Samsung R580 15.6in notebook

That the IGP is ignored is undoubtedly a good thing. There's no way the Intel graphics would have put in a score of 3606 in 3DMark 06. Not that that's a spectacular rating - it's only a hundred points or so better than the old GeForce 210M

Telly vision

The R580 puts in a decent PCMark Vantage performance, as you'll see on the charts on the following page. It can't match the HP Envy - reviewed here - of course, because that 15in machine has a Core i7 on board and the ability to auto-overclock itself, a feature, called TurboBoost, that the R580's i3 lacks.

The performance of the R580 isn't bad, just not what it might be, particularly if you're a power-hungry gamer. If gaming is you're thing, you'll be wanting a machine with a Core i7 and a more advanced GPU, though you'll pay plenty extra for these attributes.

No, Samsung's focus here is video entertainment - it'll play 1080p video nice and smoothly, and there's an HDMI port for telly connecting - and casual gaming rather than all-out blasting, and the company's extensive software bundle does indeed come with an application called Samsung Casual Gaming which allows you to download demos of titles from a few years back and buy them if you want the full versions.