Asus A8JS only choice for 14" gaming?

or look at the A8Jp (x1700 instead of teh 7700 gpu), they have it on Newegg for like $1300.

Let me get this straight: You're willing to pay $250 more for a laptop with the exact same configuration, size, even looks, just to get an Nvidia GPU that's in the same class as the ATI GPU in the cheaper laptop?...

I'm a fan of Nvidia GPUs too, but not for $250 more...That's the cost of another 7900GS or 7900GT I could SLI into my desktop machine... ^_^'

Oh...um..., about alternatives...just to keep this on topic... I believe Compal has the HGL30 which is a 14" laptop with the nvidia 7600go...I think that's the closest alternative.

That is really on the edge, but I would pay that much for a GPU that is 15-20% faster, better overclocker and has better Linux support. IMO Go 7700 is totally in different class.

I paid more for the A8Js because of the Linux support and the 10-20% performance.

I write Linux code, much of which uses OpenGL output, for my graduate program. It's hard enough without dealing with broken ATi drivers.

honestly it is prettymuch the only choice if you have to have a 14 inch machine and want it to be powerful

ok first off, you want a gaming laptop with good battery life? and at a cheap price?............

gaming is inversely related to battery life
gaming and battery life is inversely related to cheap

actually there is an acer model that's cheaper than the a8jp, but it has the turion x2 and it's hard to find, sadly i can't link you to a cheap dealer

you can configure a compal hgl30 with the same specs and price of the a8jp, except you get the nvidia 7600, try powernotebooks, it comes with a 3 year warranty

Well, my A8Js idles at around 16 watts with wireless on, which isn't bad. If they'd just put a bigger battery in the thing, it'd get much better battery life.

Gaming power isn't necessarily inversely related to battery life -- Nvidia's gotten the power consumption (when not gaming) of the 7700 down pretty low.

I dunno...I think I'd settle for the savings if I was just running windows, prodcuctivity apps and playing games. To me, a 10-20% difference in benchmarks hardly makes any difference.

If you're an openGL programmer, fine, you have to pay whatever someone is charging to get what the equipment you need to do your work. Linux? What 3D intensive games are you running on Linux?

As for the performance difference, I think you guys are barking up the wrong tree. I have yet to see any meaningful results of testing between the 1700 and 7700 aside from people mentioning things like: "10-20% edge to Nvidia".

Also, to think that small a performance difference, overclockability and linux drivers justifies putting the nvidia product in a different class sounds a bit ridiculous. They are both a 12/5 pipeline design running a 128-bit memory bus. I'll even agree that the Nvidia is faster. But to consider the 7700 a different class of mobile GPU from the 1700? What are we going to classify the Nvidia 7700? A "Upper-upper-mid-range performance mobile part?"
This sentiment is starting to sound like Nvidia fanboyism.

Here you can find some Go 7700 vs X1700 benchmarks and my arguments, in anandtechs test Go 7700 beats X1700 over 50% in some cases. http://www.notebookforums.com/thread188421.html You fail to see the whole picture, X1700 - Go 7700 Pixel Shader 12 - 12 Vertex Shader 5 - 5 ROP 4 - 8 TMU 4 - 12 Mem 128Bit - 128Bit 90nm - 80nm (better overclocker) Im no Nvidia fanboy (actually I have never own Nvidia GPU), as u can see from my sig, but looking from the specs I can say with good conscience that Go 7700 is better card.

I prefer this benchmarking link, since it compares the a8jp to the a8js, and it's not translated by google. The 7700 is technically better, but it's not that much better, and like Labmouse said, it doesn't make it jump up to the next tier of video cards.

The tests in that thread state the performance difference to be about 10%-15%. It's a little scant on testing details, but not bad for an amateur review.

Even Anandtech's review shows a very wide spread in performance difference...from <5% to as much at 50%.

Seriously, Anandtech's review needs to be taken with a grain of salt as they loaded their benchmarks with games that favor nvidia GPUs. Heck, they don't even mention the "HalfLife2 Source-engine anomaly" or the fact that the numbers may change due to newer drivers (they also didn't list driver revisions)


Actually, you're "looking at the wrong picture" to paraphrase your line The X1700 and 7700go only have a 128-bit memory bus.

I'd also like to see your sources for the ROP and TMU as they are not listed (for common consumption) on either ATI's or Nvidia's website.

According to this site: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mob...00.2157.0.html
The mobility X1700 may even be a 24/8 pipeline card which doesn't quite sound right to me for a 4/4 ROP/TMU card.



Nah, you are a fanboi, you don't have to buy into something to be it's fanboi....and your disclaimer sounds weak...as if you're trying to convince yourself that you are not! I'm just kidding. I don't care either which way if you are or not as long as you can argue rationally without resorting to namecalling or yelling.

Also, if you're going to support your argument, you need to do more research and make sure there isn't anything that contradicts your favored theory, or at least mention them when there are.

Notebookcheck is sort of faulty. I don't think they updated their 3dmark 06 scores (i can't verify right now as their site is down), which showed the 7700 an 850 point lead over the x1700. The newer version of 3dmark only shows a 200 point lead. And that also makes 3dmark a faulty bench mark.

