Review Lenovo IdeaPad Z585 Notebook

[Redaktion]

Budget all-rounder. Lenovo sends its 15-inch notebook off to the race, this time with AMD Vision processor and dual GPU. The AMD-only combination feels quite lonely, since most competitors rely either on Intel and NVIDIA or Intel and AMD.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-IdeaPad-Z585-Notebook.83889.0.html

[suo.eno]

**sigh** ... So essentially what this review means is; AMD has botched it again w/ crap gfx drivers. And this is the Windows one we're talking about. What if I plan to go full Linux distro and Steam For Linux? It's almost as if they're torturing the OEMs for supporting the Trinity initiative?

[Baz]

I have the A8-4500M version of this laptop running win 8 64, and I'm getting the same benchmarks with just the A8 APU and 8gb ran. I can run COD MW2 at 1366x768 at ultra settings, MOH Warfighter at High both reporting over 40fps using fraps - I have noticed this sight is always biased to intel. I had an dell xps15 with i7-2630qm, 16gb ram and nvidia gtg535m, that laptop only produced thea same bench marks a my lenovo but cost $450 more!

[J G]

This article is bullshit.my laptop rates the graphics at 6.7 and 6gigs got 7.2 i think 8would get a higher result.it runs games on high no prob.but yeah the HD is the weak point.but I got it for $479 about 320 euros.$527 with taxes.

[Race]

You need to update the GPU drivers to the Catylist (13.1 I think or may be a newer version), not the update from the Lenovo site, for a significant improvement. Just needs the right drivers.

[Nota Shill]

Please ignore the paid Intel shills that are posting online to try and bad-mouth AMD. Intel seems to have a bad taste in their mouth still after this whole debacle.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33882559/ns/business-us_business/t/intel-pay-amd-billion-settle-lawsuits/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_v._Intel

[waste of money]

i bought this laptop in september 2013 upgraded windows 8 to pro and the battery doesn't last an hour and can't boot into bios which is why i think this product is a dud and been discontinued

[goku]

This quote here bothered me intensely:
"In order to play a DVD without hiccups, we set the energy profile to "Balanced" and turned the wireless modules off. The notebook managed 2 hours and 42 minutes."

First of all, I have this laptop. Even in the most conservative power saving mode, the laptop plays DVDs perfectly without hiccups, ever. I can understand the choice of using the "balanced" setting as that's what most people will have the laptop set but unfortunately, that setting will lead to weak battery life due to the excitability of the processor to want to clock up to its maximum clocks. Had they utilized the power saving mode, laptop would have lasted about twice as long in the DVD test.

But, even that notwithstanding, I'm bothered by the idea that any laptop made in the last 10 years would have to resort to running at anything but minimum speed in order to play a DVD. Why? Because DVD decoding on a NON hardware accelerated setup shouldn't require more than 300-600MHZ of MMX (Pentium I MMX/II) accelerated processing power. That means most laptops made after 1998 can handle playback of a DVD no problem. However, all laptops with ATI/AMD or Nvidia hardware have been equipped with some form of Hardware Accelerated Motion Compensation, IDCT and display rendering since about 1999 and Intel Accelerated chips since about 2001-2. Hardware DVD acceleration reduces the CPU utilization and therefore requirements so much so, that one with a decent video card made after 1999 (even PCI) could reliably watch a DVD on something like a Pentium 133-166mhz though results would vary.

So, even in the worst case scenario of using 1990s technology in current CPU architecture AND having NON hardware accelerated DVD playback, 600mhz of CPU utilization would only lead to 42% cpu utilization on ONE SINGLE CORE if the CPU is set to the minimum setting which on this laptop is 1400mhz.

So either the DVD playback program you're using is a POS or you have something running in the background that is skewing results OR the "Balanced" setting was completely unnecessary as DVD playback should be more than sufficient with the "Power Saver" setting.