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Questions about i9300

post #1 of 9
5/23/05 at 3:28am
Thread Starter 
Im new to this place, and i have a few questions concerning the right laptop for me. Im goin off to college, and graduation is in a week, my mom has said she will by me a laptop with a budge of $1500-1700 bucks. I have looked and looked for the perfect laptop for my needs, which are: definately gaming, some media editing, a little multi-tasking, and basically just an all out desktop replacement. I have found some coupons but they will expire before i can purchase (will new ones come up after the 5/25 ones expire?). I did look into the XPS Gen 2 but i cant afford it, i have been unable to find a working coupon for it. Anyway here are my specs i plan to do, can you guys place tell me how this machine will handle my needs, and i REALLY need to know how this machine will play the game World or Warcraft.

>Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
>512MB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm
>256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 6800
>60GB 7200rpm Hard Drive

I might upgrade the network card too, but i would really like to have a general idea about this laptops performance in games such as WoW. Also, with the other available upgrades i need some opinions on them. Is the display upgrade with Truelife worth it? I could speeze that in possible, i just dont know if its worth it or not. And the battery life upgrade, i will spend some time unplugged, not overly but moderate, should this be an upgrade for me? I would love to hear about how you guys i9300 handles gaming needs, thats a big concern because ive decided to get a laptop over a desktop. I just need opinions because i want the outright best machine for my budget, and i think this is the one, any help is appreciated .

p.s: Is there really a big drop off between the 6800 go and the 6800 ultra? And if so, will my i9300 be able to upgrade to the 6800 ultra after i purchase it?
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post #2 of 9
5/23/05 at 4:18am
As a 2nd year college student, here what I have to say


That system should be more than enough to handle WoW. Check out the gaming thread for more info about people running WoW on a 9300.

With my current specs (see sig), I'm able to play most games with native 1920x1200 resoution and almost everything high. As an avid gamer, I haven't come across a game the 9300 couldn't handle

As for Truelife, that's up to you. The upgrade will make the screen shiny. It'll also make everything smaller due to higher resolution. I love my Truelife, though it's definitely a personal preference.

The standard 6 cell seems to last ~1.5 hours for me while gaming. I was trying to beat through Far Cry with everything set to max, overclocked vid card, and undervolted CPU. If you think you'll need more, buying a 9 cell may be worth it.

There IS noticeable performance difference between the 9300 and the ultra version. The gap can also be seen by 3dMark05. If you're thinking about running Doom 3 with all graphics maxed out, I'm not sure the 9300go can do it with smooth framerates. However, it's more than enough most games out there (including WoW)

However, I do suggest you to buy 256MB of RAM from Dell, then upgrade it to at least 1gb through Newegg.com. It's cheaper that way, and the 1gb really affects system performance!

As of now, I don't think people are successfully putting a 6800ultra into the 9300s. I may be wrong...

As for a deal....yeah. The 9300 is worth it's price. The design is not as showy and buff as the XPS2, but it also attracts less thieves. A 9300 will eventually become outdated (they're coming out with a 19" lappy soon!) but I think it'll easily last through your college years
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post #3 of 9
5/23/05 at 8:00am
thanks norad, you sold me!
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post #4 of 9
5/23/05 at 9:50am
And I'd say with a minor GPU OC you can run Doom III at full. I run it at 1920x1200 with 2xAA/8xAF 'Ultra Quality' and get decent framerates 45-60fps.
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post #5 of 9
5/23/05 at 10:37am
Thread Starter 
Thank you for the replies, im pretty dead set on this laptop. It is a good machine and it fits almost perfectly into my needs. One thing i forgot to ask was could waiting it out over the summer pay off? I know people suggest waiting to get a desktop right now because of the release of the dual core cpu's, so is there any reason for me to wait and get the absoulute best deal i can? I want more than anything a 6800 ultra in my machine, but on my budget right now thats not possible, could they make it an option on the i9300 anytime soon (next couple of months)? I know chasing technology is like chasing a ghost, but people seem to think highly of this gpu, not to say the one it comes with is bad, its just ive had to live with medicore performance in my games for years, i want somethin that will play my games skip free. Im gettin tired of worrying about somethin newer comin out when i buy my machine, i might just bite the bullet and buy it next week, but i need more opinions from anyone who might have an idea of if/when better components will come out for this laptop, and if its not too long i might wait it out. Anyway again thank you all for the replies, that made my decision a whole lot easier.
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post #6 of 9
5/23/05 at 1:31pm
My opinion on the vanilla vs. ultra 6800. While the difference may seem significant today, that gap will be much less noticeable over the next few years while you are in college. By that time you'll see the next 1 or 2 generations of what ATI and NVidia have to offer, so your laptop (or any existing machine) will chug along and find it that much harder to play top of the line games a few years from now.

Please note, this is natural and unavoidable. I guess my point is, I don't consider it worth it to spend several hundred bucks more just to be on the bleeding edge today rather than 1 notch below. The 20% performance difference today will be much less apparent when the next gen cards run laps around today's cards...
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post #7 of 9
5/23/05 at 4:10pm
I think you are making the right choice, seeing as the XPS2 is just not possible with your budget, whereas you can easily configure a very nice I9300 for that price. Getting 1GB of Ram is a very good idea, and will really help you out in WoW. I am personally very happy with my XGA screen, as the 1440x900 resolution is just fine for me in gaming. WoW runs perfectly for me in native resolution and everything to high with some AA and AF (have yet to try any higher), HL2 with everything high, 4x AA and 8x AF.

I agree with Vally btw. The problems you will get in the future are caused by your GPU having a slower and less powerful architecture, not supporting certain features and performing others at less than desirable efficiency. In those cases the Ultra wills till be the more powerful card, but the difference in speed should not be that noticeable. Which is why I always tend to go for the good value performance cards, rather than the bleeding edge one's. The 6800 Go is fast enough for all your gaming needs right now anyways.
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post #8 of 9
5/24/05 at 2:29pm
Thread Starter 
Well its a done deal now, i placed my order and the ETA is 6/14. I cant wait, im sure glad i decided to get a notebook, thank you for your suggestions and help, hopefully everything pans out smoothly.
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post #9 of 9
5/24/05 at 4:16pm
hafa i'm int he same boat as you I have reserached notebooks for about 2 weeks, to find one right for me, one which is able to play games and yet be used as a study tool as well. I locked myself on the i9300 as my best option and placed my order today, i also placed an order for a gig of Kingston DDR2 memory as well.
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