K53TA.. The best deal ever... could be!

[Voodooi]

Hey Guys,

In a small dilemma:

My brother is seeking a budget gaming laptop and asked me to help him find one. I'm considering the K53TA, which is between 549-599$ at Staples Canada (549$ when it's on sale once a month).

I'm having a hard time finding out how well it performs in games such as Battlefield 3, Heroes of Might & Magic 6, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and a few other titles due to very limited information online.

Could users playing these games describe their performance (after CPU overclock)?

I was also considering the K53SV, which is 100$ more (649$ through Canada Computers) and is equipped with i5 / 540m, which I know would run these games, but my younger brother would prefer to stay as low as possible when it comes to pricing.

Oh, and one final question: Do the TA/SV models have any heating / throttling issues like the Acer's in this price range do? I read through many, many posts in this thread and couldn't find a clear answer.

Thanks!

[Sylvine]

Overclocking the GPU has only worked with one set of drivers. It was released by Asus with a date of August 31, but they're no longer available.

Oh crap...

Well, that means no overclocking I guess.

[vycanismajoris]

This is my first post on these forums and I made my account specifically to ask this question so please bare with me if I'm asking this question in the wrong forum.

I bought this laptop about 2 months ago and have been experiencing some problems with getting my hard drives to work with this laptop. The original WD 500GB blue Scorpio HDD that came with it has worked flawlessly so far, but I can't seem to get any other hard drives to work with it.

2 months ago I bought a brand new WD black Scorpio 500GB HDD and swapped it in but it only lasted a week before getting the click of death and I was able to confirm it no longer worked in my external enclosure. then I bought a Hitachi 7k750 750GB HDD and tried using it in the laptop but it started getting random BOSDs then after a month died, however it still worked in my external enclosure via usb.

So then I decided to RMA the Hitachi drive for a replacement drive of the same model but now the new replacement drive wont even get detected in the BIOS! I got the BIOS to read the HDD 3 times so far (out of about 100+ tries) but whenever I attempt to load the windows 7 installation disc to install windows on the drive when the drive does get detected the computer freezes. However the computer won't freeze while loading the installer if the hard drive isn't detected by the BIOS.

I've tested the HDD with my external enclosure from my desktop for any bad sectors or errors but couldn't find any. I even fully formatted the drive with zeros to no avail. No matter what settings I change in the bios nor what position it's in the drive bay, the bios will not detect it.

And even with all this happening, as soon as I swap in the original WD blue Scorpio 500GB HDD in it works perfectly without any hitches. Am I just very unlucky with my hard drives or may there possibly be something preventing my BIOS from detecing my HDD? Could it be my motherboard that's bad or the sata connection? or maybe my BIOS version? (version 207).

EDIT: Before my hard drive wasn't even spinning when I turned my laptop on, but now it does and it makes a weird series of beeping noise similar to that of when my WD HDD failed on me, so I'm assuming my replacement HDD is simply dead.

[zinfandel]

For those that can't get the ASUS K53Ta I think this deal may be as good (or better?) $499 for A8 w/6620 graphics

Best deal on Dell Vostro 3555 Quad-core Laptop Bundle - LogicBUY

[Mr.Mischief]

For those that can't get the ASUS K53Ta I think this deal may be as good (or better?) $499 for A8 w/6620 graphics

Best deal on Dell Vostro 3555 Quad-core Laptop Bundle - LogicBUY

This one is actually a good bit slower. The Asus comes with a 6520 + 6550M, the Dell only has the 6620.

[cognus]

This one is actually a good bit slower. The Asus comes with a 6520 + 6550M, the Dell only has the 6620.

some of the vostros come with a matte screen. to me that is a big plus, ymmv.
but i'm not a 15 guy

[zinfandel]

This one is actually a good bit slower. The Asus comes with a 6520 + 6550M, the Dell only has the 6620.

Good point. Still seems like a good deal, just not as good!

[Mr.Mischief]

Good point. Still seems like a good deal, just not as good!

Depends on if you want to game. In 3DMark06, the 6620G scores around 4375, the 6550M scores 7477.

[FarplaneWind]

Oh crap...

Well, that means no overclocking I guess.

I believe those drivers have been hosted and posted up somewhere in this thread several times before.

[saturnotaku]

I believe those drivers have been hosted and posted up somewhere in this thread several times before.

It's a double-edge sword, though. Those drivers are older, based on the Catalyst 11.6 set, IIRC. So you would gain the ability to overclock but potentially lose on performance optimizations for newer games (if you play them, that is).