time for a new laptop, any sugestions?

Bacon_TFL · time for a new laptop, any sugestions?

right, i'm looking for a new laptop, but i aint to good with tech stuff.
i got around £1000 to spend (could go to £1200 at a push)
i've found this one

http://www.evesham.com/products/i...94F19-B16E-4976-BE02-7F16CC42F4CE

but as i say i don't know whats better, intel or AMD, Nvidia or ATI, etc etc.
i want something that will be beefy enough to play new games on and something that is future proof for a bit. and i would like 512mb graphics card.

oh, what is DX 10 and why is it a big feature?

thanks in advance for any help

[TFL]Tank0

well expect the real quality answer from hideki or bang but i will tell you my personal fav is still the intel nvidia combo . why ? well i havent had any bad experiences with it so far .

i think you are looking for a pure gaming rig .

so ask yourself , are you willing to pay for a build in webcam and wireless connection built in ?
it are nice gimmicks but if you wonna go for a gaming rig .
think processorspeed , 3d video card , RAM memory and harddisk space .

try to get the best value in those cats for your money .

another thing i find important is buying a laptop from a certain brand because support is valuable for laptops , they come as is while a normal pc you can customize . i have had several customers buy a unknown brand because it was cheaper only to find out they couldnt get new drivers after a year or so when new games/soft got released .

dx10 is the new hyped soft the new games are gonna use for more features and what not . so far just one game uses it but it will dominate in the future . only vista will support dx10 but rumors are spreading they ll release it for xp too ( not sure they will )

xp is steady but obsolete . vista is the new standard but unstable so far and drains resources . most users are putting off upgrading to the wow now system because well they don t have a reason to go dive in the unknown ( dont fix what isnt broken , i am sure you know that one from on the ship

)

if you get vista make sure the brand offers vista support on your laptop and get ready to see many problems occuring with older games / soft . the backward compatible thingie is rumored to be a biatch .

bang will no doubt give you more recent info on it but all in all its a matter of taste and a choice you ll have to make yourself .dont go for the most expensive pack and stay clear from the cheap setups

[TFL]LordofCheese

errr, Dell got anything to take your fancy?

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content...&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs
LoC

Hideki

sorry to disappoint u but lol... i aint got much helpful answers...

i thought we discussed some laptop for fatal a while back, which i cant find it somehow in the tech forum, but basically i dont wanna repeat that mac laptops are reasonable, but then again, if u're up for dx10 games on vista, u cant really trust on apple's dual boot but u better simply go with nice windows comp.

and im sure someone else has more knowledge than me about a powerful laptop, since im not too interested in it...

[TFL]BigBANGtheory · Re: time for a new laptop, any sugestions?

@ tank0, pressure is on for a good reply as Hid came up short so here goes

Laptops aren't designed for high-end gaming end of discussion.

This then leads on to the obvious question of what expectations you have and what up and coming titles you are likely to run.

Generally speaking the Toshiba Satellite x205 is your best bet in my opinion as it is the first laptop to get the Nvidia 8700M.

http://uk.computers.toshiba-europ...o?service=UK&SERIES_ID=131319

can you get one with 2GB ram for £1200? pushing it tbh maybe.

DX10 is the new microsoft graphics API (application programming interface) that comes with Vista. The only thing that DX10 does atm is offer more advanced graphics options in games which are barely noticable however with the release of new titles this WILL change. Most people use DX 9.0c atm (cos thats what WinXP uses) and what DirectX does is act as a go between the game and the graphics hardware. So when a programmer wants to draw a complicated scene and add physics effects like particle explosions, gravity, waves, wind etc they use special DX commands to simplify the process rather than every developer having to reinvent the wheel for every title. The thing is Microsoft have been crafty buggers because by not supporting DX10 on WinXP they are trying to force the gaming market to buy Vista and like or not you have very little choice in the matter if you want to experience graphically superior games. If that not complicated enough you also have to factor in the fact that Vista has known performance issues for games indeed most current games run better on WinXP. Supposedly there are some patches coming out of Mirosoft to address these problems but who is to say how effective they will be. Linux & MACs are hopeless for gaming so dont think they offer any real solutions either.

