Kostya

Ok, so here's the thing.

I want to get a laptop. Now ostensibly this machine is for University work, thesis writing, internet research and so on.

But let's cut to the brass tacks people, I want to be able to play some cool games on this baby too.

Now, I've spent a few solid hours researching into laptop tech, and Sony vs Dell vs HP vs Toshiba, and I've deduced the following:

1. I am a hopeless mutant with little or no technological knowledge.
2. Laptops are scary and complex.
3. People give a lot of contradictory information.
4. The TFP is pretty damn reliable.

So basically I'm asking, do any of you guys game on laptops. I mean, I dig that they're never going to compete with the latest desktop models, but are there machines out there capable of running badass games like HL2 or Doom3?

Any other reccomendations on what to look out for. Battery life in powerful notebooks seems to be pretty damn short, any ways to get around this?

insidious_machinae

Suggestion: Pentium M 1.5ghz (or higher) with a gig of ram and do your best to find one with a harddrive faster than 4200rpm (the most common speed). 7200 rpm harddrives will run WAY hotter and you risk frying something, but the speed exchange is brilliantly distinct. Also, the tech that makes the pentium M save battery life won't work if you've got lots of programs running, or are playing a game.


Edit: I recommend a customized IBM Thinkpad. It's gonna cost a lot of money.

Second edit:
I figure you'd probably want to know what I use. I have an Acer Aspire 1660: http://global.acer.com/products/note..._notebooks.htm
Don't go with Acer. I had to ship my first laptop back because it broke in a day. The second one worked great for about a month before the keyboard went out. I had to ship it to them and they took almost 3 weeks to fix it and ship it back.

ssnake

one of my friends has a alienware laptop and it seems to play games and do other things (in your case, college work) pretty well.....
from what i remember they have a gaming laptop on their website
check it out http://alienware.com/

Spritebox

I can play World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 on my new powerbook g4.


That's all ya need!

__________________
it's all nice on ice alright
and it's not day
and it's not night
but it's all nice on ice alright

MiSo

i prefer laptops with powerful processors, but
whatever laptop you get, make sure it has lots of ram.

also dont buy a laptop with an integrated graphics card.

cyrnel

Alienware laptops are great as desktop replacements. Fast, leading edge video, etc. Battery life and temperature are not their strong points. They're manufactured by Clevo. You can buy the same systems through Clevo's other resellers (i.e. Sager) for quite a bit less. The <a href="http://www.discountlaptops.com/index.php?section=specs&model_id=1047&category_id=2&category_theme=c1">Sager 9860</a>/Alienware 7700 rock if you have $2.5-3K to spend. You won't find anything with comparable performance from Sony/Dell/et al.

I have my eye on a notch or two down to replace my old junk. One of their <a href="http://www.discountlaptops.com/index.php?section=specs&model_id=989&category_id=2&category_theme=c1">AMD 64 system</a> for $1.5-2K. Shop around.

Frosstbyte

If you're going to drop big cash, go with Falcon Northwest instead of Alienware. Falcon has better long-term service and uses brand name parts. Alienware tends to make deals and cut corners. www.falcon-nw.com

cyrnel

Falcon NW Fragbooks are Clevo's, just like the Alienware 7700 & Sager 9860.

<img src="http://www.falcon-nw.com/gallery/fragbook/FBook_red.jpg"> Falcon NW Fragbook 6800 (top of the line)

<img src="http://www.alienware.com/Images/product_detail_page_images/area-51m_7700/7700_enlarge_front.jpg"> Alienware 51m 7700

<img src="http://www.discountlaptops.com/media/sagernp9860/Sager_9860_big.jpg"> Sager NP9860

Same parts, almost identical options from each, different prices. Falcon NW is well known for service, but you could buy a spare laptop for the Sager's price difference.

Edit: Better Sager & Alienware pictures.

trache

Be careful with Alienware.

If you send your laptop back to get repaired, be prepared to wait a very long time. It might even come back with the wrong parts replaced. Overall the technical support is sub-par.

Compaq has good machines and the support is great. I used to support them at work and always got an answer, driver updates, and the replacements came within a week (I'm talking business so the personal side might be different). Actually if you can manage it, get a business-line laptop. Trust me on this one - the parts and service are NO match for their personal line.

Remember, whatever you do:
It does not hurt you to keep calling them. Keep writing down the names of the people you talk to, time and a brief description of the conversation. When in doubt, ask for a supervisor.

__________________
"You looked at me as if I was eating runny eggs in slow motion." - Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip

Kostya

With Alienware, I'm in Australia, so I don't know if we even have it over here, and my guess is that the support would be even sketchier. I'm presuming all your prices are in $US dollars, the Aussie is trading at about 78 US cents right now, so I'm hoping that's a pretty good guide.
Anyhow:
Some of the beasty looking machines are giving me headaches, they seem good, but I'm not sure exactly what's more important, processor or RAM?

