Which Laptop is the flat-Out BEST for gaming? - Page 3

No, I only find Dell i9100 to be a poor excuse of a laptop. The only good thing with it is the Mobility Radeon 9800, but even that can't compete with the latest and greatest desktop graphics cards.

other then the dell XPS/9100, isn't the sager 5690 the next best (benchmarks wise), I hear 4000+'s in the 5690.... (on 3dmark03, but benchmarks aren't everything). Also it's a 4x3 ratio

However, the battery life isn't good either (maybe with the dual battery setup?)

It competes better than the Ferrari. Don't forget the title of this topic, the flat-out best laptop for gaming. Right now, that's the i9100/XPS and not even AMD's 64-bit brainwashing can reasonably argue with that.

this thread is for a laptop right... so no shuttle pc. as for the MR9800... as noted earlier it does about half of what the top desktop graphic cards can do which is pretty awesome for something you can take wherever you go... and dont forget it pretty much does double that of most mr9700 system, period. if you want top of the line graphic card desktop power, you have to buy a desktop... in laptop land the Dell iXPS/i9100 are king until the new sager comes out then that should be king, but the dells should be right behind instead of performing half as good.

AMDs are nice, don't get me wrong if alienware offered the 3400 with a mr9800 then i would have went there if the price wasn't too high. i mean i ended up paying around 1600 for my i9100 so for the price it was a sweet deal.

Getting back to the Dell Outlet, a couple of weeks ago there was an XPS with the 9800 for $1580 after discounts and coupons, so there are great deals out there.

The problem of course is that you then have to deal with the morons at Dell customer care, but that's the price you pay.

Steve

Sometimes the joke has to be pointed out to me

I'm sure the original poster knows now that the choice is between something heavy with more power and something light with not as much power. Most of us like to trade performance for lack of weight, as long as gaming is still possible.

I just bought a 9100 3.2GHZ 1MB DDR 80G HDD WUXGA screen and the MR9800 which ROX. Had it since last Friday and last night I was up until 6am gaming and got to work at 9am. Just ordered Dawn of War for the weekend. 9100 is a beast and well worth the money. I paid £1455 so I havent a clue what that is in dollars but tis quite interesting all the fuss about this laptop there is on forums so I even registered now to say that the only damn reason I bought it was for gaming and to be portable and with the wireless, its always fun poking around other people's networks cos people are so lame they still use default passwords and dont secure the network. Not nice when you get banned from using google or hotmail. lol. Cant do that with a desktop can you now!!!

Flat out best gaming laptop doesn't neccessarily mean the best video card. You have to look at the bigger picture and weight out everything.

Dell XPS is a great PC. It has a awesome video card and awesome pentium power. But you can't hide the fact it is also over 10lbs in weight. If you consider lugging around something over 10lbs a portable laptop, cool. More weight, err power to you

When looking at the best you have to look at processing power first. No matter how powerful your video card is, if the processing power is not there to handle it, it is useless. Then you you look at everything else, such as video card and RAM.

Since the keyword in here is laptop, i would consider anything under 7.5lbs a laptop. Anything more than it, I would consider a mini-pc

Keep in mine, bigger, heavier, larger = more heat, more weight, more ackward to move around with, more power consumption

You have to admin the Acer Ferrari 3400 is the best in the class.

1) It has a great weight to consider it being a "LAPTOP"
2) It has low power consumption, thus mean less heat
3) It has a decide ATI 9700 128MB card, in which case could knock on Doom 3 and UT2004 without any problem
4) It is using AMD64, meaning it is upgradable in OS to meet future demand
5) It is around 2k in price

Don't forget time and time again, in gaming AMD64 kick ass! over Pentium Processors

Weight out all the factors, the Acer 3400 is the best in the class in terms of power vs price vs weight ratio.

Yes the Dell XPS got better processor and it got better video card, but I wouldn't consider it a laptop period.

