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Need advice on buying gaming notebook...

post #1 of 10
11/4/08 at 1:57pm
Thread Starter 
I am wondering what is currently the best deal for a gaming notebook in the range of 2000-2500 bucks? At this price, I would expect to run crysis on high settings and have it still be able to run games in the next couple of years....

any suggestions would be highly appreciated...Other than Alienware. After owning one for the past 3 yrs, I'd never buy another one.

thanks in advance...
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post #2 of 10
11/5/08 at 3:02pm
You really need to post more information....desired screen size, resolution, hard drive, blu ray, weight, battery life, etc.

There are a lot of options in that price range but the graphics card is going to be your bottom line if you want to run Crysis at high settings. A single 9800M GTX should work well for you and you should be able to find several machines with this graphics card as an option in that price range.

A 9800M GTS will work well also if you want to go cheaper but it will be more limited in games and Crysis will need to be toned down a little bit. One thing to consider is avoiding the higher resolution screen and getting a lower resolution screen such as WSXGA (1680x1050) to allow games to run in native at a lower resolution.

SLI will be out of your budget and although there are some options for inexpensive Crossfire 3870 cards a single card is usually better and there are some issues with drivers for Crossfire in notebooks at this point which will limit your game performance.

Check out the Sager NP5796 for starters.
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post #3 of 10
11/10/08 at 12:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by cdnalien View Post
I am wondering what is currently the best deal for a gaming notebook in the range of 2000-2500 bucks? At this price, I would expect to run crysis on high settings and have it still be able to run games in the next couple of years....

any suggestions would be highly appreciated...Other than Alienware. After owning one for the past 3 yrs, I'd never buy another one.

thanks in advance...
no laptop can run crysis at high settings, its asking too much, speicaly one that would go for 2500 bucks......

next couple of years? prolly not.....but best bang for your buck would be the AW MX15 or MX17 if you can afford to spec them out properly

also, More's law will hit you like a ton of bricks, Nehlam sp* will WTFPWN anything we have right now for laptops......and yeah, more's law aside it will be here in less than a year


so, in closing, what you're asking for does not exsist
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post #4 of 10
11/10/08 at 3:16pm
dell m1730 with sli 8700 in the outlet
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post #5 of 10
11/10/08 at 8:28pm
I paid $2300 for my notebook three months ago and I run Crysis at 1920x1200 at mostly high settings. I turn shaders, water, and shadow to medium and AA off. If I had a WSXGA screen instead of a WUXGA screen it would run fine at high settings. A WSXGA screen and a single 9800M GTX can be had for under $2500 and will run Crysis at high settings.

There is no data out yet as to how the Alienware M17 with the 3870 X2 will perform but early indications are that with good driver optimization and a fast CPU it will perform close to a single 9800M GTX.

Waiting will always bring higher performance at a lower cost but there will also be more demanding games out to challenge those future systems. I think the idea of Crysis performance isn't so much about actually playing Crysis on your laptop but using it as the standard to measure the relative performance in all other games. There is no date for the release of Nehalem for notebooks. Due to the larger die size and greater heat generated it may be a while and in any case they aren't likely to offer significant gains for gaming right away.
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post #6 of 10
11/10/08 at 8:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woody87 View Post
I paid $2300 for my notebook three months ago and I run Crysis at 1920x1200 at mostly high settings. I turn shaders, water, and shadow to medium and AA off. If I had a WSXGA screen instead of a WUXGA screen it would run fine at high settings. A WSXGA screen and a single 9800M GTX can be had for under $2500 and will run Crysis at high settings.

.
I highly doubt anyone here would be ok with 13-18 fps at high settings at 1900x1200.......
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post #7 of 10
11/10/08 at 9:10pm
???

I consider 40-50fps average to be a minimum for smooth gameplay. Others will have different tastes.
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post #8 of 10
11/10/08 at 9:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woody87 View Post
???

I consider 40-50fps average to be a minimum for smooth gameplay. Others will have different tastes.
I Benchmarked this game at 3 different resolutions and also with two settings. One setting was all high and the other was using the latest CCC mod.

High 0xAA

1600x1200: AVG FPS 20.32
1280x1024: AVG FPS 27.19
1024x768: AVG FPS 35.20

Custom CCC Mod

1600x1200: AVG FPS 12.52
1280x1024: AVG FPS 15.52
1024x768: AVG FPS 20.68


Screen: 17” WUXGA (1920x1200) Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 (2.53 Ghz/6MB L2 Cache/1066MHz FSB/45nm/25W)
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800M GT 512MB
Ram: 4GB DDR3-1066MHz
Hard Drive: 320GB 7200RM 16MB cache Seagate Momentus 7200.3 SATA II
Optical Drive: 8X DL DVD Burner
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Wireless: Intel Wireless Wi-Fi ink 5300 802.11a/g/n
Battery: 8 Cells Li-ion
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post #9 of 10
11/10/08 at 10:51pm
I don't know what benchmark you're running. I've never installed the CCC mod. I ran the three benchmarks in the install folder for you at 1920x1080, NVidia 180.43, DX9, AA off, shaders, shadows, water to med, all other settings high.
CPU: average 30fps
CPU2: average 16fps
GPU: average 32fps

Although I've installed my copy of Crysis, I've never played it on my Sager. I actually run Crysis Wars on my Sager which runs a little smoother than Crysis and multi player doesn't have the destructible environment like the single player. I also use 1920x1080 rather than 1920x1200 because the game scales well to a higher aspect giving you an enhanced field of view. My frame rates at the settings I described are around 30-55 on fraps in a multi player environment and playable without a really noticeable loss of visual quality. Shaders to medium has the most significant impact on visuals when dealing with lighting effects but it's a huge increase in performance and not really noticeable unless you compare screens side by side.

Also keep in mind that I'm running a 3.16GHz Wolfdale with a 1333 FSB.
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post #10 of 10
11/11/08 at 1:31am
The top-line Alienware laptop with SLI can run Crysis on maximun setting but only amazing low 40-45 FPS. And the top-line isn't cheap, you're talking about 5+ grands here.

EDIT: Sorry but Alienware is the only one that producing the top performance laptop in the world.
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