Then I find stuff like this on Cnet:
So it seems like a beastly processor means crap games and video-wise unless it has decent cache storage?

Some have upwards of 3Gig processors, but only say 512RAM with both DiMM slots used.
Also, any processor above 2Gig effectively seems to render the battery useless.
Hyperthread processors have a maximum battery life of 2 and half hours if you're lucky.

So totally avoid any shared RAM video setups, dedicated RAM only. What's the optimum here? 64 megs dedicated seems to be pretty standard, but some go up to 256.

Slavakion

At a quick glance, I thought that was a gameboy SP. Of course, now somebody's gonna post mods that look just like giant SPs, and SPs with working PDAs inside, and OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE!

On another note, I got my graduation present a few months early because there was a good sale on Toshiba laptops. I'm really impressed with it, but my one question is: what kind of games can I play with only 64 megs of integrated video? A decent guideling is what I'm looking for, like "no farscape, but minesweeper is fine".

Kostya

Most of the Toshibas look pretty sweet that I've seen, but I get so frustrated when I think I've found the absolute perfect laptop only to discover some gigantic unforgivable drawback.

Killers so far laptops which have everything but:

-Good cache, it's hard to find accurate info on the cache capabilities at the best of times, and I've found seemingly unbeatable machines with under a 512kb of cache storage.

-RAM. 256 is not enough damn you allllllllllll.

- Dedicated Video RAM, I'm beginning to dread the words integrated, shared etc.

- battery life. 1 hour? How can I watch Apocalypse Now on the train?

New question:
Can you compensate for shared video RAM with just pantloads of RAM?

Like, if it has 128 shared, and you get 728 or so, will it be the same as having 512 and 128 dedicated?

Arrrrrg!

braisler

Keep in mind that you are going to have a monster in size and weight. The tradeoff to having a high-end performance, desktop replacement is that you are going to want to leave it on the desktop more often than not. I opted for a heavier, higher-end Toshiba when I got my laptop. Its advertised weight is 7.9 pounds which doesn't sound like that much. But once you get it in its case with the power cord and such, you are working with more like 15 pounds.

A better option if you can swing it is to get a relatively simple, lightweight laptop for your actual work (you don't need much processing power for email and word processing). Then get a decent desktop that can play your games well. Run the numbers. Two computers might work better than one. Of course, this means that you will lose the ability to carry your games around with you, but you will get more work done, graduate sooner, and be able to afford better games with your new job.

__________________
---
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
- Albert Einstein
---

Kostya

Good points.

Unfortunately I don't think I can swing the duo comp setup, and my current desktop arrangement is to say the least, primitive.
So basically, while I know that it'll become obselete before the first chime of Windows XP I still want a high end beast because I'm probably not going to update my hardare setup significantly for a long long time.
As with weight, well, lets just say that after dragging dozens of books around, my back's totally ruined anyhow. I'm a pretty strapping lad, I'm not too concerned about it, though I intend to drink lots more milk in the future to stave off bone deformities and such.
Also, I'm doing Arts, History major.
Job? er.
PhD, then maybe...

EDIT: Another consideration I just remembered is that I need an 802.11 b or g WiFi card to get onto the University network. Apart from longer battery life, this seems to be the only reason to get Centrino over a meaty P4.

MiSo

most laptops come with integrated wireless or have the option. and even if it doesnt you can still buy a wireless card to plug into your laptop. i have the latter. so wireless shouldn't even be an issue. the only bad thing about the second option is that you'll have to buy a wireless card, and my G card cost around $50 on ebay.

i said above that i prefer a powerful processor.
i have a 2.2 ghz pentium p4 and the battery life is about 2 hours, but i always carry the power plug with me when im at school.

if you want to game just make sure you have
a good video card. i have an integrated card in my laptop because i didnt know any better when i bought the thing over a year ago.
i had problems playing sim city 4 until i upgraded my ram and it played alot smoother.
but i still have problems playing games like the Sims2 when there's too much going on. it'll get extremely choppy. also when i play Call of Duty, when there's alot going on it'll take me like 2 minutes to move 3 steps.

so i'm gonna stress
powerful processor, ram, and video card are a must.
screw the battery life because its easy to carry the plug around.
plus its not like you'll be heavy gaming when you're not around a power source.
if you take a road trip, just buy a power converter to make charging in your car possible.

Slavakion

If you're worried about battery life, a lot of laptops come with some sort of power management software. This will usually allow you to throttle the CPU and screen brightness to conserve power when the battery hits x%.

