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ABS zForce F2 Questions

post #1 of 9
2/8/04 at 3:37am
Thread Starter 
After reviewing several different notebooks from Dell, Gateway, Hypersonic, Alienware, Voodoo and Sager, I've decided to purchase a notebook from ABSPC.com. At first I was going to buy a Sager 5680, but after a glance at the battery life I said "no way!"

Upon further research I decided to buy a Dell 8600 because it has a good tradeoff between battery life and power. However, after reading about the 8600's "issues" I said "no no NO way!!!"

Then I decided to check out the zForce F2, and seeing so many good reviews about it, I decided (finally!) that this was the notebook I wanted. But before I buy, I have a few questions concerning the notebook's specs. They are:

1. What kind of battery comes with the F2? Is it Li-ION? Also, how would the battery performance with this notebook compare to a Dell 8600 with dual battery setup?

2. I need a notebook that will be able to run Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, and graphics intensive games like Unreal Tournament 2003 and Call of Duty. Will the 64MB Radeon 9600 be able to meet the requirements of these programs?

3. Any idea on when ABS will be shipping the Intel 802.11b/g card out with F2s? I really don't want a "lowly" b card...

After reading the posts on this board for about a week, I'm pretty sure I can leach some info out of you all. Looking forward to some info!

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post #2 of 9
2/8/04 at 4:20am
1. The battery is Li-Ion, yes. It compares well to a Dell i8600 with one battery, but an i8600 w/ dual batteries is going to have anywhere between 1.5x to 2x the life.
2. Yes. I've run most of those programs and comparable games fine on this comp.
3. No clue. =p I'm stuck w/ the lowly 802.11b myself...
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post #3 of 9
2/8/04 at 4:38pm
Call of Duty plays no problem with most of the higher settings at 1280x1024.
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post #4 of 9
2/8/04 at 5:34pm
I've become interested in reselling these units and inquired about the b/g cards from a couple different distributors. Thus far I have not be able to get a definitive answer. Basically they seem not to have them on hand presently, and won't know about the future shipments until they acutally arrive. Perhaps this represents a tactic for minizing their stock of soon to be obsolete 802.11b modules....???....???....

My plan at this point is to forgo the integrated wireless, as I can ususally jack into wired access. Then a couple months down the road pick up a b/g card when they've become readily available. No sense spending money on an 802.11b when they're on the cusp of obsolescence.
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post #5 of 9
2/9/04 at 12:57am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the responses guys! Now I'll move on to more questions...

1. Is there a great difference between 512 and 1024MB of DDR333 RAM? I run all of the programs listed in my first post on my 512MB DDR400 desktop at home and everything works fine. Is an extra 512MB worth the additional $100?

2. I've read that some people prefer to have a bigger HD cache vs. a faster RPM. What is the difference between a 5400RPM HD w/16MB of cache and a 7200RPM HD w/8MB?

I promise no more questions after this!

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post #6 of 9
2/9/04 at 1:48am
1. Depends on what you do. For graphics like you mention, more RAM is definitely better. When you move on to bigger files, more programs running at once, and the next big OS, you'll need that RAM. Aftermarket RAM is ~$100 now, and will probably be cheaper later on, but it's a good purchase, and dual sticks of the same type of mem. from the same company ensures that things will be compatible.
2. Haha, I believe that "some people" would be XTern or possibly Devast. I have the 7200 RPM Hitachi, and while you do hear it spinning (as opposed to the 5400 RPM, 8MB cache one, which I didn't hear much), it does feel like programs are loading faster. With a 16MB cache, I'm not too sure.
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post #7 of 9
2/9/04 at 3:35am
If I were going to spend the extra money one place or the other, I'd go with the extra 512MB of RAM. Unless you do a lot of transferring of large files, the extra cache on the HD is of lesser importantance. Datheron is spot on regarding present ram prices-- I can order it cheaper with the notebook than I can get it at reseller pricing from Crucial by about 20-30 percent. Yeah, Crucial is top shelf stuff, but they're going to stay high as long as the U.S. Gov is protecting them from imports pricing themout of business. Waxing nostalgic for the days when I could get a 256MB stick of Crucial ECC Cas2 for under $30. But I digress....

FWIW-- In my opinion, the 5400 RPM drives with 8MB cache represent a good bang for the buck compromise. Unless you absolutely, positively have to squeeze out that last drop of performance, the extra bucks for the 7200 rpm jobs isn't justified (at least in my eyes).

So many opinions to choose from, but here's my "me too". Hope it helped some.
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post #8 of 9
2/9/04 at 3:45am
Quote:
1. Is there a great difference between 512 and 1024MB of DDR333 RAM?
well.... if you are going to get a gig in the future, might aswell get it with a gig from the get go. The $100 difference is about the same as you'd get from anywhere else and you'll be assured to get two identical sticks. From building desktops, I've learned using sticks of ram with exactly the same specs from different manufacturers can occasionally lead to headaches.

Quote:
I've read that some people prefer to have a bigger HD cache vs. a faster RPM
Only went with the 80 gig 5400cuz I'm always running out of space and I only need 7200 speed for my video work which I already had 360gigs of external 7200 goodness for. Since I wasn't going to use the internal drive for video capturing(it's too small anyway), I decided to go with the 5400/80 over the 7200/60 for my apps and files. IMHO 5400 is fine for loading up apps and such, but if you do anything disk intensive such as video, you should get 7200rpm drives in one form or another to avoid dropped frames during capturing. Aside from video capturing, I don't think you're going to notice really the difference. Also, with the price difference, you may be able to get an external meaty firewire/usb2 drive to supplement your internal drive.
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post #9 of 9
2/9/04 at 4:01am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for your help and input guys. Appreciate it.

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