3D Gaming Notebooks: Fantasy or Reality? Part I

[ccstooge]

It annoyingly ate my post too. I stated that it's not correct to say that you have to deal with stretched screens on a widescreen laptop - I have a 14" widescreen laptop (and previously a 17" laptop), and most if not all laptops have a feature to disable stretching, and do a centered display at the true resolution/size on the laptop (so that 1024x768 is not stretched to 1280x800). Yes, you have to deal with a slightly smaller viewing area, but it is not *THAT* crucial to lose 1-1.5 inches of game/movie/whatever on either side. The article needs to be edited to mention this, because you can have circles and not ellipses for planets on widescreen laptops,

Oh, and while I can appreciate reviewing other notebooks, it would be nice to NOT mention your own company to promote business KillerNotebooks - Yours is not the only affordable company out there! If your company is worthwhile enough, other people will mention it, which is a more true sign of quality.

 

[ccstooge]

It annoyingly ate my post too. I stated that it's not correct to say that you have to deal with stretched screens on a widescreen laptop - I have a 14" widescreen laptop (and previously a 17" laptop), and most if not all laptops have a feature to disable stretching, and do a centered display at the true resolution/size on the laptop (so that 1024x768 is not stretched to 1280x800). Yes, you have to deal with a slightly smaller viewing area, but it is not *THAT* crucial to lose 1-1.5 inches of game/movie/whatever on either side. The article needs to be edited to mention this, because you can have circles and not ellipses for planets on widescreen laptops,

Oh, and while I can appreciate reviewing other notebooks, it would be nice to NOT mention your own company to promote business KillerNotebooks - Yours is not the only affordable company out there! If your company is worthwhile enough, other people will mention it, which is a more true sign of quality.

 

[Bruxbox]

I'd like to add that all notebooks currently on the market can play many older pc games very well.

For example, Half Life came out in late 1998. Every notebook made since 2004 can probably play HL very verry well, even if the notebook uses an integrated graphics technology with shared memory.

I tried playing all the HL titles on my HP Pavillion dv1000 of late 2004, and these pc games run fabulously. It gave me a whole new gaming experience with the original HL when I went on a business trip for a couple weeks.

Before going on the trip, I copied all the HL titles on to the dv1000's hard drive, and played the titles from there.

 

[Bruxbox]

I'd like to add that all notebooks currently on the market can play many older pc games very well.

For example, Half Life came out in late 1998. Every notebook made since 2004 can probably play HL very verry well, even if the notebook uses an integrated graphics technology with shared memory.

I tried playing all the HL titles on my HP Pavillion dv1000 of late 2004, and these pc games run fabulously. It gave me a whole new gaming experience with the original HL when I went on a business trip for a couple weeks.

Before going on the trip, I copied all the HL titles on to the dv1000's hard drive, and played the titles from there.

 

[frollo]

SLI notebooks are still scarce both for purchase and testing.

Question remains - Can a dual Go 7900 GS compete with a single Go 7900 GTX 512MB solution like the Dell M1710.

wrong the question is what game was that pictured on the last page of the article!

 

[frollo]

is there a reason why these forums are gimped? why is it you have to double post to have your first post show up?

 

[frollo]

wth! this is the 3rd post and it still isn't showing my prev 2

ps anybody know what the game on the last page was?

 

[DarkPheonix]

Well, I didn't read the whole article, but they didnt really mention how gamers can get very high resolution screens (1920x1200) for a much smaller amount of money to upgrade than to buy a 1920x1200 screen in real life.

Also, they did mention how the incentive by ATI and nVidia to release drivers that would allow people to use the second card in SLi for physics instead. Why not just have Ageia manufacture a PC card or ExpressCard (w/e) that incorporates the PhysX chip, possibly using sys RAM to run? I got 2 GB in my system and most of that is just standing there, plus, if Creative could make a Audigy 2 Notebook card, so could Ageia (theoretically). Right?

 

[arkon]

Part II - Conclusion: Why can't you get hold of a Dell XPS M1710? You managed to review it at the beginning of May,

http/tomshardware.co.uk/2006/05/02/m1710_image_overview_uk/

...and I've had one since mid-May.

I expect there will be a follow up comparison?

It's been faithfully running Oblivion on full settings at 1920x1200. Just need to wait for nVidia to release a new driver for it (the Dell shipped with a pre-release driver not available on their website).

