Midsized Gaming Laptop

[synaesthetic]

I'm in the market for a new computer since my gaming desktop (which was aging anyway) gave up the ghost earlier in the year, and I had to sell the corpse to pay bills.

Previously my plan was just to get an ION netbook or CULV notebook capable of playing anime fansubs and then build a new gaming desktop as a primary system, but things have changed.

Now I want a single computer solution in a laptop (well, I'm not getting rid of my Celeron eeePC, so I guess it's still a 2-computer deal), because I don't really have that much room for a desktop in my tiny little apartment. Plus I like being able to take my computer over to people's houses and whatnot.

I can't buy it right away, but I want to know pretty much exactly what it is I'm saving up for, barring any amazing and spectacular new releases in the next 2-3 months.

Budget is preferably around or under $1000, but depending on how awesome the computer in question is, I can go up to $1200. I will have to eat ramen noodles for a year, but I don't care. ^^;

I want it to be a PORTABLE computer, so no monstrous 18" desktop replacements. I'll set my maximum at 15" but I'd prefer a 13" or 14" screen size. I don't need a numeric keypad, so the smaller size doesn't really bother me much.

I'd like it to have at least decent battery life, but concerning gaming laptops this is usually not possible, so as long as the laptop + power brick is reasonably lightweight, it's not so problematic. If I need to do some hours-long websurfing, well, that's what my netbook is for.

I'd like the computer to play most new games fairly well. I'm not looking for bleeding-edge framerates in Crysis with everything maxed out or anything; I'm not much of an FPS gamer, but I'd like to be able to play things like The Witcher, Fallout 3, Diablo 3, STALKER, maybe Aion Online.

I don't need everything set to max. Midrange gaming performance is fine. I tend to be slightly behind the curve when it comes to gaming anyway, due to the prevalence of boring shooters I don't care about and the extreme paucity of PC roleplaying game releases that aren't MMO.

With these things in mind I have a couple of contenders, some more affordable than others, some more powerful than others, but I'd like additional suggestions as well.

Asus N81Vp
Pros: Absolute most powerful 14" gaming rig I've come across. Much faster graphics card than any of the other 13-14" options. Asus is a great company and I've never had problems with their products. Weighs very little for a gaming laptop.
Cons: Standard non-chiclet keyboard. Battery life is ugly at only barely over two hours. The price is nearly 20% over my budget. Design is pretty unattractive. Older stock; has Vista installed so I'd have to buy a copy of Windows 7.

Sony Vaio CW
Pros: Absolutely gorgeous design in Fiery Red. I've heard oodles of good things about Sony laptops, especially from a close friend who owns a Vaio FW. Six hours of battery life on the high-capacity battery option. Chiclet style keyboard. Runs very cool compared to other powerful notebooks. Has Windows 7. Can bump to Windows 7 Professional for a much lower price than most vendors.
Cons: Goes way overbudget with a maxed out configuration ($1400). Will have to pay tax on it if I order a custom build from Sony Style. Weaker graphics than the N81VP.

(Note: I could save quite a bit with the CW and drop it much closer to budget by choosing a lesser processor--is it really worth paying Sony the $300 premium to get the T9600 over a lesser C2D?)

Asus UL80VT
Pros: Ridiculously long 11 hours of battery life. Attractive design and very light weight. Price well under budget at $820. The most portable system listed here. Has Windows 7.
Cons: SU7300 processor is considerably weaker than a normal Core 2 Duo. Weaker graphics card than any of the other options. Too much glossy plastic. Might not play some of the games I want to play.

Asus G51Vx
Pros: More powerful than any of the other systems listed. nvidia GTX 260M graphics chip. Looks pretty sexy. Price is within budget just under $1000.
Cons: It's friggin' huge. Battery life sucks just as much as the N81Vp. Has Vista installed.

[chikorita157]

I suggest looking at the Thinkpad T500 series. The higher priced one ($900+ model) have a discrete graphics card (Radeon 3650) and a fast enough processor. Although the ram and HD isn't that high. The Thinkpad is a higher quality computer and probably does not have a glossy screen or cheap plastic.

