Internal Features Evaluation

While the specifications page might easily sum up what the guts of the eMachines M6805 notebook has in store for you, we’ll quickly go over the major components of it and how they compare to desktop parts and other competing mobile parts.

The most prominent feature of this system is its use of the newly released Athlon 64 Mobile chip.  This processor is a model 3000+ Athlon 64 Mobile that runs at 1.8 GHz with 1 MB of L2 cache.  This is different, however, than the desktop model of the 3000+ that runs at 2.0 GHz and has 512 KB of L2 cache.  Other Athlon 64 notebooks released before the Mobile part was out used the identical parts as the desktop Athlon 64 processors.  This forced the system to be very heavy and bulky and also raised the price tag to above $3000 in many cases.  With the release of the Athlon 64 Mobile, with PowerNow functions integrated and running at a lower voltage, the notebooks could be designed somewhat smaller.

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The screen on the M6805 is the same kind of widescreen display that you may have seen under the Dell name or others.  The resolution runs at 1280×800.  However, if you are playing games, you will be running them at 1024×768, as that is the largest that the monitor can display without clipping some of the contents of the window. 

Powering your 15.4″ screen is none other than the ATI Radeon 9600 mobility graphics chip with 64 MB of dedicated video memory.  This is one of the most powerful graphic chips for the mobile market, second only to ATI’s very own Mobility 9700 chip that was recently announced.  With the use of the 9600 graphics core, eMachines has provided gamers with an easy solution to both traveler’s boredom as well as the LAN party user.  As mentioned before, I have been using this notebook as my personal machine for two months now, and I have had to oppurtunity to do pretty much everything on it, including gaming.  You will see the benchmark numbers later in the article, but from the pure “experience” the machine offers, I can say that it is acceptable at all the games I have played on it.  Below, I have a 8MB movie of myself playing Call of Duty at 1024×768 with all the otions turned up.  And before I get any comments, yes, I already know I am not that good!  🙂

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Click to view

Another notable feature is the inclusion of an integrated 802.11g wireless LAN that supports speeds up to 54 Mbps along with its 10/100 Ethernet and 56K modem.  The 54G wireless card is backwards compatible with all 802.11b networks as well and keeps you ready for the future integration of 802.11g technology. 

With 512 MB of memory, the M6805 was able to handle all my development needs for PC Perspective including running Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver 2004 MX as well FTP programs, shell windows and Internet Explorer browsers all simultaneously with ease.  The 60 GB hard drive provided more than enough storage, though if you would like to upgrade this feature, the 2.5″ hard drive bay is easily accessible with the removal of a single screw. 

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Size and weight are one category in notebooks that is basically moot in the desktop world.  If you’ve ever had to carry your laptop with you while walking around a convention hall for say, eight hours, you’ll know exactly how important it is in the mobile front.  Coming in at 7.5 lbs, the M6805 is in the same weight class as the Dell Inspiron class notebook but is much lighter than my previous Toshiba multimedia 17″ widescreen notebook that was over the 10 lbs mark.  Make no mistake, the eMachines M6805 is not a replacement for your 4 lbs thin and light category machine you may be used to toting around without a second thought, but it is far from being unmanageable. 

Overall, I think you’ll find the specifications that eMachines chose for their new M6800 series laptops to be about the best you can get in the mobile sector, and its performance is going to showcase that as well.

*Note* As this is our first mobile review at PC Perspective, we don’t have any same-level comparisons for the benchmarks the M6805 posted, but we still think you will find their numbers to speak for themselves. 

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