Laptop + Gaming

[Manvol]

Guys I'd like to ask you something else.

My brother thinks of buying a laptop, because he has to move weekly from one city to another. He is not interested in battery efficiency, he will always have it plugged into the electrical network.

What he wants is this laptop to be able to play latest games quite well. With this he means a gfx chip with the power of 9800 or more (say X800 or 6800 Go).

He also wants to give out around 1700 euros.

What do you suggest in this price range, if there is something, that is!

 

[Frank]

- Lots of RAM (1G min)
- Pentium-M
- Radeon 9600 Mobility or better
- An LCD screen with a good but not great resolution

 

[Sxotty]

Couldn't he get a p4 or amd based laptop?

If battery life isn't an issue he could get one that is just as fast and way cheaper than a PM model.

 

[Frank]

Couldn't he get a p4 or amd based laptop?

If battery life isn't an issue he could get one that is just as fast and way cheaper than a PM model.

A Pentium 4 is about as fast as a Pentium-M running at half the clockspeed, and that P-M uses much less than half the power as well. DON'T buy a laptop with a P4, unless you want to use it for a heater!

An AMD Turion is ok, but like nVidia Go videochips hard to get and generally more expensive for the same performance as a P-M / Radeon combo.

 

[incurable]

Once you made up your mind that you'd like either of the high-end mobile parts, there're really not many notebooks to chose from left. The GeForce Go 6800 Ultra is in the Dell XPS II, IIRC, which is over 2000 Euros, and the only place I've seen an X800 (12pipes) tested in was a Clevo barebone using a Pentium 4.

Basically, I think you wont get either in the price range you're currently looking, either go at least 500 Euros higher, or get one in the Mobility X700 / 6600 GT range.

 

[swaaye]

Inspiron 9300. GF6800Go, Pentium M, DDR2, 17" WXGA 1440x900 or WUXGA 1920x1200.

You probably will not be able to beat the price of that machine with any other laptop maker. Dell is the Walmart of PC sellers, but their machines are good quality and cheap.

 

[Frank]

Inspiron 9300. GF6800Go, Pentium M, DDR2, 17" WXGA 1440x900 or WUXGA 1920x1200.

You probably will not be able to beat the price of that machine with any other laptop maker. Dell is the Walmart of PC sellers, but their machines are good quality and cheap.

Sounds very nice, but for games you might want the smaller screen size. Or make sure that it has a great and fast stretch mode.

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

If you can wait a little longer there is a very powerful notebook coming out soon. Its a clevo D900K. Its a AMD S939 and can use a FX57 to a X2 4800+. It can hold 2 SATA hard drives in raid and have a NV 6600 to a 6800U or ATI X700 to X800 XTPE.
Here is a link with some specs.
http://rockdirect.com/notebooks/xtreme64_cons.htm
This is a barebone notebook so theres going to be many notebook builders that will have this and build it to specs you want.

 

[ANova]

My suggestion would be a Pentium M 1.8 GHz or higher (make sure it's a 533 MHz fsb with the 915 chipset), 1 GB of DDR ram and a mobility X700/6600 Go or higher.

 

[Karma Police]

If you can wait a little longer there is a very powerful notebook coming out soon. Its a clevo D900K. Its a AMD S939 and can use a FX57 to a X2 4800+. It can hold 2 SATA hard drives in raid and have a NV 6600 to a 6800U or ATI X700 to X800 XTPE.
Here is a link with some specs.
http://rockdirect.com/notebooks/xtreme64_cons.htm
This is a barebone notebook so theres going to be many notebook builders that will have this and build it to specs you want.

I was wondering when someone was going to mention that. However, there still is no word on availability.

 

[Manvol]

This new Clevo laptop sounds very nice as well as the Dell 9300 Model does. But what about the price and especially the availability in Europe? I think Dell 9300 was only available in the US and European users should buy it from there.

 

[incurable]

The Athlon 64 Clevo will probably be >2500 Euros once configured, I know a comparable Clevo barebone w/ a Penitum 4 starts at 2000 Euros, and that's with a cheap Prescott, no FX or X2.