[synaesthetic]

I'm quite fond of Thinkpads, but I wonder how big the T500 is? Isn't it 15.6" display? I'd like to stay away from the fifteen-inchers if at all possible. Business oriented laptops usually tend to be quite heavy, too.

T500 looks nice but it only has 256MB of VRAM on the 3650; the Asus N81Vp has a gig.

[RayLancer]

Sony batteries tend to cost a fortune... we have a 3 year old Sony Vaio C series laptop (13.3") and battery for that thing costs like $200 still. We were planning on getting her a netbook instead of the battery, but we ended up getting her a new laptop.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....&type=product& id=1218124204092 $999

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834114719 $799

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834117967 (There's a black version at the same price) $849

[synaesthetic]

The 9-cell Vaio CW battery is $249 from Sony Style.

That's just plain ridiculous.

Already I'm heavily leaning toward the Asus G51Vx-RX05 purely based on performance and price for a refurb. I will, however, need to obtain a copy of Windows 7. =| Vista can die in a hotel fire.

[0utf0xZer0]

Anandtech recently posted a first look at the UL80vt, and I believe they're working on a full review:
http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3665

... I never realized that Asus factory oced the CPU on this thing to 1.733ghz. Looks like it may have been a smart move too.

The GPU in the UL80vt is basically a rebadged, discrete 9400M with a bit of an overclock, so it's hardly great. In fact, looking at the specs Anandtech provides (16 shaders at 1468mhz and 128 bit DDR3 at 1580 mhz), it has 50% more shader power than a 8500GT and about twice the memory bandwidth. According to Toms' Hardware, the frame rates at 1280X1024 at minimum settings for a 8500GT are 20 FPS for FEAR 2, 27 FPS for Far Cry 2, and 40 FPS for Fallout 3. If you assume the UL80vt's chip is 50% faster based on shader speed, then yeah, I guess that Fallout 3 runs pretty good, but it's still minimum settings and FEAR 2 in particular looks like it might be barely playable.

On the other hand, of the games you listed... Fallout 3 runs, Stalker seems quite scalable (isn't the third game supposedly going to have separate code paths for Direct X 8 through 11?), the Witcher doesn't seem like a system crusher in my experience, and Blizzard is traditionally quite conservative about system requirements. So if those are what you want to play you might be fine.

The rumour I've heard is that Nvidia's upcoming Ion 2 chip will support CULV processors and have 32 shaders (compared to 16 in the UL80vt's chip) - I imagine if Asus ever pairs that with their 1.733ghz overclocked CULV it might make a nice little light gaming ultraportable.

As for the Sony battery price... $249 is higher than some brands but laptop batteries are never cheap. I paid Dell $190 Canadian for a replacement 9 cell for my Inspiron 1501. I did try and $84 generic battery for a while, but it was down to half an hour of charge after 8 months of light use, so I just bit the bullet and got the real deal.

[synaesthetic]

The G51Vx has an nvidia GTX 260M (with a gig of GDDR3) which ought to be able to handle pretty much anything I throw at it. It's got 112 unified stream processors compared to the G 210M's 16 and the GT 230M's (GPU of the Vaio CW) 48. Plus twice as much VRAM as either.

The G51Vx-RX05's mainboard is also capable of supporting a Core 2 Quad processor, so that could be an upgrade option later--it'll take a Q9100. Comes stock with a T7350 running at 2.0GHz, which according to some folks at the notebookreview forums, can be overclocked to 2.25GHz without increased heat and even to 2.4GHz if one is careful and uses a cooling pad.

I sacrifice battery life, but eh... there's not much I can do about that other than stop playing games.

Edit: I just noticed that the G51Vx-RX05 comes stock with 4GB of RAM, but doesn't support any more than 4GB of RAM. That's... kind of annoying, actually. ><

[chikorita157]

4GB of RAM is useless in 32-bit OS and DDR2 RAM in the future will be outclassed by DDR3 RAM once they go down in price and better memory chips come out... The 260M seems to be more powerful than my 9600 GT, getting about 2500 more points in 3DMark06, although my computer have a faster processor, about 400 MHz more. If you are using it mostly on your desk and not moving it, it's great but gaming machines mean nothing when you have to bring them back and forth, especially if you in college or travel alot. 7.3 LB in the end can hurt your back in the end if you have other textbooks (and hard cover textbooks are a killer) unless you have them on ebook. This is why I don't go for the heavy looking laptops and I rather carry something at 5.6 LB max.

