Buying A Gaming Notebook: Advice Wanted.

[Gimpy]

So I have decided to drop a chunk of cash into a gaming notebook. Looking to spend around 2-3k.

Now I am not as familiar with the options for notebook gaming as much as I know PC gaming rigs. Really interested in getting the most bang for my buck. Skeptical about the whole DX10 thing, as I believe that you pay a huge premium for the latest and greatest and the price drops by 40% a month after release. Don't love Dell simply because they offer the same product on their site, call the second product special edition and give it a red case, then charge you an extra $300. That bothers me. Alienware is fine as long as they dont try to give me transparent cases and glowy wires.

Trying to figure out if a Gforce 7950 would be better than a GForce 8600-8700 since traditionally the Gforce X800+ cards were the gaming cards. My favorite 8800 does not appear to be available for notebooks. Then there is the question of do I need to go Vista. I don't know what benefits a Vista OS has for running Huxley and I know what the downsides are from my current PC which has it.

My faves so far in bang for the buck are

http://www.discountpcsales.com/cgi-b...key=MTECHD900C

and

NCIX.com - Buy ASUS G2S-A1 Core 2 T7500 965PM 2GB 160GB 17.1IN WUXGA GeForce 8600 GT 256M Vista Premium Notebook - 90NJYA6531222CQL100T In Canada.


Advice and comments appreciated.

[zeekgenateer]

I suggest making a custom laptop. You can get a barebone laptop case and buy the parts from the cheapest stores instead of going the premade route. Though that depends on your computer building skills. If you don't know the difference between SATA and EIDE and other stuff like that get it premade. In almost all cases building it yourself would be cheaper.

[Amphiron]

Wait about a month and Nvidia will have a 9800 which is designed for notebooks. Its supposed to compare with the 8800Ultra. What zeek said is the best route to go. All your gonna get from a company is $1000 dollars extra for it to be called a Dell or a Alienware.

[Corbs]

Unfortunately, barebones are rare and have too few choices. Plus, the video card is, if I'm not mistaken, always included and is, in most cases, below your standards. Therefore, for a gaming laptop, apart from the RAM / Processor, you do not gain anything from building it.

As Amphiron said, I'd definitely wait a couple of months if you intend to play the next generation games.

But hey, the G2S is a great laptop. Reviews so far, if I remember correctly, have been pretty positive. On the other hand, I do have a preference for the G1S for its portability (15.4IN vs 17.1IN). Is 2 inches more really worth 200$?

[Gimpy]

Originally Posted by Corbs

But hey, the G2S is a great laptop. Reviews so far, if I remember correctly, have been pretty positive. On the other hand, I do have a preference for the G1S for its portability (15.4IN vs 17.1IN). Is 2 inches more really worth 200$?

For FPS like Huxley I do think that the 2 inches is worth the extra $$$. I do find that there is a difference.

I personally dont like to buy absolute leading edge as I find that there tends to be a hidden prestige premium built in because its the latest and greatest. Check the prices of chips once they have been released and compare the prices 2-3 months down the road. Thats the prestige premium. I think if wanted to wait for the 8800M (or maybe they going to call it 9800) I would need to wait about half a year to get good bang for my buck, which is too long for me.

I am also thinking that with the DX10 being so closely linked with Vista gaming, that it seems like almost a package deal. The games currently in development started off without Vista DX10 as their platform so they would run fine on DX9 and XP. I think that for the next 2+ years we won't see any games that will suffer hugely running on a system like that but I would appreciate other peoples opinion on that.

If that is true then I probably leaning towards the Gforce Go 7950 GTX w 512mg and wiping the system in favor of XP.

My other question would be what is the deal with Kingston RAM?

[Corbs]

True, the more you wait, the better the prices will be. Although, we are talking about a FPS. What happens if your card isn't able to properly run Huxley?

Indeed DX10 & Vista seems attracting, although have you seen DX10 reviews?

Anandtech DX10 review

Granted those are desktop reviews, but laptop's graphic cards have always performed under desktop ones.

Here's a few older reviews:

8600 GT/GTS Follow-up Performance
DX10 for the Masses: NVIDIA 8600 and 8500 Series Launch

I have a friend who has the 7900 GO 512MB on his dell XPS laptop and so far, it's been running quite nicely. For an example, Bioshock runs perfectly (60 FPS) at maximum details on 1280x1024. Anyhow, if you're actually serious about DX10, then I'd recommend waiting for the 9k series. Although it could mean, as you said, up to 6 months.

Why are you asking about Kingston RAM? To my knowledge, they've always been a pretty decent company. Although, they used to be more dominant... All I see lately is Corsair & OCZ.

My two cents on the matter.