 I thought that the M6811 would be just right for me.
I bought my M6811 from Best Buy on 07/21/04 & ofcorse I had to put thru the benches, work & a few games to see how she’d react.
Video Editing
Editing 2 hours of video with Video Studio 7 is a breeze on this machine with no hiccups in performance or quality of the edited video, & converting this video with Dr Divx Pro was a surprise with an astounding 43.2 FPS average which tells me that the AMD 64_3400+ Athlon, DDR PC2700 ram, & the system configuration was up to par with my desktop machine in this category infact it performed slightly better than my desktop which could only produce 36.5 FPS average in Dr Divx Pro.
Gaming
One of the things that I require out of my computer is gaming performance & amazingly enough it performed quite respectful, in Halo & UT 2003 I settled on 1024X768X32 with 1/2 to 3/4 settings & was pleasantly surprised that it played quite smooth, also running the new Doom 3 on this machine wasn't too bad with obtaining just 26 FPS with similar settings to Halo but I reduced the resolution to 800x600x32 to continue playing D3 with 37 FPS.
The 6 in 1 flash card reader is a nice addition to a machine that so far has performed flawlessly & come at a great price.
Benchmarks
I used 3 different benchmarking programs to test my machine out.
Sisoft Sandra
Futuremark 3Dmark 2003
Futuremark PC Mark 2004
Sandra no OC
CPU Arithmetic
9624 ALU
3558 FPU / 4517 Mflops
CPU Multi media
21882 Integer
23464 Floating-point
Memory
2324 Int Buff’d
2325 Float buff’d
3Dmark 2003
2523 No OC
3140 OC to video only 405/251
PcMark 2004
3803 no OC
I’ve yet to run it OC’d
These benches are not the best but for a notebook computer that is producing stock numbers that is 2/3 to ¾ of what my desktop was doing that says a lot to me, & the fact that it has yet to crash on me with all I do has impressed me even more.
The only detractor that I have as of yet about this PC it the cracking hinge issue, I have started to develop a crack on my left hinge but since emachine’s has informed me that they’ll repair it then I’m happy.
As of this writing I have installed a 512mb PC2700 sodim to increase my memory to 768mb total, it has increased my performance a bit but my reasons were of the video files that I normally work with that can be memory intensive.
I have been looking for a notebook computer for nearly 6 months now to use as a desktop replacement for business & pleasure, but for the most part a notebook PC with my specks come with a near $3000.00 or more price tag or could not handle the challenge of what I was looking for, till now.
My requirements for a notebook are:
3.0gig processor or faster
512mb DDR-ram min.
80gig hard drive min.
DVD/RW drive
Wireless 802.11g
Graphics with non shared ram.
These requirements are mainly because I plan to totally replace my desktop machine & a lesser machine doesn't make since to me with all that I do.
In came the Emachines 6811.
First off the specks on this machine are impressive for a $1600.00 notebook.
Specifications
Display:15.4" Widescreen TFT LCD WXGA (1280 x 800 max. resolution)
Operating System:Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition 1
CPU:Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64 3400+ Processor
64-bit Architecture operates at 2.20 GHz
System Bus uses HyperTransport™
Technology operating at 1600 MHz
1 MB L2 Cache
Memory:512 MB DDR SODIMM (PC 2700)
Hard Drive:80 GB HDD 2
Optical Drives:DVD +/- RW Drive (Write Max: 2.4x DVD+R/RW, 2x DVD-R/RW, 6x CD-R, 10x CD-RW; Reads 24x CD, 8x DVD)
Media Reader:6-in-1 Digital Media Manger (Compact Flash, Micro Drive, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro)
Video:ATI® Mobility RADEON™ 9600 with 64 MB Video RAM
Sound:PC2001 Compliant AC '97 Audio
Built-in Stereo Speakers
Modem:56K ITU V.92 Fax/Modem
Network:802.11g Built-in Wireless (up to 54Mbps)
10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet
Pointing Device:Touchpad with Vertical Scroll Zone
Battery:8-cell Lithium-ion (Li-ion)
Dimensions:1.6"h x 14.0"w x 10.4"d
Weight:7.5 lbs. (8.65 total travel weight) 3
Ports/Other:4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 IEEE 1394, 1 VGA External Connector, 1 S-Video Out, Microphone In, Headphone/Audio Out, 1 PCMCIA Slot (Card Bus type I or type II)
Pre-Installed Software:Microsoft Works 7.0 1, Microsoft Money 2004, Microsoft Picture It! Standard Edition, Encarta Online, Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™, Microsoft Media Player, Real Player, PowerDVD, Internet Explorer, BigFix®, CompuServe®, Norton AntiVirus 2004 (90 day complimentary subscription)
Specks were copied off of Emachines web sight
After some research, reading reviews & reading several users of the M6805, M6809, & the M6810 I thought that the M6811 would be just right for me.
I bought my M6811 from Best Buy on 07/21/04 & ofcorse I had to put thru the benches, work & a few games to see how she’d react.
Video Editing
Editing 2 hours of video with Video Studio 7 is a breeze on this machine with no hiccups in performance or quality of the edited video, & converting this video with Dr Divx Pro was a surprise with an astounding 43.2 FPS average which tells me that the AMD 64_3400+ Athlon, DDR PC2700 ram, & the system configuration was up to par with my desktop machine in this category infact it performed slightly better than my desktop which could only produce 36.5 FPS average in Dr Divx Pro.
Gaming
One of the things that I require out of my computer is gaming performance & amazingly enough it performed quite respectful, in Halo & UT 2003 I settled on 1024X768X32 with 1/2 to 3/4 settings & was pleasantly surprised that it played quite smooth, also running the new Doom 3 on this machine wasn't too bad with obtaining just 26 FPS with similar settings to Halo but I reduced the resolution to 800x600x32 to continue playing D3 with 37 FPS.
The 6 in 1 flash card reader is a nice addition to a machine that so far has performed flawlessly & come at a great price.
Benchmarks
I used 3 different benchmarking programs to test my machine out.
Sisoft Sandra
Futuremark 3Dmark 2003
Futuremark PC Mark 2004
Sandra no OC
CPU Arithmetic
9624 ALU
3558 FPU / 4517 Mflops
CPU Multi media
21882 Integer
23464 Floating-point
Memory
2324 Int Buff’d
2325 Float buff’d
3Dmark 2003
2523 No OC
3140 OC to video only 405/251
PcMark 2004
3803 no OC
I’ve yet to run it OC’d
These benches are not the best but for a notebook computer that is producing stock numbers that is 2/3 to ¾ of what my desktop was doing that says a lot to me, & the fact that it has yet to crash on me with all I do has impressed me even more.
The only detractor that I have as of yet about this PC it the cracking hinge issue, I have started to develop a crack on my left hinge but since emachine’s has informed me that they’ll repair it then I’m happy.
As of this writing I have installed a 512mb PC2700 sodim to increase my memory to 768mb total, it has increased my performance a bit but my reasons were of the video files that I normally work with that can be memory intensive.
