BF2S Forums Serious Gaming Notebooks?

Personally, I would have said that getting a light laptop or tablet PC for uni work as well and getting a gaming PC for your dorm/apartment. Sure its just preference, but I would rather not be lugging around a very expensive, probably quite heavy gaming laptop.  My experience of laptops and uni is that its a lot easier to just put it into your bag along with your books, instead of carrying your probably quite heavy book bag and a heavy laptop bag.

Getting a laptop and desktop means you can go for the more sensibly priced midrange laptops, and build your own desktop, and probably save a fair bit of money for more important things in uni!! Thinking UK prices, maybe £1500/CD$3000 on a seriously maxed out self-build desktop, monitor, speakers etc and £800/CD$1700 on a midrange laptop or £1200/CD$2500 for a decent tablet PC. So, say £2300 to £2700/CD$4700 to CD$5500, leaving a fairly substantial amount of money to waste on, you know... actually being a student!

I wouldn't even consider touch Alienware or any of those other gaming "boutique" stores, very very overpriced IMHO.
Also, very quickly looking at that VoodooPC link you included, the "Insane Gaming" build doesnt even include a DX10 graphics card or even an upgrade to one and doesnt include Vista. So yeh, "Insane" must mean you would be Insane to buy this for the price its at!

Edit: Just looked at their lowest spec'd one on that page, a whopping CD$5869.92/£2800 for barely anything at all?!?!

Last edited by aujt74 (2007-06-20 12:04:08)

aujt74 wrote:

Personally, I would have said that getting a light laptop or tablet PC for uni work as well and getting a gaming PC for your dorm/apartment. Sure its just preference, but I would rather not be lugging around a very expensive, probably quite heavy gaming laptop.  My experience of laptops and uni is that its a lot easier to just put it into your bag along with your books, instead of carrying your probably quite heavy book bag and a heavy laptop bag.

Getting a laptop and desktop means you can go for the more sensibly priced midrange laptops, and build your own desktop, and probably save a fair bit of money for more important things in uni!! Thinking UK prices, maybe £1500/CD$3000 on a seriously maxed out self-build desktop, monitor, speakers etc and £800/CD$1700 on a midrange laptop or £1200/CD$2500 for a decent tablet PC. So, say £2300 to £2700/CD$4700 to CD$5500, leaving a fairly substantial amount of money to waste on, you know... actually being a student!

I wouldn't even consider touch Alienware or any of those other gaming "boutique" stores, very very overpriced IMHO.
Also, very quickly looking at that VoodooPC link you included, the "Insane Gaming" build doesnt even include a DX10 graphics card or even an upgrade to one and doesnt include Vista. So yeh, "Insane" must mean you would be Insane to buy this for the price its at!

Edit: Just looked at their lowest spec'd one on that page, a whopping CD$5869.92/£2800 for barely anything at all?!?!

actually alienwares ones are better bang for buck than dell
i need a decent GFXcard and 2gb+ of ram in on i look @ (for PS etc.)

leetkyle wrote:

There are none. And if there are, it'll be outdated in a year.

[PTG]shogun wrote:

actually alienwares ones are better bang for buck than dell

dell own alienware

That's the case with everything, even  with PC's!

Last edited by rabee2789b (2007-06-20 12:54:23)

Inspect@hDeck wrote:

Yeah, I thought those prices were a bit hefty, but I thought that would be normal for a laptop because laptop parts could possibly be more expensive. I was actually going to order the Voodo, and was waiting on someones advice, and I'm glad you told me not to get it, because you're right in saying it's way to expensive :p.

Originally I was leaning towards a laptop only venture, but you've given me a lot to think about, perhaps I will modify my existing desktop, which is pretty potent (7600GT, 3GB Ram, C2D E6700 @2.8), but is still less powerful than I would want. Thanks.

If you have a desktop with specs like that, I would just upgrade it. Get an new DX10 graphics card (8800 GTS/GTX depending on your screen size), maybe get a more powerful PSU if you need to, another hard drive, or whatever else you feel you need to. Look into lightweight laptops from the more mainstream manufacturers (Dell, Acer etc) or even Tablet PC's. I looked into getting a tablet earlier this year, the Asus R1F in particular, convert it to a flat tablet and you can take handwritten notes in MS OneNote which looked really great for lectures and so on, convert it back and its a regular laptop for your report writing.

