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Decent Gaming Laptop

post #1 of 41
7/27/07 at 12:11am
Thread Starter 
Ok first things first... Why am I posting in the Linux forums? Because I want it to have good linux support obviously.

I am accepting an offer to work on a game, and as such I need a decent laptop that can be used for gaming, but I am hoping to not spend to much, look for around $1000-$1500. I just don't have enough money for a MBP this time around unfortunately. Any suggestions from those here? Since this things primary purpose will be to game, or develop for games, it actually needs to be strong in the video area etc obviously.

Seablade
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post #2 of 41
7/27/07 at 12:44am
so here is my rundown on hardware to look for:

CPU/Chipset : Intel C2D and Intel chips
GPU: Nvidia x7600 or better (no ATI for any reason)
Wifi: Intel or Atheros (so you dont have to mess w/ ndiswrapper)
OS: preferably NO-OS, why pay for windows if you won't use it.
RAM : 2GB whatever....
HDD: something at least at 80gb/5400rpm or bigger/faster

and of course Sony is absolutely out of the picture.

now lets see what comes up.....

on geared2play you can get a Asus S96s for $1133 nicely equipped w/ 2.0ghz C2D, intel 4965 wifi, 120gb 5400rpm hdd, nvidia 8600gs 256mb.... according to this thread everything but wifi is well supported by ubuntu.
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post #3 of 41
7/27/07 at 2:09am
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by strong in videocard area. If you could give me a card you want your performance to be comparable to I can give some info. Also maybe post size, used or new, etc
I have been having problems with my 7950 GTX so far but I only reformatted about a week ago. I'm gonna start again fresh this weekend which I doubt will help much as I think I will just have to modify everything myself. I'm unsure if the problems I have apply to any other 7 series cards.
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post #4 of 41
7/27/07 at 4:26am
Thread Starter 
Performance will probably need to be comparable or better than the upper ranges of the 7000 Series. 7600 GT or therabouts is probably as poor as it can get.

Seablade
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post #5 of 41
7/27/07 at 2:23pm
Thread Starter 
HMm anyone have a comment on the Acer Ferrari 1000? While I don't much care for the branding(Ferrari), the specs aren't bad. The only thing I am unsure on is the ATi Radeon XPress 1150. How will that actually stand up in terms of performance? It appears to be supported in Linux thankfully.

The rest of the specs on it are decent and for a short time I can pick one up for about 1200(Until they run out). The 6Pin FW400 port is very tempting for me, along with a few other things(Size etc)

Seablade
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post #6 of 41
7/27/07 at 2:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
HMm anyone have a comment on the Acer Ferrari 1000? While I don't much care for the branding(Ferrari), the specs aren't bad. The only thing I am unsure on is the ATi Radeon XPress 1150. How will that actually stand up in terms of performance? It appears to be supported in Linux thankfully. The rest of the specs on it are decent and for a short time I can pick one up for about 1200(Until they run out). The 6Pin FW400 port is very tempting for me, along with a few other things(Size etc) Seablade
The XPress 1150 is an integrated video processor using shared RAM. It's just a tiny bit better than Intel's integrated video, and absolutely nowhere near as good as any performance graphic card released in the last 3 years. If a performance graphics card in Nvidia's 7000 series is your minimum, then you need to look at notebooks with one of the following: from Nvidia: 7600 7600 GT 7700 7800 (any version) 7900 (any version) 7950 (any version) 8600M GS 8600M GT 8700M GT Quadro FX 1500M Quadro FX 2500M Quadro FX 3500M from ATI: x1600 x1700 x1800 (any version) x1900 (any version) HD 2600 HD 2600 XT FireGL 5200 FireGL 5250
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post #7 of 41
7/27/07 at 2:50pm
Thread Starter 
Unfortunatly the new ATis are out until AMD gets off their Keister and releases support for the R600 series in Linux.

Ok still looking around and came across a Dell surprisingly...

XPS M1210
NVidia Geforce Go 7400 (Opinions on gaming performance? I pulled 7600 out of my arse based off what I am looking at for desktops)
Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz
1 Gig of Ram

Obviously I am just trying to get my options together, I haven't counted out the ones ABF listed above either. Also obviously gaming has never been a priority on a laptop for me before

Seablade
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post #8 of 41
7/27/07 at 2:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
Unfortunatly the new ATis are out until AMD gets off their Keister and releases support for the R600 series in Linux.

Ok still looking around and came across a Dell surprisingly...

XPS M1210
NVidia Geforce Go 7400 (Opinions on gaming performance? I pulled 7600 out of my arse based off what I am looking at for desktops)
Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz
1 Gig of Ram

Obviously I am just trying to get my options together, I haven't counted out the ones ABF listed above either. Also obviously gaming has never been a priority on a laptop for me before

Seablade

the 7400 is a decent midrange card, but if you're planning to play any of the latest games, you'll need to use low-medium settings and resolution for them to be playable. To give you some perspective, the 7400 is just slightly less powerful than the performance-class Nvidia 6600 in my Asus Z71v that I bought two and a half years ago. A 7600 is a much better gaming card.
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post #9 of 41
7/27/07 at 2:57pm
7400 is weaker end card, will play some games ok, but not great. really do stick to the 7600 or better rule. also don't even look at ati at all. i say this as a linux user w/ an ati card in my laptop and its a bloody nightmare. the xorg radeon drives work ok most of the time, but not quite as well as fglrx for gaming performance, however fglrx is extremely buggy and are just horrible horrible drivers.
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post #10 of 41
7/27/07 at 3:01pm
here's a really good guide to explaining the different types of graphics cards and what they're best for:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=39568
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post #11 of 41
7/27/07 at 3:34pm
Thread Starter 
Yea for newegg by the way, good selection of ASUS laptops that are possibilities...

