Z71V or Z70VA - Page 2

Too bad we would charge you sales tax for being a new yorker. Gotta move out of this state to like delaware or oregon where there is no sales tax

i decided with the z70va also. i live in mass, ny is pretty close

oooh. I work with relative terms. Didnt relate there. My fault

That all looks good except for the RAM. I'd change it to a single 1 gig stick rather than 2 sticks of 512mb. That way, if you ever decide to upgrade to 2 gigs in the future, you have the extra slot already open and you don't have to throw away the 2 sticks of 512 to upgrade.

but if you never do upgrade to 2 gigs, you wont have dual channel.

FYI to fix the Sager 5320 sound problem. disable IrDA and the problem goes away

Yeah I don't really see a point in getting a z71v over a z70va unless price is a big deal for you.

One difference between the two is the graphics card.
Ive read the 6600Go on the Z71V is Shader 3.0 compliant while the X700 on the Z70Va is not.
Is this feature actually used on any of todays games?
Or is anyone aware of titles in development that will either require it or give much improved quality with it?

Is this likely to be something that when it comes into widespread use the 6600 and X700 will be struggling to keep up wiht the graphics cards of the day anyway?

Exactly. SM3.0 heavily taxes the video card, and the 6600 is not a powerful enough card to take advantage of it and still run a game at decent framerate. This is a selling point for the 6800 over the x800, but it doesn't really apply to the 6600 vs x700.

Well, im not sure about the PS3.0, in my opinion, if it has the technology then your better off.

For example, my Geforce 4 ti 4200 128mb, can play all games but BF2, right now.
Some people have tried to Hack Bf2 to have the Ti 4xxxx series working with Bf2, but failed.

Thinking now, if my card had PS2.0 i know will be running at 800x 600 and low settings.
Acutaly this is how i run all of my games.

But i would rather be able to play BF2 since i have it and see what its like and i can't cos i don't have PS2.

So when the first game is released with PS3.0, and you have a PS3.0 card, YES you will be able to play it, just turn down the graphics and stuff.

I personaly don't care how the game looks like, aslong as it playable and is good looking to me, and yes have low standards on how games should look like compared to sometinhg like a 7800gtx lol!.

As we know the X700 is a better card than the Go 6600, in 3dmarks05 by about 500~, and in terms of Frames per second, its only a difference of about 5ish~.

But the Go 6600 is more future proof in terms of gaming, dont know how long till PS3 games will come out, but it will be a long time, estimating 3 years min.

Also Nvidia is putting out the new Go 7xxx series will have equal power to the M-R Xseries, and pull the same 3dmarks05 and have same FPS, and will have PS3.0 that will be slitghly more advance than the Go 6xxx series.

HOWEVER, inspite all of this, THE PS3.0 factor should NOT be the deciding factor for your laptop. (I realized this myself after alot of reading (about 4 -5 months))

So i decided to wait, since i have time, see what Yonah has to offer, and see what the 7xxx series gots in terms of power.

I personaly like Nvidia better than ATI, but that preference means nothing to me in reality.

Cos if i wanted a notebook today, i would handsdown go for Z70va over Z71v and over the Sagger 3880 and 5320.

Im glad you made the choice to go for the Z70va, good luck.

Thanks,

MysticGolem