Whatever you do, don't needlessly waste money! (I'm looking at people who SLI two 8800 GTX's and only have a 22 or 24 inch screen...) Upgrade your desktop and get a medium priced laptop of some kind for lectures. Should suit you fine!

Zimmer wrote:

Desktop > laptop.

QFE

And, for a serious gaming laptop, there big bulky things that have little battery life, defeats the purpose of a laptop imo.  I still think, viable gaming laptops that still encorporate the versitility of a laptop, with the power of a desktop is some time away still.  And, the fact that its something like a 40% price permium for the laptop brings it way out the realm of value for money.  IF, I was going to buy one, I'd go for this

http://www.alienware.com/product_detail … rview.aspx

Branded yea, but in laptops we dont have a choice (maybe if we start gettin the option to build laptops the OEM's MIGHT cut prices, but I'd certainly go for this, infact I might myself   Quite like the Dell XPS 1710 actually to, but to bulky

Martyn

Like almost everyone said, getting an UBERLEET notebook for gaming is, even in my eyes, overkill. It's interesting to see them and see what can go into them, but I don't quite like screen sizes that are 17"+ mainly because they tend to be heavy and not something that you'd exactly call portable, killing off the one advantage a notebook has over a desktop.

If you have that much money, you are better off upgrading/getting a new desktop and getting a lighter notebook for the casual game or two on the go.

Btw, BooVoodoo is bleh. It makes Alienware look cheap. There was one Dell that had better value than a few Alienware notebooks. It was actually relatively cheap and had an upper end GPU but apparently they discontinued it.

I think the best area of notebooks are between the 14"-15.4" notebooks. Not too large or bulky to carry around and you can still get decent performance out of them. Check out some Asus notebooks at that size, they've got some really good hardware for a relatively cheap price.

Zimmer wrote:

Desktop > laptop.

^^^^

I'm at university a lot with loads of free time between the lessons so I do want to game a bit. The way I have it set up is a lappy that will play games (C2D 1.83 GHz, 2GB ram, x1600mobility) but is still affordable and a desktop for some serious gaming.

I win.
http://www.voodoopc.ca/transactions/qks … 0b3387e8a4
comes to a grand total of
$14089.77- US
$14676.84- CAN
€10567.33- Euro



I'm J/k I just picked everything with the highest price possible cause im bored.


I would just get like a 2-3k Laptop...

Smithereener wrote:

Poseidon wrote:

It's like, 5000 bucks for an XPS, Voodoo, etc that's future proof for the next...year.

Get an Asus Lamborghini or Ferrari if you really want to, they're not that bad. You can find 'em on ASUS's site.

This would work too. DX10 video card, 160 GB HDD space, 2 gigs DDR2...It's an 8600 but it'll still run things like BF2, CS and others on medium.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6834220182

I think Ferraris are from Acer.

The G1S you pointed out is actually capable of running BF2 at high with 8x AA at around 40-50 FPS. The 8600GT is currently the strongest notebook GPU with DX10 capability.

You can get decent notebooks that can play current games at high and future games at a low-med settings for a relatively cheap price.

On a side note, getting 3G of RAM on a F3SV with the 8600GS can get better performance than 8600GTs because it has more memory to turbocache and utilize for the game itself.

Yeah, Acer. That's what I meant.

Inspect@hDeck wrote:

Now, what about a laptops upgradeability? I will be able to upgrade it when it becomes outdated, right? Also, they say some of these things aren't that portable. Is this just because they are heavy/cumbersome? Or will they break apart after I move them a couple times?

You can only upgrade the ram and possibly the HDD

http://www.notebookreview.com

go there


A year ago and I am still using this laptop:

Compal HEL-80.

I built it from barebone. 

15.4" screen
Go 7600
2gb DDR2 667 memory
T2500 Core Duo

handles games well.

Last edited by link52787 (2007-06-22 00:01:50)