I'm in the market for a laptop (read desktop replacement) with a budget of ~£2k. I am an avid gamer and can see this being used for the odd Lan party etc which means that it would need to play Call of Heroes, Mark of Chaos etc without any *chugging*. Of course I am also WoW player ... So here is my pragmatic list (rather than wish list) : 17" 1920x1200 - one with a decent viewing angle and not affected by glare too much. Processor: Not biased! Not being able to find too many reviews on them I am leaning towards a T7600, as I have heard that AMD chips run extremely hot? GFX: Would love the best: 512Mb 7950GTX?... but does it outperform a 256Mb 7900 by much which would save me? Some are offering SLI, but I cant see that that is really needed - all my games on my desktop run fine and that's just a 6800GT OC! Memory: I am assuming that more is the better here, so really 2Mb Disks: Is 100Gb enough for games? Would prefer 160... So what am I after: Really recommendations: I have reviewed Acer, Dell, Alienware, Rock as standard products, but prices differ so much that really I think it is going to come down to recommendation from purchasers and people who have experienced good (bad?) after sales support. As always not many companies state whether you get the original disks (e.g. OS and other installed rubbish) A the moment a machine with the above mentionables from dell comes in at about £2.4k which I wuold love to trim a bit....Oh dell seem to charge £60 for delivery too! OUCH! So over to you gurus!
cpu: i'd receommend a core duo atm. AMD's running hot is a bit overstated mine(ml-32 turion) runs fairly cool. however having said that u should get a core duo they are better atm. the cpu u mention is quite good. Also battery life is important in a laptop and the rock thingy with sli in it makes it only over just an hour battery life. So u might take this into consideration when u choose one like this. also i believe to have read that the full power of sli wasn't available when using without adapter. As for the graphics card. i have yet to encounter a 7950gtx in a laptop tha isn't insanely high priced for it's performance. As u said a 6800GT also does the job and is way better value for money. I think u meant 2gb ram instead of 2mb and that is on par with what i recommend for ur budget. 160gb Hd however is a rare feat in lappy's 120Gb is what i've got and for a laptop it's large enough and being less rare then 160Gb it is better value. As for the brands u've mentioned they're all good but rock and alienware really are overpriced. U actually pay more because of their name. Acer is traditionally exvcellent value for money and dell is reasonably priced too. I'd recommend anything from the dell inspirion series. O.S is usaully on a disk, most of the times it's an OEM version. most brands supply a basic package to burn disks play media... but don't expect much from it although it does a good job at all these tasks. And the delivery of dell is from what i've heard from my friends impeckable. On time and never damaged so the price is normal. a package send by dhl (or similar company) cost about the same.
I'd consider getting a slightly lower-res screen. Reason being, I got a Dell 2405FPW screen for my desktop and my X1800XT had trouble running games at that res. Then consider this is a laptop you're looking to run games on which isn't overly upgradable and it looks like new games will be unplayable at that res without seriously reducing gfx details. 1680 x 1050 should be more than enough on a 17" screen tbh otherwise you'll strain your eyes anyway... The Rock direct laptops have recieved good reviews online IMO. The Extreme CTX Pro looks nice IMO. I'd choose the 100GB 7200RPM HDd over the 160GB 5400 tbh. You can choose 2GB memory. You can have it with Vista if you like though I'd personally stick to XP for now. All spec's up it came to less than the £2k budget and would be an awesome laptop.
just fought i should tell you it might be worth your while waiting as i believe i read there should be an GoForce 8800 coming soon. Not sure how long til its released or price but you should check it out
I also heard the same thing, although it could be quite a while before it's released. £2k eh? That's quite a hefty sum... I spent £1600 on a Novatech Blazer about 3 months ago (almost the same as the Rock CTX, but with an ugly, blue/silver lid!). Pretty happy with it, although the Rock system sounds better for the enthusiast (better RAM, faster HDD, O/Cing options and a nice looking lid!) - their support is damn good too...they even helped me out despite the fact I don't own their product! As others have said, go for anything with a Core2Duo CPU, they're fantastic. If you really need to go for HD resolution, then you may want to consider looking into SLi systems - my lappy has a Go 7900GTX 512Mb, and while it's great, I've found that anything newer than HL2 won't run at native resolution (1920x1200) with high settings. I either need to drop the resolution, or tone down some of the GFX options. FEAR for example, would run ok @ 1400x1050 with almost all effects on max, but set the resolution any higher and it get's a bit choppy. SLi would be a better future-proof option, but I'm not sure how much they're going for these days. Of course, if you're not too anal about running TFT's at their native resolution, then the 7950GTX would probably do just fine. Just out of interest, what kind of games/resolutions are you running with that 6800GT? 2Gb RAM is a must, especially if you're planning on getting Vista. As for the HDD, I'd seriously recommend getting an external one too. I'm running with a 120Gb internal, but I don't really keep any media on it - I mean, my MP3 folder alone is around 25Gb, and I've got tons of random videos and other misc. stuff. So I kept one of the HDD's out of my old PC and stuck it in a caddy and voila! 400Gb external HDD.
yawn my M90/t7400/2 gig ddr2/fx1500m/17" [1920x1200] widescreen is fine, just like my previous personal M60 & 8600 laptops, and not forgetting the 4 poweredge servers, 10 precision workstations, 20 SFF desktops and various M60 and M70 laptops which I specced and configured for my employers. If you have a valid argument based upon personal experience fair enough, post your experience here if relevant to OP, if not there are plenty other passengers on the "we hate Dell for no particular reason " bandwagon My current CAD biased laptop was bought with 3 years dell warranty and originally 1 gig ram and t2300 cpu, I swapped it out for a t7400 and 2 gig ram total cost to me £699 [Euro PC] plus £200 for cpu [eBay], and a net cost of 75 quid for the mem upgrade. total cost sub £1000 The graphics is on a par with a 7900gs, but there is an fx2500m which is reported to be on a par with a 7900gt but drains 30-40% more battery power for the privelidge.