In summary then you will at some point need Vista for DX10 cos new titles will use DX10 to greater effect over the DX9.0c alternative.

Intel chips out perform AMD chips at the high end of the market, as you drop down things become less one sided. There are plenty of AMD chips which own Intels middle to lower end chips but as far as you are concerned just get an Intel Core 2 Duo or Centrino and have done with it. AMD was the king, now they are not.

The Evesham laptop you are looking at... Ok its not half bad, but you need 2GB of RAM so you would want the Zieo N550-HD at least. Evesham do also the higher end laptops with the 8700M Nvidia chip but as I am sure you have seen the price goes up quite sharply.

If you can get one with 2 GB of RAM and the 8700M GPU within your budget there is your answer. If not the Zieo N550-HD is probably going to be your best 2nd choice. Dell make some sexy XPS laptops but they are mega bucks and shite value.

Hope this help oh 'swine empowered one'.

Bacon_TFL

what does turbo memory mean? i just looked st the one u linked to BBT, and how big a mb is this grapics chip? NVIDIA® | NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8700M GT supporting TurboCache™ technology (from the same laptop) surely not 8700mb? or is it?

[TFL]Temmu

no it is probably 256mb....
ummm for me the best comp that i got was a an ASUS G1S gaming rig.... it came with 2 gb of RAM and 160 GB HD....... came with a a geforce 8600 GT.... along with a bunch of other nifty features... it did come with vista... some of the vista problems can be annoying but nothing you cant get through.. .it is true that it does drain resources... i got a cpu monitor running to watch my cpu and shit this dual core hits the roof at times when using only IE.... but besides that its a solid system...

also this thing is well within your budget... about 1800$ US... anything like this from dell would be like 3000$ US.... trust me i did the price check and comparison... u def want a dx10 card though.. and ATI gave up making high end video cards so stick with the nvidia...

hope this helps =)

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

Video memory will be 256MB or 512MB, turbo cache is all about sharing memory from the GPU with the system memory and vice versa.

Most of these fancy named technologies have next to no real world benefts.

See if you can find a tech review of the 8700M vs 8600M to see if it is worth the extra money.

[TFL]Temmu

i havent seen any real difference..... also bacon if you get a mobile laptop with an 8600 prepare to deal with vista because the hard ware that you get from it will not go backwards to xp... thats the only true issue right now...... thats the only that needs work...... because the hard drive as well as some other bios drivers were not made for xp....

DolphinTFL

im saving for a new laptop aswell, i'm not ready to go to dual-core just yet most of the programs are incompatible with it. only the new stuff coming out is. right now i'm saving 1000 dollars maybe more. and atm i have my eye on a p4/ HT 3.2 to 3.8GHz single-core. and a nvidia or ati 256mbs of video RAM with 1 or 2 gigs of RAM of course i can always update the RAM.

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

Bacon_TFL

cheers guys, gave me a lot to chew over, sorry i aint been on much but the wedding is taking priority ATM, we got family coming from all over the world, from Hong Kong to Thailand, and most crners of England, so things are a bit mad here, i'll try and look in from time to time, but till after the wedding i'm gonna be a lost solider.

Xerxes|TFL

unless you want an uber gaming notebook, take a mac. they look nice, they are really quiet, they are fast and mac os x is by far the best os i've ever worked with.
you can even play with a mac - EA plans to release several games for mac + you can use dual boot via bootcam (i do this, but i use windows much less (fewer?) than expected - nearly never *g*)

Hideki

i can second about mac any day, but then again, i've heard couple troubles running windows from my friend on his mac (it still runs just fine, but seems to hang up from time to time, dunno the cause for sure though), even on a dual boot, boot camp. so, if u want the safest bet on running with the best condition with latest hardware with latest games, i'd still say get a windows notebook.