The XPS/9100 is by far the fastest. I see people saying wait for the 6800go. They dont even know what the specs are for this card. It could end up like the geforce4 go which was a piece of crapola. The 6800 go will be better than the 9800 if it has the rumored 12-16 pixel pipelines. If it doesnt, there wont be much difference between the 9800M and the 6800go

There are already some benchmarks out for it. It performs slightly better than an overclocked 9800.

can you post some links to the benches?

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...400#post514400

They are somewhere in that thread...

its 50 pages long

we talking gaming laptop. Games stress the GPU more than the cpu. Thus, if you have two laptops, one has the 2.8 ghz p4 and a radeon 9700 and the other has a 3.4 ghz p4 and a radeon 9600, the former will outperform the later in most (if not all) games.

first, nark is totally right with his comment on CPU power... they aren't the limiting factor when it comes to laptop gaming... mostly since we are talking about systems with desktop processors.

as for the weight factor, these kind of systems aren't meant, nor are they advertised as thin and lights. they are desktop replacement. people who these systems are targeted are people who want a portable desktop. yes its bigger, heavier, and larger, but it also has high end processors, widescreen lcds, larger cooling fans (to keep those prescotts cooler than those thin laptops with pentium 4s), and good laptop speakers.

oh and nark... flat out best gaming does mean the best video card in laptop land. i even spoke with ati and talked to them about the mr9800 and they have said that a cpu around the 3ghz range should be enough to get the most out of the gfx card. now if we talk overclocking, then maybe a faster processor is needed, but there isn't that big difference between 3 and 3.4

the acer F3400 is a great looking laptop and has a very nice CPU, but against the i9100/iXPS there is no match yet since the mr9800 doubles the performance of really any mr9700 based lappy no matter the cpu.

the more valid argument is with the future laptops with the still unknown specs of a 6800go. i've seen those benchmarks and they look to be good, but i'll hold off judgement until they are actually released. if they aren't released for a few months, then they are just the natural progression of tech and i'm sure ati will have something good in store also.

The Athlon 64 is clock for clock almost exactly the same speed as the Pentium M:

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sho...px?i=2129&p=10

That's a DESKTOP Athlon 64 that the Pentium M is holding it's own to. I'd imagine the Pentium M would do pretty damned well against the Athlon 64 Mobile.

I'm not saying you should choose one over the other, only that just because you're an Athlon64 fanboi doesn't mean it's the best.

Obviously because a laptop uses an Athlon64 or Pentium M, doesn't really matter due to their nearly identical performance. Since they're nearly equal you must make other considerations when judging if a laptop is better than another.

dont know if its because its 2:30 in the morning and I am tired as hell, but I dont see what your getting at with this statement. By best gaming, we are talking about being able to play games at the highest settings/res and at the highest fps right? So a faster and more powerful video card will be better for gaming than a slower card right? Well of course, the other components need to match performance-wise with the video card. ITs not smart having a 1 ghz p3 and a mr9800, because the system will be limited by the processor and vice versa. However, the difference in performance in gaming between a 3.0 and 3.4 p4 and a mr9800 is very small.

edit: by vice versa i mean pairing a 3.4 ghz p4 and a tnt2.

Athlon 64 is slightly faster, but Sempron/Athlon XP is clock for clock exactly the same.

In fact, AMD's mobile parts perform EXACTLY the same as their desktop parts with the same xxxx+ rating. This is contrary to Intel's mobile offerings, that usually perform worse then their desktop counterpart.

Athlon 64 performs best, no question about it. But you're right that there are other considerations to take into account when judging the performance of laptops. Faster memory access, better chipset, faster bus and AGP8X support are all advantages Athlon 64 laptops have over Pentium M laptops. Add in NX-bit and 64-bit support and you have a clear winner

For laptops, the fastest is Athlon 64 3400+,, and with pretty decent battery life. Dothan is a pretty good laternative too.

yeah it was too damn early in the morning when i was writing that...lol... that comment should've been pointed at the guy you were quoting in your post... sry bout that...my bad.