I have once own a Inspiron 9100 and it weighed even more than the Asus G51Vx you mentioned. About 9.2 Lb and only lasted one hour and thirty minutes since it had the most powerful GPU at the time (ATi Radeon Mobility 9600) and a fast processor (Desktop Pentium 4 at 2.8 GHz) but it tend to overheat alot since the cooling sucked and the Pentium 4 Processor produced alot of heat that it's not funny. If you want to travel with a Inspiron 9100, think again since it's extremely heavy and your shoulder will hurt after several minutes of carrying it.

[hobbes_fan]

there's a lot of assumptions there. high latency ddr3 is in most of these things. Low latency ddr2 800 is still faster than high latency ddr3 1066. The US $ is pathetic atm and even the most optimistic of analysts don't see it getting much better quickly. meaning stuff isn't going to get cheaper any time soon.

Vram/videocard RAM is complete non issue here - non of these mobile laptop gfx solutions are fast enough to utilise enough of it to render game textures at the resolutions it will need the additional RAM. They're simply not fast enough to deal with 1920x1080 where 1gb+ is necessary. 512 for 1680x1050res or lower or 1gb for higher. Realistically playing any intense FPS or even RTS/MMO you're down to 1440x900, 1366x768, 1280x1024 or even 1024x768. 256mb is well capable for the lower res. You'd be fine for things like Fallout3 and Stalker 1 and 2 at these resolutions. You're already prepared to turn down settings as well which makes vram even less of an issue.

cards like 1gb 9600gt , 9500gt, 3650 are lol. If they ever used more than 1/2 of the available ram they had you'd be watching a slideshow. I'll leave the snarky comment on Vista alone. My thoughts on 7 vs vista particularly the 64bit variants as a beta tester are in the appropriate thread.

[synaesthetic]

@chikorita157: Whatever I buy is going to get carried a lot. So it seems I may have to put more thought into this because the G51 is so enormous and heavy.

Starting to think about just picking up the best I can get for an under 5 pound laptop and just deal with not being able to game heavily until I move into a new place and have the space to put a new gaming desktop together.

So I wonder, what's the best under 5 pound thin and light? The N81Vp still looks pretty strong but they're still expensive... and the battery life is ass. If the Dell Studio 14z had some graphics better than integrated 9400M, I'd be all over it for cheapness and portability.

[chikorita157]

If you looking at 14 inch laptops, you may want to look at the Thinkpad T400 series which weigh close to 5 pounds and have a ATI Mobility Radeon 3470. Note that the 9400m G is a integrated GPU, so it can use RAM. In comparison, the 3470 is only slightly faster than the 9400m G in 3DMark, so if you go with the Dell Studio 14z, you aren't losing much except build quality.

I have bad experiences with Dell with many of the machines my family owns because their quality is alot lower for the consumer laptops.

[synaesthetic]

Wow why is this so hard...

I'm really unsure now. ><

[NvIon]

If you want a gaming laptop, I suggest you look for one with the 40nm Geforce GTS 250M.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product...s_250m_us.html

The architechture is based on the GT200(GTX285 etc) but it has been enhanced with DirectX 10.1 support. It's also low power and very efficient compared to the Geforce 8M/9M/100M GPUs. The link below gives you an idea of the of the architechture. Basically, the 40nm GPUs have larger L1 & L2 texture caches and they have double the register space over older gen GPUs.

http://www.realworldtech.com/include...es/Fermi-1.png

All the 40nm Nvidia GPUs also come with the new Purevideo HD VP4 decoder. They also have built-in HD audio controller just like the Nvidia 9300/9400/Ion chipset, they have 8 channel LPCM support over HDMI output port.

Also the Geforce G210M is not a "rebadged, discrete 9400M" because it also has the brand new VP4 decoder whereas the 9300/9400/Ion only has VP3.

[synaesthetic]

I'm actually looking for something easier to carry than that Toshiba monstrosity (which seems to be the only laptop I can find with a GTS 250M).

I probably don't need that much power anyway, since I mostly want to play older games and less-demanding RPGs.