I have a debadged version of the Rock Ctx Pro and its awesome--go to http://www.rockdirect.com/viewNotebook.php?pName=XTREME CTX PRO to check it out. Doesnt run to hot either--Would highly reccomend
Wow - thanks! Some seriously good ideas and thoughts to think about! I had completely forgotten about native resolutions! DOH! And the pointers for about trade-off on components is certainly making me think However the Dell XPS1710 comes at a native resolution of 1920x1200 so I would have no choice in that... hence the subtle requirement for a decent GFX card. cant believe that - some friends had problems with a bad lot of keybaoprds on workstations but never heard anything but goodness about the notebook machines themselves. As for Rock/Alienware, aye there certainly seems to be an element of elitism in owning one and thus a premium added to the price! Basically for approximately similarly specced machines: the Dell is coming out ~£1800 as is the Rock and the Rock has a faster hard disk. Alienware: I have heard bad things about their reliability so am throwing those out. Acer: a lot of people are recommending, but the chips I can see are only T5500 not the Core 2 Duo which people are saying is better... So the list is being whittled Jecko - the link is the actual rock website. How did you get a debadged one BTW: My desktop with the 6800GT OC runs WOW all maxed out quite happily! Which is the reason I stopped overspeccing the lappy!
silly little annoyance! some of the web configurators seem to allow a 667mobo to be installed with 533 speed memory! Is that just due to skimping on some money, or am I missing something?
It can be confusing, bottom line is the t2xxx/t5xxx/t7xxx cpus run on a 166 fsb, quad pumped to a 667 bus, so ddr2-5300 [667 doubled from 333] runs a 1:2 ratio, there are no huge differences in performance between pc4200 and pc5300 in my experience, but it was bugging me personally and I upgraded to the pc5300 stuff, IIRC the ratio with pc4200 was 3:5 p.s. run aquamark 3 on your desktop and compare with my 90k score on my M90 lappy
The Rock CTX machines are actually manufactured by a Chinese company called Clevo - Rock, Novatech, Evesham and other companies use this machine, but stick their own badge on it (or not, in the case of Novatech - my machine just says "Style-Note" on the lid!). This could be what he's talking about... It may be worth acutally using a lappy with a 1920x1200 resolution. It took me a while to get use to it, just because of the fact that everything it so small (text, icons etc). Hell, I've had to switch to the 'Magnified' mouse cursors, just to make it easier to see! On the upside though, 1080 HD videos look absolutely awesome, and HL2 was fantastic @ 1920x1200. It's worth looking into Rock & Novatech just for the finance options (6 months and 9 months respectivly) - as long as I pay the full £1650 before July, there's no interest to pay.
Go to http://www.ISTNC.com --- Thats where I got mine, and the people are really nice, found them on ebay actually...Pretty cheap on the clevo's and look at the 570u thats the debadged version of the CTX pro from Rock. I dont know if they ship out of the US though, but do the live chat and ask...Hope I am of help..
WAIT! if u need somethin right now just pick up a laptop wit say a 7800gtx like I did for 600quid I would seriously really recomend that u wait for the santa rose chipset, penryn cpu's and 8800gtx which should all be out later in the year which im waiting for before i get new laptop .... though im thinkin maybe just get a macbook for mobile use and shuttle sdxi for gaming n lanning.....damn now thats a sweet rig
Exactly - i could do but that just skimps on other components. Also "later in the year" is always the call.. irrespective of when you buy. Unless it was imminent I doubt I can really justify waiting... I'll take a looksie and seewhat around. Thanks for the heads up on that though
Rock Xtreme SL Pro... XSLPRO-TL52 (£1820.43 / £2139.00): AMD Turion X2 TL-52 1.6GHz 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX 512MB 1GB DDR2 667MHz 1x 100GB 7200rpm SATA HDD or XSLPRO-TL60 (£2126.81 / £2499.00): AMD Turion X2 TL-60 2.0GHz 2x NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX 512MB 1GB DDR2 667MHz 2x 100GB 7200rpm SATA HDDs
Anyone know what the battery life is on an SLI-rig? Must be pretty short? Would heat be an issue too? NOISE!! cooling requirements cant be all passive in a rig like that! I notice that rock them selves 4/5 on the noise front (I assume that 5 is the noisiest!) 20" must be a luggable!
You simply have to expect both noise and heat from a laptop with such high-end specs... especially of you were to go the SLI route! And I wouldn't expect much more than about an hours' [mobile] battery life from it either? So you'd need to either have it plugged into the mains during fragging sessions at home... or order a second battery with it for 'on the move' use
well I just managed to upgrade my fx1500[7900gs] to an fx2500 [7900gtx] and scored 4890 3dm2k6 marks with card at default clocks, and I should still get decent battery life. going for ultimate graphics as already stated makes the laptop a less attractive proposition from a portability and non mains powered solution IMO
i picked up 17inch 1920*1200 512mb 7900gtx 1gb mem 80gb h/d 2ghz core duo etc etc etc for 450quid inclu shipping n vat.....brand new....evesham gettin rid of old stock
