This is a short and brief review with no pictures.
My gf was looking for a laptop, around $1000 to $1200. We first saw the AV5500 on Newegg advertised with a Radeon 9600 w/64mb for $829 with $20 rebate.
We jumped on this deal only to discover that the laptop has SiS 760 Mirage 2 graphics instead.
However, my gf is not a big gamer and so it doesn't bother her as much as the SiS bothers me.
So with the background in mind, the Averatec is a well made notebook for the money. In terms of your every day work, it's a fine machine.
Here's the Specs:
Sempron 2600+ 1.6G Socket 754 (K8 Core)
256mb DDR Ram PC2700 (Averatec cheaped out as the memory controller clearly supports PC3200-DDR 400)
40G 4200RPM HDD
DVD/CDRW
15in XGA TFT
802.11g
Comparo Machine:
ABS ZforceF2 (AOpen 1557G)
PM 1.6G 1mb Cache
1024mb PC2700 Ram
DVD+R/RW
M10 w/64mb
15in SXGA+ TFT
802.11g+bluetooth
On to the numbers!
SiSoft Sandra
CPU Dhrystone
PM 1.6 - 6290 MIPs
Sempron 1.6 - 7313 MIPs
CPU Whetstone
PM1.6 - 2192/SSE2 2824 MFLOPS
Semp 1.6 - 2613/SSE2 3388 MFLOPS
Comments:
No surprise here. Since the Sempron is based on the K8 core, it performed very competitively with the PM clock for clock.
3DMark2001SE
F2 w/m10p 64mb - 9705 3dmarks
AV5500 w/SiS760 32mb - 1628 3dmarks
Comment:
The SiS integrated is basically the Xabre 400, which is a competitor to the GF440MX. It does have pixel shader and completed all tests. Although very very slowly.
In SiS's tech brief, the 760 is capable of 64mb Local Frame Buffer, which Averatec elected not to use. Local Frame Buffer is basically mem chips soldered on the MB so graphic core won't need to steal ram from the main memory. W/64mb LFB the 3Dmark score on the SiS760 generally can double that of using UMA alone. If Averatec went with the LFB, the 3d score of this laptop would at least be acceptable.
FFXI Vana Diel Bench 2
F2 High Res - 3344
F2 Low Res - 4782
AV5500 High Res - 749
AV5500 Low Res - 1197
Conclusion:
With DDR400 and a faster HDD, the AV5500 can be a potent work horse for cheap. It'll even play some games for a very low price. The SiS 760 supports up to 128mb UMA on the Averatec and hopefully that'll help a little. As far as older games like WC3 or CS, this system is perfectly fine.
My gf was looking for a laptop, around $1000 to $1200. We first saw the AV5500 on Newegg advertised with a Radeon 9600 w/64mb for $829 with $20 rebate.
We jumped on this deal only to discover that the laptop has SiS 760 Mirage 2 graphics instead.
However, my gf is not a big gamer and so it doesn't bother her as much as the SiS bothers me.
So with the background in mind, the Averatec is a well made notebook for the money. In terms of your every day work, it's a fine machine.
Here's the Specs:
Sempron 2600+ 1.6G Socket 754 (K8 Core)
256mb DDR Ram PC2700 (Averatec cheaped out as the memory controller clearly supports PC3200-DDR 400)
40G 4200RPM HDD
DVD/CDRW
15in XGA TFT
802.11g
Comparo Machine:
ABS ZforceF2 (AOpen 1557G)
PM 1.6G 1mb Cache
1024mb PC2700 Ram
DVD+R/RW
M10 w/64mb
15in SXGA+ TFT
802.11g+bluetooth
On to the numbers!
SiSoft Sandra
CPU Dhrystone
PM 1.6 - 6290 MIPs
Sempron 1.6 - 7313 MIPs
CPU Whetstone
PM1.6 - 2192/SSE2 2824 MFLOPS
Semp 1.6 - 2613/SSE2 3388 MFLOPS
Comments:
No surprise here. Since the Sempron is based on the K8 core, it performed very competitively with the PM clock for clock.
3DMark2001SE
F2 w/m10p 64mb - 9705 3dmarks
AV5500 w/SiS760 32mb - 1628 3dmarks
Comment:
The SiS integrated is basically the Xabre 400, which is a competitor to the GF440MX. It does have pixel shader and completed all tests. Although very very slowly.
In SiS's tech brief, the 760 is capable of 64mb Local Frame Buffer, which Averatec elected not to use. Local Frame Buffer is basically mem chips soldered on the MB so graphic core won't need to steal ram from the main memory. W/64mb LFB the 3Dmark score on the SiS760 generally can double that of using UMA alone. If Averatec went with the LFB, the 3d score of this laptop would at least be acceptable.
FFXI Vana Diel Bench 2
F2 High Res - 3344
F2 Low Res - 4782
AV5500 High Res - 749
AV5500 Low Res - 1197
Conclusion:
With DDR400 and a faster HDD, the AV5500 can be a potent work horse for cheap. It'll even play some games for a very low price. The SiS 760 supports up to 128mb UMA on the Averatec and hopefully that'll help a little. As far as older games like WC3 or CS, this system is perfectly fine.