No, again you fail to see the point, the memory bus width was not the point, as they both have the same width. The point was, Go 7700 have three times more texture mapping power compared to X1700. And you don't need sources for amount of TMUs because they are pinned to Pixel Shader units, so all Nvidia GPUs in 6/7/8xxx series have equal amount of Pixel Shaders and TMUs, but if you want here is one nice compilation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...Force_7_series Also ATIs website clearly states 12/5 http://ati.amd.com/products/mobility...700/specs.html Here is list of the reviews so everybody can make up their own opinion: http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2899&p=9 http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=94846 http://translate.google.com/translat...%3Den%26sa%3DG EDIT: And here is nice site for information on wide variety of GPUs and also for information which explaines all the terms and fillrate calculations etc.: http://www.gpureview.com/geforce-go-7700-card-457.html http://www.gpureview.com/Mobility-Ra...6505b877410431

I see your point but I choose to ignore it because it doesn't have the relevance you put to it...unless you're buying a chip for it's architectural complexity and density rather than how it plays your games.

Your argument is: "The Nvidia GPU has 3 times the textures units of the Ati GPU" Then where is the 3 times performance difference? By your argument, the 3x increase should yield a 3-fold increase in performance, right?

Why do some games (which are still relevant and in production ala HL2 Source) do better with Ati's architecture than Nvidia's? Why do the numbers vary so much between these sets of benchmarks?

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread188421.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=94846

And these?:

http://translate.google.com/translat...%3Den%26sa%3DG

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2899&p=9

MY argument was: I wouldn't pay the premium of over $250 (in a $1300 laptop) for an "upgraded" GPU that gives maybe a 10-20% performance increase depending on who's benchmarks you read (I personally prefer the amateur reviews, because that's how I game, I don't overclock or tweak my laptop for maximum graphics power or crap like that)

No matter how good of an overclocker it is, or has better Linux/Open GL, very little of that matters to me and a good majority of people who want to occasionally game on their laptops. If you are a programmer or a software engineer, that's just fine, I wish you luck getting all your programming work done on the road or at the park, and you have my condolences on feeling you need to shell out the extra $250+ for a slightly better GPU.

The extra $250 I save can go to an extended warranty or another GB of ram AND a replacement 100GB 7200rpm HD...or a 500GB ESATA HD and an adapter card to back up my data.

Well, enough of this cripple fight. I'm sure the users on this forum thought it was entertaining to watch 2 people with no rep points duke it out on a trivial matter.

Well, 3Dmark is an artificial benchmark. And I wouldn't say it's "faulty" either. It doesn't seem to be a very accurate measure of performance in all 3D accelerated games, just games based on madonion's 3D engine.

But it's a good gauge of just very generalized 3D performance as long as you repeat the mantra of "your mileage may vary"
For Example: If your new video card has double the 3D mark score of your last video card. Chances are, it's a superior video card to the last one and worth whatever money you paid to upgrade.

Now you are making just plain stupid assumptions here, ofcourse texture mapping is not the only thing affecting to performance but it definitely is one part of it, and I did put the gpureview links for that everyone can read and learn the basics of GPU systems. Yes, why do they? Driver issues? Bias issues? Circumstance issues? Strength issues? Game issues? And the list goes on and on... The only definite facts we have are specifications and they clearly show, atleast for me that Go 7700 is definitely in different class, than Go 7600, MR X1600 and MR X1700 and the bulk of the benchmarks confirmes that. EDIT: And one thing which points out mastha's review is So it draw different areas of the game which could affect performance, and had 1.5% smaller area for X1700.

that's why i used the qualifier "sort of"

Also bto tech at one point had the a8js @ $1450, but now i see the price is raised to $1500. So the a8js can be had for $200 more than the a8jp as opposed to $250 (it's still not worth the upgrade though for the reasons you mentioned). Sorry for the nit pick.

Ah, so now you're backpeddling on the importance of texturing units? As I seem to recall you were hammering home how important the 3x difference in texture units were, as if it was some god-given panacea to remedy 3D graphics slowness. Yet I'm also seeing graphics benchmarks where the performance difference is even less than 5%. And that's from the Anandtech review which you linked to. The average appears to be a performance increase of 10%-20%


Yeah, didn't I just mention bias, driver and game issues just 2 or 3 posts back? I guess you were too busy hammering on the texturing unit issue.



OK, yeah, definite facts...like the radeon 9500's that could be unlocked with software effectively turning it into a 9700? Or how about the recent crop of entry level cards that only have a 32-bit memory pathway, when the specs originally stated 64 or 128-bit? I wouldn't call specifications that are subject to change without notice a "definite fact".


All right, let me ask you a question, just to compare apples to apples, we'll only talk about Nvidia GPUs:
In performance, which GPU is the 7700 go closer to? the 7600go or the 7900GS go? If I remember correctly, the progression is: 7600go --> 7700go --> 7900GSgo. Before the 7700go, the line between mid-range and high-performance was delineated between the 7600go and the 7900GSgo. So, according to your reasoning, what class does the 7700go fall into? mid-range or high-performance? Or would you rather create a separate class all for itself?