Gaming Notebook price vs performance questions

As to question 1: AMD Athlon 64s run cooler that P4 LGA 775 processors and provide better performance making them a better choice in the kind of high end notebook you are looking for.

As to question 2: Dual core's are in my book preferable to single core as they can do anything everything a single core can do, but perform multitasking better than single cores and they are future proof as more games and programs are written to take advantage of dual core technology. AMD currently makes the best dual cores on the market in my opinion. And lastly 2GB of ram is fine for most of todays games and on into the future for at least the next year. Bottom line with memory: If you find yourself needing more buy more. Until then 2GB of memory is plenty.

As to question 3: I have no clue, never used raid in my life and I have never even seen it offered on notebooks before.

As to question 4: 17" WUXGA 1920x1200 all the way, don't skimp here as you can't upgrade in the future now can you?

GENERAL RULE OF NOTEBOOKS: Whatever you can't upgrade (CPU, GPU, screen, hard drive config) max out on when you buy.

Hope this helps you out.

1. amd's are better for gaming and the fx-60 is very fast.. and amds dual core is very fast.. If you get a amd laptop go with the x2 4400 + because it has 2 mb of cache. The p4 runs very very hot. If you get either adm or intel consifer buying a laptop cooler
2.Dual core will be more "future proof" as more and more games are going to take advantage of dual core. If you have the money get dual core now.Also i have heard that 4 gb of ram actually slows gaming performance down and its a bit of overkill unless you do serious video editing and need major space. I would get the least amount of ram and you can and buy like 2 gb of ram off of newegg because its cheaper to buy from newegg then buy it from the oem your buying the laptop from.
3.Raid is for serious dtr's (desktop replacements). If you want desktop like performance then you would go with raid 0. It is very fast but idon't know if you would notice it in a game.If you don't have the money to get raid then just buy a cheaper external harddrive.
4.Whatever you like more.. with the 1920 x 1200 you will be pishing your video card harder but you can see more.Lets say you are playing fear maxed out adn your average fps is like 20 on 1920 x 1200 but if your playing it on 1680 x 1050 your average fps may be like 30 but you won't be able to see as much detail. I hope this helped

In terms of gaming, yes; Athlon 64s have a pretty large advantage in terms of FP operations, which is heavily used in most games, (especially FPS games), and because of much lower memory latency on the AMD K8 IMC (integrated memory controller); intel single core chips are better for SIMD applications, such as media encoding.

For dual core chips, there is not comparison between the performance of AMD and Intel P4/PD; because of the design of on-die northbridge and cross-bar between two cores which runs at full CPU speed, would be much higher bandwidth and lower latency than going through Intel going through FSB. This is especially important for things like cache coherency (one of the primary performance factors for a multi-chip/core system).

For current games, not really;
but during 2007, we will begin to see significant number of main stream games moving towards SMP capability, at which point, multi-core CPUs will begin to reap the benefit.

But RAID-0 also descrease the reliability of your storage subsystem (increase chance of failure). The performance difference, provided that you have enough RAM (1.5GB for the latest games), would be only during loading games, and loading scenes; not during actual game play. If you don't have enough memory, then faster HDDs may speed up swap; but you should try to avoid that in the first place by getting the right amount of RAM anyways.

WSXGA+ is usually plenty for most people. WUXGA is usually for software developers, graphic designers, engieneers who need a lot of desktop realestate to work with. Actually for games, 1280x1024 would be ideal for most high end graphics cards; at higher resolutions, the game play experience does not really improve much with the resolution; but you will cut into your FPS (frame per second) by loading the pixel pipelines/texture units with heavier tasks.

RAM is always good, upto a reasonable point (2GB for games right now would be pretty much adequate for everything); and dual core CPU will allow you to be more future proof, and hence less of a need to upgrade in he near term future. The others do not really add up in terms of benefit/cost ratio.

1. There is a performance difference but with a budget like that why are you looking at those CPUs? In my mind 12 - 13 lbs notebooks with a Athlon 64 X2 (Clevo D900K/Sager 9750/Alienware m7700 ) or with a Pentium 4 (Clevo D900T/Sager 9890/Alienware m7700) are a thing of the past. With the Duo you can get nearly the same performance and cut 4 - 5 lbs. Read this article:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2...o/index.x?pg=3
The above article compares a 2.16 GHz Duo to some higher end desktop CPUs, a Pentium M 2.0, and some Turions. They all use a 7800 GTX. For gaming the 2.16 Duo performed better than a Pentium XE 965 and Athlon 64 X2 3800+. In FEAR it actually scored higher than a Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (though there appears to be a bug in FEAR in 64bit OS). For other computing tasks the 2.16 Duo scored above a Pentium XE 965 and nearly as good at a Athlon 64 FX-57 in worldbench. The Duo T2600 (2.13 GHz) is significatnly cheaper than the FX-57 and FX-60 as well. To me it does not seem worth 4-5 lbs to get a little edge in performance at a higher cost. A Sager 9750 configured with a A64 FX-60 and a 7800GTX will weigh 4 lbs more than a XPS m1710 configured with a 2.13 GHz Duo/7900GTX, will not perform as well in games, and it will cost more.

2. Yes, dual processors are worth it. While it is does not signify a huge difference in gaming now you will be ready when more games come out with multi-core support. It also has a very significant impact on on other tasks you will be doing on the computer.

3. I have no idea. I have never run hard drives in RAID.

4. Personal preference. I perfer WSXGA+ (1680x1050) but many others would go with the Ultra. I suggest you try both before deciding.

With your budget I would look hard at the XPS M1710.

If I was in the market to buy, I'd just wait for the dual core Turions. That's all I'm gonna say.

Lower power consumption