Hammerhead's m9700... - Page 5

It's a little clear strip set into the case. There are two icons over it, a battery, and what looks like a zap of lightening. Under the battery behind the clear strip is a red diode that flashes when running on battery, and under the lightning thing is a blue diode that lights up while plugged in. The diodes match the led color in the start button. If you're plugged in and charged up, the start button shows blue. If you're on battery or the battery is charging it flashes or shows red in the start up button.

I think you can see in the pics I posted the start button with both blue and red showing...

It appears to have the same type of heatsink cushion for the gpu memory that your setup does Aaron.




Here's a pic with the bottom off.

I have the 2.4G turion 64 ML-44. It's noticeably faster than my 3.2 P4 desktop cpu.

As for the future path, AMD is introducing the turion 64 X2 dual core, and that will replace the turion line. The turion will be phased out this year but I expect many years of continued support and supplies by AMD. Unfortunately the X2 uses a different socket so it needs a different mobo. No word on whether Arima will be making a motherboard for this case that will accomodate the X2. I'm just planning to use this machine until it's time for a new machine. Upgrading laptops isn't the same as desktops IMO...

There are a few drawbacks with the X2 though, mainly heat and battery life, as well as clock speeds. The dual cores will be clocked slower due to the extra heat generation. Also I understand the cores can't be powered separately, so if one core is running at 100%, both will, even if the second isn't doing anything. I need to confirm that for sure, but I've read that in more than one place in AMD tech forums.

Games are all single thread now, but that will be starting to change soon, but it won't necessarily have a big impact on gaming performance. Dual core helps multi-threaded apps and multi taskers much more than games.

So far the pentium mobile line doesn't support SLI, so the turion was the only viable mobile option for the m9700.

I've yet to find any real gripes Yang...

What is the price difference between the 5750 and m9700 you're configuring?

I've never seen a 5750, so I can't really say, but I find it hard to believe the performance of this laptop. Seriously it doesn't even break a sweat on Oblivion at 1920 x 1200 on ultra-high settings...

Maybe look at the m9700 with a single gpu for price.

It would be great if you could exchange the 5750 later on an m9700 if you don't like it after getting it, but I've only heard of AW letting people do that that have repeat issues with their systems...

This thing is pretty big so I can see why people would rather have the 15" for mobility, but the 5750 is 17" also...

The 5750 would probably be a safer bet for what your uses will be. I really don't know how they game though. For me gaming is most important for this machine so the choice was easy for me.

I'll know better about the performance in a week, but that won't help you much...

No issues so far, no shutdowns or wonky behavior. I do think a lot of those cases were corrupt OS's due to the way they wipe and reinstall before the machine leaves the factory. Most of them cleared up with a fresh install of the OS.

The sound is the best I've heard in a laptop. Haven't had the time to hook up the 5.1 speakers yet though. As I said, this is the best sound I've heard from a laptop, but I'm a little disappointed it's not a bit better.

Haven't had a chance to deal with the tuner yet. I'll get to that this week. To get the internal tuner, you have to select MCE, and then also select the tuner option under that.

And I've only run it on battery for a few minutes so far, I'll test battery life soon.