thinking of picking the hp zd7000 over the sager 8970... - Page 2

Ofcourse, but even my 9800XT, or my ELSA, or any of my others currently sitting in the pc pile really would ever utilze 8 pipelines yet. 4x is not a bottleneck Im worried about.

The thing is that there are not many games out right now that can max out the pipeline in terms of quantity of memory. Thats why you often see 128 meg cards benching with pretty much the same frame rate as a 256 meg card with the same speed memory. Where the 256 meg cards normally gain their advantage is that they often came with not just more memory but faster memory. This situation will be changing shortly. The new engines from id and valve can both flood a 128 meg card. I would recommend the extra headroom.

If you like the Brightview screen, go with the HP. I did a side-by-side comparison of the 8790 (which my brother just returned) and the zd7000, it is not even close. The 17" wsxga+ Brightview is pure eye candy. Other positives of the HP: 2 hr 20 min battery life, MUCH quieter than the 8790, better speakers, and it runs cooler.

If you want RAID, ATI, and don't care about the screen and the things I mentioned above, go with the Sager.

About Costco not giving support, they have a 6 month no questions asked return policy.

IMHO, 256mb in Radeon M11 is an overkill. I had both systems 8790 and HP ZD7000 with 128mb vram. I did not notice any increase in performance. Worse, while playing Call of Duty, I get slowdowns from 8790 while ZD7000 run the game with no hickups. You might be talking about desktop PCs, which I agree that 256mb vram is better than 128.

I think that you are ignoring the difference between the GPUs. It's not a GPU memory issue, but rather, a GPU performance issue here between the configurations and a lot of other "slowness" issues. These are relative even if you do build desk tops on a daily basis. Slow is slow. Hard Fact.

As one who has a ZD7000 w/WSXGA+ ordered, I'm keeping an open mind about things. Yes, the 8790 has a better video card, although I suspect that the M11 will be fairly outdated by the time any games or apps can take full advantage of its 256 MB VRAM. The 8790 is a little faster in the CPU department, as well. The top processors for the ZD are 3.2 GHz and 3.2 GHz EE. You can get a 3.4 GHz or 3.4 GHz EE for the 8790. The 8790's RAM is DDR 400 PC 3200, whereas, for some unknown reason, the ZD ships with DDR 333 PC 2700. If you want a TV tuner/video recorder, I think the ZD's MS Windows XP Media Center 2004 has the edge over the 8790's tuner package. You can get a 4X DVD+R/RW with the ZD while the 8790's DVD writer tops out at 2X (it offers both +/- formats, though). And, of course, the ZD offers the new WSXGA+ 17" screen...that option means A LOT to many, and it pushed the ZD to the forefront for me. I bought it with the attitude that I'm gonna play with it for a month while I await my REAL preference...a WUXGA+AMD Athlon 64+ATI 9700/Nvidia 5700 version of the 8790. I'll definitely post a comprehensive review of my ZD before returning it...assuming it doesn't rock my world to the point where I find myself asking "what OTHER notebook?"

I've looked at that hp you are talking about and to me, it doesnt compare to the 8790. I have a few friends that has the zd7000 and they are not at all satisfied with it. One friend of mine has only had his a week, and he already is having to send it off to the factory to repair the power plug, wich broke off from the mother board. I also have other friends that have hp products and they constantlly have problems out of it. I dont know, maybe we just got a bad shipment of them down here.

Wouldn't the higher res on an already inferior vid card cause even more degradation in performance? The card has to deal with another million pixels.

Yes, and numerous 8790 batteries are crapping out while playing games. It's the chance you take.

Maybe while playing games at native resolution. In all other instances, no. I don't play games at 1680x1050 so it is not an issue. You guys assume everyone is buying just to play games.

Asmodeus- You are asking in a Sager forum. Most people are going to say go with the Sager. If you go post at the zd7000forums, everyone is going to say go with the HP.

yeah... higher res does not equal better quality gaming.

flashram,

When not playing at native, doesn't the gaming area get tiny? I just dumped a Dell D800 because when I played out of native res the screens were impossible to see.

Both my notebooks work fine (full screen) at non-native resolutions. Not sure what you were doing.

Here are some screenshots at non-native resolution on the zd7000. Native is 1680x1050. Looks good to me:

City of Heroes 1400x900

Planetside 1152x864

UT2004 1024x768

Are you sure about this? Because I know they do it for all the other stuff they sell. I just didn't think they do it for computers/notebooks because these things get outdated FAST.

Yes I am 100% sure.

From Costco's return policy page:

"Effective November 4th, 2002 Costco Wholesale’s desktop and notebook computer return policy is six-months from the date of purchase. After six-months from the date of purchase, all services and technical support will be subject to the applicable remaining manufacturers' warranty."

Very odd....Your sig indicates a 3.06 processor and 60GB 7200RPM HDD - both not offered by HP. Do you have the WSXGA+ Brightview?

Try running "maxed out" on that machine and see if your battery fries. If not, then you are like many other happy Sager customers. Just because two or three people on these forums complain about a bad battery does not in and of itself mean that all 8790 batteries are bad... SIC>......

Went to COSTCO... They have a 3.06 refurb that has a 60GB 4200RPM drive and a 15.4 WVA WXGA screen.

Are you for real???

Yes, and just because one person has a power connector break somehow does not mean all zd7000's are faulty. See how we can go back and forth?

I upgraded the hard drive myself. And HP most certainly does offer a 3.06, go look again. I just did and it is still there. What I have in my sig is what I have. So yes, I have the wsxga+ BrightView.

Who are you talking to? And what are you talking about?

Go to www.hpshopping.com and configure one or www.costco.com.

I edited my original response.

You bought this at CostCo? On the Web? @ Costco.com? Didn't see it and I did not see it on the HP site. Please URLS for both of these.

Thanks