Lucifer

Toshiba 2450: 2.4 GHZ, 512 MB RAM; 60 GB HD, 64 MB Nvidia video card, 802.11b integrated wireless. Battery life is around 2.5 hours for DVD's. I too use it for everything, work, movies etc., but I like to play games as well. So far the only thing it has stuttered on is Far Cry and UT 2004. It will play Halo without missing a beat, Total War: Rome plays just fine unless you start attacking cities with 10,000 men. Avoid shared/integrated video like the freaking plague. It doesn't matter how much RAM you stick in, it'll never be as good as a stand alone card.

__________________
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

1123, 6536, 5321

cyrnel

I may be reading more into your words than you intended, but storage (HD) cache and processor cache are different animals. Are you comfortable with the concepts of HD cache vs processor L1 and L2 cache? L1 is ideal but expensive, and you won't find choice within a processor architecture. L2 is what you'll normally be comparing. You won't find mainstream performance processors with less than 512KB L2 cache. (KB = KiloByte vs. Kb = Kilobit.) AMD 64's have 512KB or 1MB L2, depending on model. P4's have 1 or 2MB L2. (Intel's interim competitive boost until the multi-core CPU's arrive.)

Don't be concerned about the amount of RAM included. You can call Crucial and order whatever additional you need for less than the computer company will charge. What you should be concerned about is the maximum RAM and the number of RAM slots. If you buy a system with 512MB RAM consisting of 2 256MB DIMMs, and it's taking the two available slots, you'll be pitching memory when you upgrade. Those crazy Clevo's above have 4 slots. If the memory controller allows dual-channel access, you'll also want to be careful about ending up with matched pairs of memory, at least matched sizes to have any chance of dual channel working.

Yep. It's a compromise among cost/performance/size/heat/power. They save resources by sharing but it doesn't make for a good game system.

Don't trains have outlets yet?

No. The shared problem isn't so much that it takes RAM away from other processes, but that the "pipe" serving video memory is shared by the rest of the system. The video processor has to interleave access to the same RAM that's being accessed by the usual CPU/northbridge access. This is especially bad for gaming which tends to be memory, cpu, and video intensive.

There aren't many laptops designed for gamers. Laptop compromises are at odds with peak performance. If you want a fairly good laptop with lots of battery life you can assume it won't be great for games. If you want a desktop replacement then don't expect perfect laptop features like battery life, light weight, or cool running.

Keep in mind, you could buy a $600-$1K laptop for real work and save the rest for a game box. A sub-$1000 home box will be better for games than a $2500 laptop, and it'll be incrementally upgradable as technology progresses.

cyrnel

Lots of new stuff since I last read the thread. Pardon my redundancy. Net access is sporadic today.

mercury-hg

we still haven't heard how much you're willing to spend. that alone will decide which recommendations will have any bearing on what laptop you finally purchase.

Kostya

Thanks everyone this is helping a lot!

Right at the minute I'm building a list of necessities for gaming:

1. Processor - 1.5gig or up.
2. RAM 512min with losts of room (1-2gig max)
3. Dedicated video card, 64meg min 128 beast preferable.
4. Good RPM Hard drive, 5400 probably very hard to find higher than this.

am I missing anything?

Another question (I know this laptop business is freakin ridiculous!)

I've seen a lot of customers review laptops and say that gaming laptops are useless for typing because the resolution makes the text fuzzy or something.
Are there any screen specs I should be outright avoiding because of this?

Lucifer: Your machine is the bomb!

EDIT: Wow, Powerbooks cost... a lot.
Alienware is available in Australia, but it's pretty harsh on the wallet, though the system they offer is a freaking beast. Tempted, but I don't think I'm that hardcore gaming wise.

Slavakion

5. Good mouse. Either a high-resolution optical, or a good old-fashioned ball mouse (yeck)
6. Possibly an external monitor. If you want to keep your laptop light and affordable, go for a smaller screen. Then dock it to a meaty monitor for your fragfests. (alliteration not intended!)

Kostya

Yeah, mouse seems to be pretty damn essential, I'd hate to be playing RTS with a touchpad.

Currently my budget is trying to stay at about A$2000, but I think if necessary it can go to the A$3000 mark.

Lucifer

yeah, I know, it's a year old and it still kicks ass

__________________
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
- Job 30:29

1123, 6536, 5321

viper11885

I'm currently in university and having a heavy laptop really doesn't help. I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 that weighs 9lbs. I find that it is both too big and heavy to carry to campus everyday. I don't really need my laptop at school and wanted a desktop replacement so it doesn't bother me too much.

If you are going to be travelling a lot to classes, you will really want something that is light. Make sure to get a Pentium M Centrino. The fans will pretty much never be on when in class and you have the added benefit of added battery life.

Kostya

I'm a graduate student, so I basically don't go to classes anymore, except for one seminar a week on writing theses, which I probably won't bring my laptop to anyhow.

The Centrino looks like a great processor, a nice tradeoff with power and battery. You can get the Pentium M processor at 2.0GHz which I think is pretty sweet.