besides, if u get a mac, u need to get a macbook pro, which is... just simply twice the price of macbook (macbook is enough for average consumers). since macbook pro is the only laptop that comes with decent gpu, not to mention u cant choose gpu until apple thinks they want to swap it or else u have no other choice in mac product lines.

while all u want is run recent games in modest environement but want all the advanced feel and look of os x for everyday use, its cool to have a macbook pro (for a cost), if u dont play games, macbook just owns everything else like demons own every other clan out there (i mean in the past...), but right now isnt the best time for a mac when all u want is the bestest shiny new games out there. and since u gotta go to win/mac by dual boot to play games, its sorta annoying. there are vmware/parallels that lets u run win apps like any other regular mac apps on mac os x which works, but for heavy 3d games, it's not gonna work that way until u reboot to win.

its just... expensive to run good 3d games on mac right now... but if u do ever want to get a macbook pro, i suggest u look around the net on reports how games of ur choice play on them.

[TFL]Temmu

i somehow do not believe he will want to spend $3500 US for a macbook... macs are way over priced trying to make up for their heavy loses in the past 10 years... yes the mac os x is a much more resource friendly OS it is much less compatable... everything is out for Windows including the main game he plays hw2!!!!
also the asus notebooks are much people and their tech support is great... tried getting some help of putting xp on my laptop from the guys over there and they were more then happy to supply me with the proper drivers even though it is a vista notebook... in the end i just left vista on it though =)

i am not smashing macs or anything its just that they are way to expensive... they are nice but can be a pain at times... i tried loading photoshop cs2 for a friend and it took dam nearly forever for me to go about all the steps of "properly" loading it

windows is probably what he is comfortable so why change... if the prices in macs changed and the software was a bit more compatable i would go with macs in a heartbeat... but price and software still makes want to stick with a pc... along with all the customizability of a pc

and dolphin have you been living under a flippin rock!?!?!?!? of course dual cores are supported... anything new withing the past 2 years has been supporting dual cores.... its the quad cores that arent fully functional yet but soon will be... come on man and also ATI is now garbage!!!!! ATI has given up competing against nvidia because that 8800 totally bashed in ati's latest card in every way possible... ati is now only building cheap lowerend cards... nvidia will be the choice of graphic hungry users like ourselves =)

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

Hideki

just point out the right fact plz...

macbook and macbook pro are just damn different... well, for the price at least. so, not all macs are overpriced, in fact just like i said on above post, just compare how macbook (not PRO) prices compare to any other win similarly designed pc... last time i checked for a bit, nothing beat it. and u know a mac mini is merely 600 bucks...

and talking about compatibility, it just makes me laugh... an app designed for windows doesnt even work on another windows version... namely... hw2! yes i heard some sf got it working, so at last, it seems to work after much struggle.

>windows is probably what he is comfortable so why change...

at least im not saying he should get a mac for what he's trying to do... but u know, just to know what other side of the computer market holds, it doesnt hurt to try it

btw, u dont look for app compatibility on mac about win apps... u get alternative apps... as for games, mac lose, period. but for day to day use, im sure 90% of ur required app is already there. and then theres virtualization that lets u run win apps like native app... i think ur photoshop problem was due to it being the old powerpc designed one, newest photoshop is intel cpu based, so it should be better / faster than old ones. and i just want to know what kind of compatibility and price u're looking for in a mac...

yeah, if u're geek who needs to swap parts in and out to play around, u need a win box.

Xerxes|TFL

Macs are not overpriced. You get a MacBook for ~1000 Euros, standard notebooks with equal components cost as much as a MacBook.
Asus has by the way a very bad service. They take very long to repair and don't always find the real prolbem with your notebook (same with gericom, sony and some other brands).

If you look at the servcie, you can only buy Lenovo, Dell, HP, Samsung and Apple Notebooks.

If you want a pure gaming machine, a notebook won't be your friend anyway, since they aren't as fast as desktop pcs and afaik are gaming notebooks quite expensive.

[TFL]LordofCheese

I sure hope, ATI haven't given up on the GPU race. I mean, otherwise it spells monopoly.

And then we're doomed!