General Question... Between a GeForce 7600 and 8400, which would yall go for?

There are a couple of ASUS with Geforce 7600 and AMD Turion x2, which I would like to support AMD in the interest of keeping competition out there. THere are also some Core 2 Duos in the same price range with 8400s

Of course there are also a bit more expensive(On the high end of that 1500 I quoted) some with 8600's and 7700s. (Un)fortunatly those are all Intels so no helping competition there...

There is also one that I saw with an ATi x1700 which if memory serves is now supported in Linux with the fglrx drivers. Where does that compare in terms of NVidia cards that I am more familiar with?

Seablade
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post #12 of 41
7/27/07 at 3:35pm
Thread Starter 
I really should refresh my page before I post

Seablade
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post #13 of 41
7/27/07 at 3:37pm
Thread Starter 
Good link Djembe, thanks... going through it now.

Seablade
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post #14 of 41
7/27/07 at 3:56pm
Thread Starter 
Ok going through Newegg it looks like I came upw ith another two choices to research and see how well supported they are...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220156
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220163

I didn't find much in Acer stuff. The ferrari is nice, but since I am getting this primarily for gaming the video card unfortunatly kills it. The question is, is the price difference between these two worth the performance boost? Even with it though I may still financially be forced to go with the cheaper anyways

Thanks to everyone for the help thus far by the way.

Seablade
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post #15 of 41
7/27/07 at 6:32pm
I'd agree with the others. Make sure the sub-series (second number in the card name) is "6" or better. You could get by with a sub-series 4 card but I wouldnt advise it. Also, to add to djembe's list, I'd put the 6800 and 6800 ultra on there. You may think they're pushing up daisies but in actuality, they still outperform many of the newer cards (especially so for the ultra). Also, I had an excellent experience with my 6800 go ultra in linux.

Edit:
Oh, and from the two laptops posted, I'd go with the second just because I've never used an AMD and the card will be better. The screen is small enough so that you wouldnt experience scaling issues with the 128-bit bus of the 8600 as well.

I think you can find better prices for similar hardware however.
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post #16 of 41
7/27/07 at 6:43pm
Thread Starter 
Yea... at the moment I am trying to find the going rate for used powerbooks, I am wondering if I can get enough for me selling mine to make up the price difference to pick up a MBP.

Seablade
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post #17 of 41
7/27/07 at 7:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by zzpulp View Post
I'd agree with the others. Make sure the sub-series (second number in the card name) is "6" or better. You could get by with a sub-series 4 card but I wouldnt advise it. Also, to add to djembe's list, I'd put the 6800 and 6800 ultra on there. You may think they're pushing up daisies but in actuality, they still outperform many of the newer cards (especially so for the ultra). Also, I had an excellent experience with my 6800 go ultra in linux.

Edit:
Oh, and from the two laptops posted, I'd go with the second just because I've never used an AMD and the card will be better. The screen is small enough so that you wouldnt experience scaling issues with the 128-bit bus of the 8600 as well.

I think you can find better prices for similar hardware however.

I'd also go with the second. For some reason, Asus' AMD-powered notebooks seem to have more problems than their Intel-powered ones.
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post #18 of 41
7/27/07 at 7:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
Yea... at the moment I am trying to find the going rate for used powerbooks, I am wondering if I can get enough for me selling mine to make up the price difference to pick up a MBP.

Seablade

check out the For Sale/Wanted section. That should give you a good idea
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post #19 of 41
7/28/07 at 8:47pm
Thread Starter 
Well I am looking at Mac of all Trades and seeing how much they will offer for it, their base is currently $550 for it apparently, and I have an extra gig of ram over the standard in mine, so if they offer enough I may sell this one, go without a laptop for a couple of days while I get the money from it, and charge a MBP, solve the entire issue as it is an NVidia video card, an 8000 series which I really wanted to see what the stream processors are capable of anyways, and an 8600GT to top it all of.

Plus it should be pretty well supported in Linux, based off what I have seen, though I may be using the alpha Broadcom driver, so I can put Linux on there for day to day use, but still do my sound design prep work in Mac OS when I need, and develop in Windows for the game(Yea I know, it sucks, but not my choice at the moment, sorry folks

The only real question then is where to come up with money for the stinkin POS MSOS. But at least itll be a good laptop I won't be replacing anytime soon. The ASUS models I was looking at at newegg just worry me for overall build quality. I know several ASUS models are very good, but those have a look about them of cheap plastic.

Seablade
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post #20 of 41
7/28/07 at 9:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
Well I am looking at Mac of all Trades and seeing how much they will offer for it, their base is currently $550 for it apparently, and I have an extra gig of ram over the standard in mine, so if they offer enough I may sell this one, go without a laptop for a couple of days while I get the money from it, and charge a MBP, solve the entire issue as it is an NVidia video card, an 8000 series which I really wanted to see what the stream processors are capable of anyways, and an 8600GT to top it all of.

Plus it should be pretty well supported in Linux, based off what I have seen, though I may be using the alpha Broadcom driver, so I can put Linux on there for day to day use, but still do my sound design prep work in Mac OS when I need, and develop in Windows for the game(Yea I know, it sucks, but not my choice at the moment, sorry folks

The only real question then is where to come up with money for the stinkin POS MSOS. But at least itll be a good laptop I won't be replacing anytime soon. The ASUS models I was looking at at newegg just worry me for overall build quality. I know several ASUS models are very good, but those have a look about them of cheap plastic.

Seablade

you got it- Asus A series and F series notebooks are their "consumer" line, which means fair to average build quality. They'd probably be comparable to an average Dell or HP consumer-line model.
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