[NvIon]

Well, you said you wanted more graphics power than the G210M & GT 230M, so the GTS 250M is the step up without being excessively power hungry like the GTX 260M(G92/9800GT). Also I didn't mean the huge Toshiba laptop, I'm sure there'll be more notebook models with the GTS 250M in them soon.

Also do note that only Nvidia provides regular quarterly driver updates, and drivers make or break a notebook with a good discrete GPU.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_drivers.html

[synaesthetic]

I'm not really sure what I need exactly. A lot of online reviewers and testers seem to base everything on Crysis, and truthfully I don't care about that game. The fact that Crysis is more demanding than pretty much anything that has come out in the past and since makes it hard to judge just how much power I need.

When it comes to first-person shooters, the extent of which I care is DOOM and Source engine games. Stalker, as mentioned is already very scalable to system specs.

But it's hard. If this was a desktop build, I wouldn't mind spending extra to future proof a little but this is a portable, which I want to carry. I know that to be smaller, lighter and have decent battery life, I have to go with less power.

I just am pulling out my hair trying to figure out just what exactly, is the correct balance.

[0utf0xZer0]

MSI's soon to be launched GT640 is supposed to have a GTS 250m with Core i7 that varies between 1.6ghz when all four cores are in use and 2.8ghz when only one is being used. 15.6 inches, just a tad under 6 pounds. I believe it uses a six cell battery, and a Core i7/GT 240m combo with a similar battery got over three hours in this site's testing... however, they did note that actually using all that power drained the battery far faster.

Caveats... well, MSI's marketting material says it uses GDDR3. It could be a typo, but the GTS 250m is designed for use with much faster GDDR 5 since it has a narrow memory bus. Using GDDR3 would seriously constrain it. Second, a rebranded version of the current but lower end GT628 sells for $900 with a dual core CPU and GTS 160m, and I imagine the GT640 will sell for a fair bit more. I'm not sure that fits your budget.

(Edit: FRAK. I did a quick search and I'm hearing an MSRP of 1400 Euro for Europe. Better hope MSI is one of those companies that prices the same in Euros and dollars...)

(Also, the only MSI board I have ever owned failed after like 1 year, and spending $35 to ship it to them netted a replacement board that was also screwy, at which point I decided I didn't want to bother with another RMA and just grabbed a cheap Soltek board for $80... I imagine that some people have had better experiences with them, but it does make me a bit leery of the brand.)

[synaesthetic]

I've used MSI mainboards on my desktops for years, never had any problems with them. Only once did I have one die on me, and that was probably more due to the fact that it died during a lightning storm and I wasn't home to unplug everything.

That is a bit over my budget though. I'm just kind of leaning toward something smaller anyway since within the next six months I'll be building a new desktop. So it's still kind of a toss up between the Vaio CW and the UL80Vt and anything else in that same 13.3-14", under-5-pounds category. The Asus has huge battery life and I can get it from XoticPC without paying tax... unfortunately Sony Style is in CA so I end up paying tax if I want a CTO Vaio laptop.

This really shouldn't be so hard but it is. >.>;

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

I've used MSI mainboards on my desktops for years, never had any problems with them. Only once did I have one die on me, and that was probably more due to the fact that it died during a lightning storm and I wasn't home to unplug everything.

That is a bit over my budget though. I'm just kind of leaning toward something smaller anyway since within the next six months I'll be building a new desktop. So it's still kind of a toss up between the Vaio CW and the UL80Vt and anything else in that same 13.3-14", under-5-pounds category. The Asus has huge battery life and I can get it from XoticPC without paying tax... unfortunately Sony Style is in CA so I end up paying tax if I want a CTO Vaio laptop.

This really shouldn't be so hard but it is. >.>;

The GPU in the CW has 2.2X the shader power and twice the memory bandwidth of the one in the 80vt. Bank on twice the performance, then.

I still think that most of the games you mention would run on the 80vt, but that you'd need to dial back the settings somewhat.

[synaesthetic]

If the UL30 had the switchable G 210M/4500MHD that the UL80 has, this would be a no-brainer. But since the UL80Vt is barely thinner and lighter than the Vaio CW... Sony looks like a winner.

Now the trick is affording it. =|