Incidentally, you do know not all past Mac software (and there is far less than windows) works on OSx too?

Frankly, when Mac have the same collosal range of software as windows, they'll have exactly the same backwards compatibility troubles.

The joy of PC's (and for some reason the MAC advert makes fun of this), is that every component, and every piece of software is made by different people. This not only means that you have a wider range and choice (always good), but that each piece is made by someone who specialises in the area.

So you can have I-life. Or customise your program portfolio with a collosal range of programs.

And for performance, a PC will almost always out perform a MAC - pound for pound, dollar for dollar.

LoC

Hideki

why are we having mac vs pc on 2 different threads...

this is not just the choice of win or mac apps, but recently i feel that more choice isnt always cool. just having 10 more free apps that does somewhat same job isnt any better than having 2 seriously good working apps that does similar job.

there are million free/foss desktop apps out there, but 95% time, they suck. if u pay, they suck much less or u get to know the 5% actually reliably working app.

win has many apps, thats true, but so what... it's full of junks, amount of overall quality app i think isnt too far apart and i think mac apps seems to do job fine here and there with its less selection, besides this is a moot point when u can run both side apps on mac anyways... and this even makes it ur point of having more choice is better, since mac runs both side apps... when win only runs win side.

>And for performance, a PC will almost always out perform a MAC - pound for pound, dollar for dollar.

and this comes from what source? my point of denying this fact comes from pages that describe price/hardware and i have never seen apple hardware obviously lose by a good margin on cost/performance ratio by just checking out latest hardwares... or are u just comparing the cheapest dell lines? u may be able to add a lcd with the same cost as getting a single mac mini without a display, but thats about the example i can think of.

im starting to think u never owned or even played with mac much and trying to tell how u love ur currently owned win pc without much facts to add...

[TFL]LordofCheese

Hideki

more choice of app is cool, when they all work. do you think u feel good looking at all the girls in school or just some on magazine? just coz there's many doesnt mean, u feel happier.

its about linux too, 100 different distros... wow, amazing, but u really need 10 or so, that is worth counting. (here's a list of distro with ranks on the right side part of the page) why do we need them? no we really dont.

i thought u said high performace as in cost ratio to its ability... if u simply mean high performance as in specification, then i'd say mac is just wrong here. suddenly when it comes to high spec mac's, prices double, no one sane would get one... unless they really need one.

so, no, u want a win machine for real high performing machine. u should keep the money for ur gf instead of getting mac pro.

[TFL]Temmu

dude what do you mean hw2 wont work on different versions of windows.... mine works quite well with my vista and or ME on an older computer that i have.... so it does not matter... because any program you have will work on vista just not as well as it did on xp without a patch... hw2 is one that works just as well with no hitches.... i cannot debate over a forum about which is better... each have there pros and cons... macs are nice but pcs have the capability to tweak and upgraded which is key to any high end performance user... sure mac have those but what happens if someone wants to put in a better processor/ mobo... or how about another hard drive for more room... cant do that with a new mac...

and asus has a very good customer service rep... they are very quick and thorough... havent had a problem with my laptop... strong as a rock and much much cheaper compared to any other companies out there... this laptop cost me 1800$ while on dell a laptop with the same config cost 3500$.... cant do much better then that i must say

Hideki

yeah, i was referreing to this it souds solved, but on the other end, it doesnt sound so... so, i guess u're the lucky one.

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

macs are a bad choice for gamers, and therefore a bad choice for Bacon until such time as DirectX is effieciently emulated by linux which isn't likely tp happen anytime soon.

OpenGL (the alternative to DirectX) based games can potentionally run on any system, but there is no way to guarentee future titles will use OpenGL infact the odds are against it unless its coming from id software (Doom, Quake boyz).

You can of course run the Windows OS as a virtualised guest OS on top of a mac OS as its basically Linux at its core. Then run specific applications in the virtual guest....however there are bound to be performance penalties for doing so.

macs have their place and their market share, the top and bottom end of the price & performance scale is dominated by PC quite simply because more research and development is invested there cos thats where most of the money lies and thats where most product developments are first released.