- 4rkon

 

[kaorisdad]

Why didn't they review true gaming notebooks like Falcon Northwest's or the Dell XPS along with the Alienware?

 

[bman212121]

I am starting to get disappointed a little with the articles that have been done as of late. I'm not sure if the Alienware had a 7800GTX or a 7900GTX because it kept flip flopping in the article. It would be nice if the article could be reviewed better.

 

[frollo]

and if they provided the names of games used in pictures

 

[WRX-Rated]

Give me a break. You would have to be the biggest loser in the world to buy or even want a 'gaming' laptop. Complete waste of time and money. Nobody NEEDS to game while they are away from their pc and with a battery life of 1 to 2 hours, why even bother? I just completely wasted my (actually my employer's) time skimming through this article. My x850 would rape the 7800 in that Alienware POS.

 

[WRX-Rated]

Give me a break. You would have to be the biggest loser in the world to buy or even want a 'gaming' laptop. Complete waste of time and money. Nobody NEEDS to game while they are away from their pc and with a battery life of 1 to 2 hours, why even bother? I just completely wasted my (actually my employer's) time skimming through this article. My x850 would rape the 7800 in that Alienware POS. Who cares about non-discernable shadows and shading effects?

 

[Sirsri]

Mr WRXRated you are of course (wrongly) supposing that everyone has both a PC and a laptop.

There are two groups of normal people who want gaming laptops:
1 Those who only have one computer, but still wish to game, again, you aren't looking for the absolute best performance, but acceptably good. Would your x850 (or my X800) destroy a notebook 7900 or x1900? Well... kinda, but not really, our cards don't support SM 3.0, so its not really a fair comparision, anything which does support SM 3 is going to perform better, and look better, on the gaming notebook. Would a desktop 7800 or x1800 outperform their laptop counterparts? of course.

2 People who go to lan parties etc... Do I go to LAN parties you ask? Well no, I don't. LAN parties come to my house. its much easier to set up, for people who have laptops. They need one power outlet, and a WPA passphrase and they're off to the races. Desktops need several power connectors, still consume 7 or 8 x the power of the gaming notebook, much larger footprints, setup time etc... (that or people use my extra machines which they need to configure their way).

The 3rd group I don't count as normal people, in the sense that normal people do not write software for a living. Those of us who do graphics research or software for a living (esspecially in academia) don't want to lug a 35 kilo computer back and forth from work everyday.

Are gaming notebooks for everyone? no of course not, but then desktops aren't for everyone either. Rather clearly there are some people in the THG readership who found something interesting in this article.

Which still hasn't answered our question of what game that is on page 30? I'm wondering if it's an old screenshot from something like descent 3. I dunno.

 

[Bruxbox]

Yah, it seems that we do have to post twice before a message will take on these forums.

My first message, which was rather long, failed to make it the first time.

I'm not going to go through the effort to write the same thing twice just to put up one message. It ain't worth it.

Sorry, I'm wrong. this message took on the first try.

 

[frollo]

whatever the game is it looks freakn sweet

 

[kaorisdad]

I would say that there is a fourth group as well:

4. Those who travel either on business or pleasure that like to relax playing some games on their laptop.

I include myself in that category. I play multiplayer FPS games on my PC at home, but when I'm on vacation, I like to play the single-player versions of software for fun. I'd like to get a gaming laptop for this reason, but they are too expensive for me. I have a laptop that can run certain games, but titles like COD2, Quake 4, or even COD1 etc. just overpower my 1.8 GHz Athlon laptop.

 

[taulin]

Also, they did mention how the incentive by ATI and nVidia to release drivers that would allow people to use the second card in SLi for physics instead. Why not just have Ageia manufacture a PC card or ExpressCard (w/e) that incorporates the PhysX chip, possibly using sys RAM to run? I got 2 GB in my system and most of that is just standing there, plus, if Creative could make a Audigy 2 Notebook card, so could Ageia (theoretically). Right?

what im more worried about is the compatibility issues this will result in, if nvidia/ati are going to have their graphics cards doing physics work, and you have a physx card will there be any priority in what card will do the graphics? would you be able to specify the physx card as the primary physics device with the second sli card being secondary? i believe this would be a much more useful solution as it would allow for the second card to focus more on rendering if the physx card is able to handle the amount of physics going on, while still being able to backup if the physics gets heavy

but more likely nvidia will go one way, ati another and ageia will be sitting in the middle with nothing to do

 

[frollo]

*cough* what sci-fi game *cough*