 

[kmolazz]

I was looking for a laptop a few months back and for that price range (maybe 100€ less) you can find some by Asus/Acer/Toshiba with PM1.8 or Amd Turion, 1GB ram and X700 mobile. For something with a better graphics card (6800 or x800) you'll have to pay a lot more than 1500€).

 

[Frank]

Asus is very good, Toshiba is good as well, but I don't like Acer. Bad experiences and lots of complaints from other people.

 

[silence]

dunno if it helps, but i've seen some nice NEC laptops.... as for ASUS or Toshibe, you can go wrong with those two.

 

[mr]

Last month I bought a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M3438 for under 1700€ which offers very good value.

I'm pretty impressed by the Pentium M's performance at 2.0GHz which is mostly in the same ballpark with my Athlon 64 at 2.4GHz.
The NV41 is also a pretty good performer but you definetly need the horsepower when you want to run modern games in 1440x900 with even 2x MSAA.
If you want a gaming notebook I wouldn't go any lower than that.
Playing HL2, Far Cry and Battlefield 2 (with a new video driver from FSC finally without shadow glitches) in 1440x900 on a 17" widescreen while taking the train is a pretty sweet experience.

I was mostly impressed by the general low noise which was my main concern with this setup. Coming from an Acer Aspire 1660 with a P4 3.0GHz it was both an improvement in processing power as in battery life and heat/noise.

A built in card reader and a DVD remote (instead of a PCMCIA slot) is a nice addition.
As an alternative I would only consider the Dell Inspirion 9300 which is, in Europe atleast, a good deal more expensive when you match the specs.

 

[swaaye]

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=80879

If you are into overclocking, you can get some very cheap gain out of 400FSB Dothans. I have a 1.6/400 @ 2.13/533 right now, and have now for several months. It doesn't involve any voltage boosts so for all intents and purposes, other than the little jumper wire, it's the same as a real 2.13. Just a LOT cheaper.

 

[Sxotty]

Finally some reviews have surfaced comparing Turion and Pentium M
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050906/index.html

From a battery life perspective, the Turion 64 was clearly inferior to the competition based on Intel technology. But then only when the CPU is lightly loaded, as when running a typical set of Office applications. When applications put more demand on the CPU, the difference in battery life among these systems narrows noticeably. And if the CPU and graphics components are purposely maxed out, as when gaming, the tables turn completely as our results showed, and the Intel system falls behind. In this last usage scenario the lion's share of power consumption in a notebook goes to the PCIe-attached 3D graphics chip and video RAM, and not to the CPU.

It basically implies that the unused Pentium M takes less power than an unused Turion, but that when both are actually being used at a high % the Turion is neck and neck, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind.

The point is obviously that the Intel CPU has better power management features, but does not use less energy to get a similar amount of computing done.

It also implies the sempron based notebooks might actually be quite decent, especially compared to the celeron based ones, as Semprons have the power saving features of the turion.

But yeah I guess the best deals are likely to be found on a P-M...

 

[swaaye]

Well both CPUs have nearly equal maximum power ratings which I suspect relates directly to these results for non-idle usage. The Pentium-M seems to have extremely advanced power management when it comes to idle time, far moreso I suspect than a desktop K8 at a lower voltage.

My notebook's Dothan will clock down to 800MHz at idle and a very low voltage. At this speed it does not need a fan at all and will sit around 35-40C. A lot better than my Clawhammer could do at the same clock and similar voltage. Granted Turion is a smaller die and lower voltage, but Pentium M is just exceptional at low power idling.

 

[Zaphod]

Finally some reviews have surfaced comparing Turion and Pentium M

Here's another. A direct comparicon between a Turion and a P-M notebook from the same ODM, the same OEM, and with almost identical specs. Namely the Acer Travelmate 8104 and the Ferrari 4005.

I also wouldn't buy a Clevo D900 for a gaming laptop. These things are *movable* not mobile. Primarily workstations and not a notebook computer you'd want to carry around at all. (Allthough, for the use specified in the first post, it might still be acceptable.) The Dell 9300 (great deals to be had on these, plus they often screw up the webpages and allow overlapping promotions and cupons) and the Fujitsu Siemens mentioned earlier are both better value, IMO, as well as more managable in size and weight.