Get the Right Laptop for College & Gaming - Under $900

[J Goodrich]

Hey guys, I'm in the market to get a laptop. I don't want to spend too much money, but I want to get a decent quality laptop that I'll be able to play a few games on without any trouble. I'm going to be entering college with a double degree in electrical engineering and physics too, so it has to have the capability to handle any applications I might get in my courses there without problem.

Here are the specs I've currently found:

HP HDX16t Premium Series Notebook PC
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
• Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P7550 (2.26GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
• FREE Upgrade to 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• FREE Upgrade to 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive from 250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
• 16.0" diagonal High Definition HP BrightView Infinity Display (1366x768)

After a discount, it comes to $900. It's also eligible to receive a free upgrade to Windows 7. I think that's a pretty good deal. Anyone have any thoughts?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Your laptop should be able to play the top games for roughly two years at reduced settings. Try to maximize the graphics card.

 

[junglebeast]

Why is the OS, memory, and hard drive all listed as upgrades? Does this mean you need to send away for them after buying it or what?

I don't agree with this 2-year rule Greg has mentioned -- I expect you will be able to get a lot more life out of it than that. While overall compute power may still be following Moore's law, the CPU processing requirements stay roughly the same as games increase in graphical quality...and current CPU's are not fully used anyway.

GPU cards are growing faster than ever, but it is so easy to scale back the required GPU calculations by using smaller textures and simpler shader effects, and all modern games provide fallback shaders for backwards compatibility,so this shouldn't be a real holdup either.

Sure if you wait long enough there may be a paradigm shift...for example, we may see games switching over to GPU-raytracers in the not-too-distant future, at which point the relative performance between laptops and desktops will be severely crippled. However, that's probably a lot more than 2 years off.

 

[B. Elliott]

Your laptop should be able to play the top games for roughly two years at reduced settings. Try to maximize the graphics card.

Agreed.

If you don't mind spending a few hundred more dollars (~$1300 total), I convinced a friend of mine to purchase this one. After using it for almost a month now, it's been an excellent laptop.

Asus
Model: G71GX-RX05

Product Height: 16.2"
Product Width: 11.8"
Product Weight 8.8 lbs.
Product Depth: 2.4"
Processor Brand: Intel®
Processor: P8700
Processor Speed: 2.53GHz
Display Type: Widescreen LCD (1440 x 900)
Screen Size: 17.1"
System Bus: 1066MHz
Cache Memory: 3MB on die Level 2
System Memory (RAM): 6GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M
Video Memory: 1GB GDDR3
Hard Drive Type: Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
Hard Drive Size: 500GB
Optical Drive: Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW

It would be worth the extra money just due to the extra graphics capability (9600GT vs. 260M) and processor power (2.26 vs 2.53GHz).

9600GT

Manufacturer NVIDIA
Series GeForce 9M
Codename NB9P-GS
Pipelines 32 - unified
Core Speed * 500 MHz
Shader Speed * 1250 MHz
Memory Speed * 800 MHz
Memory Bus Width 128 Bit
Transistors 314 Million
technology 65 nm
Features PCI-E 2.0, 1250 MHz Shader Taktung, 400 MHz Speichertaktung bei GDDR2, 800 MHz bei GDDR3, PureVideo HD Technologie (VP3), Hybrid SLI mit HybridPower (mit aktuellen nVidia Chipsätzen).

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html

260M

Manufacturer NVIDIA
Series GeForce GTX 200M
Codename N10E-GT
Pipelines 112 - unified
Core Speed * 550 MHz
Shader Speed * 1375 MHz
Memory Speed * 950 MHz
Memory Bus Width 256 Bit
Transistors 754 Million
technology 55 nm
Features HybridPower, PureVideo HD, CUDA, PhysX ready

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-260M.14559.0.html

Almost quadruple the number of pipelines, double the memory bandwidth, and double the number of transistors. CUDA capability would also be a nice asset, but that depends on if you ever have the need to tap into it. Lots of potential number crunching power there.

 

[B. Elliott]

I don't mean to push this laptop if it's out of your price range, but since you did mention gaming (i'm guessing fairly intensive games) do consider this. For $300 more you get;

6Gb ram vs 4Gb
500Gb HD vs 320Gb
1GB 260M vs 512MB 9600GT
2.53GHz vs 2.26GHz
17.1in vs 16in screen

The good: Good components for cost; secondary instant-on Linux OS; separate number pad.

The bad: Big, heavy, and power hungry; mixed performance; lights can't be completely shut off; no dedicated media controls.

Almost double the frame rates when gaming compared to other laptops in this review...

Unreal Tournament 3 (in fps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
1,280x800, 0X AA, 8X AF*
1,440x900, 4X AA, 8X AF
Asus G71GX-RX05 @ 1280 x 720
*123.6
100.6
HP Pavilion dv7-2185DX @ 1,280 x 768
*79.0
53.1
Sony Vaio FW480J/T @ 1,280x768
*53.3
47.8

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-g71gx-rx05/4505-3121_7-33695862.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/CNet/story?id=7982851

If the only bad things I could say about a laptop are it being big, heavy and power hungry, well darn, I guess I just purchased a big, powerful laptop that rivals others that cost upwards of $2,000.