The same is true of the PC following mainframe technology (with the exception of graphics), most of the recent PC advances have been around for years in Enterprise computing things like clustering, multi-core processing, extended memory management, virtualisation is like 10 - 20 yrs old in mainframe terms.

Hideki

mac isnt linux...
it has derived from freebsd which is a unix, but not linux.

i dont care about linux desktop, its ages away from win/mac. people who only use english might find it half usable, but for others its just a plain toy.

and u can run windows as a native os on mac with dual boot which would minimalize performance/compatibility issues, but talking about this point is nonsense as, like everyone already pointed out, if u want a game laptop, go get a windows laptop.

everyone says the price/performance is owned by win machines, but have u really checked the price and spec of both sides? i was surprised when recent macs just brought real competitive hardware to already grown up pc hardware industry.

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

technically ur right but as far as 99% of users are concerned unix = linux

unless you are an employee of SCO, HP or Sun

[TFL]Temmu

lol bbt... i am running vista home premium and i got hw2 working fine and dandy... dont know what they are talking about.... and i would still say for bacon an asus would be great since they are not over priced and still are a very high quality comp... love mine =)

DolphinTFL

i have 2 dual-core laptops that i can always get my hands on. and im telling they are junk when it comes to gaming. unless that crappy Vista has something to do with it. but since is not my laptop im not erasing Vista from it. if i get a dual-core it'll probably be for my 3d lessons. and thats all.

http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/201972/Chess-Game-avi.html 59 sec 800x600

http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/203765/hourglass-avi.html 3 sec 1152x864.

[TFL]Temmu

well gaming also has to do with memory... my dual core processor is always cranking and i have windows vista... i am also running multiple apps at once... its really effective... i have a monitor running... soooo its a good thing to have... mayb you just need some more memory =)

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

Check this baby out Rock X770-T7500:

Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2GHz,4MB Cache, 800MHz
New Nvidia GeForce 8700M GT 512MB (DX10)
WSXGA+ X-Glass rock logo
2GB DDR2 667MHz RAM
100GB 7200rpm S-ATA
Windows Vista Home Premium

yours for £1400 incl. VAT

[TFL]Temmu

thats a sick laptop for the price.... really high end.. bacon thats for you bud!

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

There is an interesting article here about how a Toshiba Laptop with the NV 8700M GPU performs playing CoH in DirectX9 vs. DirectX10

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3085&p=7

Basically they say dont bother running in DX10, which suggests that maybe you should remove DX10 from your purchasing descision on the grounds that the NV 8700M cant run DX10 games properly today let alone in a year from now.

To be fair I dont run CoH in DX10 mode either on my NV 8800 GTX KO pc mainly cos there are too many graphical glitches.

So I would say given the expense for a DX10 enabled laptop it aint worth the money.

The day someone makes a modular CPU & GPU upgrade for a laptop is the birthday of the 1st gaming laptop for the mass market.

Hideki

i wish someone comes up with external gpu box...
there's already a few, but doubt it's that good. problem being, there's nothing that can transfer the data at the speed of a gpu bus as an external link.

[TFL]Tank0

[TFL]BigBANGtheory

I got a new laptop from work today, GPU chipset isnt up to much but I have to say the new Centrino 2 (a dual core at 2.4GHz in my case) is stonkingly fast.

Anyone considering pairing something like a 9800M GPU with a Centrino2 is likely to get a gaming laptop that would beat out even a reasonably spec'd desktop from last year.

[TFL]Tank0

oi BBT i am planning to buy this notebook , but in the years i have learned to respect your insight . You think i can keep gaming on this for the next 2-3 years ?

ASUS M70VN-7S001C
Core2 duo P8400
17“ color shine
RAM : 4 GB
HD 640 GB 5400 rpm
GFX: Nvidia 9650 with 1GBDDR
Wlan: 802.11 B/g + BT
DVD: DVDRW DL
Vista Premium
1350 €

time for a new laptop, any sugestions?

Re: time for a new laptop, any sugestions?