Going to get the NP9262 finally :)

[Maziar]

Hello all hope u are all fine

Well i finally am going to get a SAGER NP9262 because i am giving my current desktop to my sister for her university works and i want to buy a notebook for myself

My current dekstop has this config :

E6600@ 3.2 +4GB RAM + 8800GTX+500GB HDD(I dont really need that much) + 22" monitor with 1680x1050 resolution

and the config i am looking to buy is this:

17" with 1920x1200 resolution
2x8800MGTX in SLI
4GB DDR2 800 RAM

I have some questions though, my main task will be Photoshop + gaming so i need recommendations for CPU and HDD:

The options for CPU are E8400(Which is the stock model), Q6600(Adds $35), Q6700(Adds $65), Q9450(Adds $165) and Q9550(Adds $360)
So which will be better for my work?

Also shall i go for 320GB 5400RPM vs 200GB 7200 RPM ?

Another question is that i want to know whether its worth it to get "0" Dead pixel policy or not?

Also this setup is alot better than my current one right ? 😀

thanx all

BTW,i was going to buy a desktop with a 24" monitor but a 24" monitor is very expensive hre and the components arent cheap either thats why i am going to get this beast

 

[frozenlead]

To my knowledge, photoshop doesn't use past 2 cores, so a quad would be a waste. Considering you're gaming, too, that's vote 2 for dual core. Vote 3 comes from the fact that it's a laptop, and even though you might not move it a lot...some battery life is good, you know 😛
So I'd say go with the E8400.

Having gone from a dual 400GB 7200rpm system to a single 250GB 5400rpm system, I notice little difference between the speed of the drives other than in installations and massive file movements. My notebook drive loads games at least twice as fast as my desktop. I'd go with the bigger, slower drive - 320GB 5400rpm gets my vote.

Zero dead pixel policy is expensive and a one-time-deal. With Sager's reputation, i doubt you need it. I thought about it, too, but it's just really expensive. I went without it. My display is flawless on my NP5793. I don't think it's worth it. I haven't seen a dead pixel on a screen for years.

It's not a lot better than your current rig, I'd say 20% to 40% in games that can use SLi well, less in games that don't. But it is still an upgrade, and the mobility is nice, too. I know that's a wide range, but I've never personally tested a dual card system...never even seen one that wasn't at some show or something.

Write a review on that beast when you get it!!!!
I'd love to compare numbers on my notebook versus yours!

 

[aevm]

Q6600 will be better than E8400 in certain areas of Photoshop, by a negligible margin. I've seen benchmarks where Q6600 beat the E6850 by 9%, and the E8400 is a little faster than the E6850. However, I suspect there are lots of areas that weren't benchmarked where the E8400 would win because not everything can be made to work on 4 cores.

Q6600 will be better in FSX, if you play that.

If you're mostly playing (and it's not FSX) then I think E8400 is better value than those quads.

320GB 5400rpm is probably better in a laptop - batteries last longer that way. It's just a guess. I don't know. Being a bigger drive, it may consume more after all.

1920x1200 in a 17" monitor is awfully small, you better have good eyesight. I'm thinking of buying myself a 27" Samsung 275T for that resolution.

"0 dead pixels" - it depends on how much it costs and how much you'd hate it if you got a yellow pixel stuck on in the center of the screen. I'm not buying monitors unless I'm allowed to check them for dead pixels first.

I wouldn't have the courage to buy a notebook with an Nvidia motherboard these days. They are dropping like a stone in the stock market (30% crash on Friday alone), and the main reason is a series of product recalls, mostly about defective laptop parts.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

If it's a 2 platter 320GB 5400 RPM drive then it'll be nearly the same speed as that 200 GB 7200RPM drive so IMO go for the 320GB HDD. It may be close to the same speed, a little less power hungry, and a little cooler.

Now as for the CPU as mentioned it's up/down as to whether you will notice any benefit from a quad. IMO go for the Q6700, not for current support but for support later this year or in 2009. Also even if one ap doesn't benefit then multitasking will benefit. Sure an extra couple of Mhz is nice, but I'd take the Q6700 over the E8400 for the longer term, shorter term the E8400 would likely be more beneficial.

As for the zero dead pixel it depends alot on price. IMO less than 5% premium, sure thing, between 5-10% worthwhile if a single dead pixel would bug you (which I hate when working with images), over 10% you need to start considering the benefit of simply getting 2 monitors if it's that much more expensive.

For $300 for my laptop, I'd risk the LCD panel from a good laptop mfr as they likely do a better job of quality control, and if I lose, then buy a separate LCD.

 

[lostandwandering]

As far as the CPU and HDD go, I think I agree with TGGA. The Q6700 will give you longevity as more apps move towards the multithreaded direction and the HDD will consume less power and produce less heat which is a major plus in a laptop of that power.

As far as the dead pixel policy, I didn't go with it on mine based off of reviews I had read. Most of what I had seen said that the Clevo/Sager WUXGA panels were made by Samsung who has an excellent reputation in the monitor realm. My monitor was flawless upon arrival w/ no dead or stuck pixels and hardly any light leak. No regrets.

 

[Maziar]

thanks alot for all of your helps

Well a friend of mine told me to get a Q9450 because he said that photoshop benefits from SSE4 and also he said that 12MB cache will become useful,well i dont think so, what do u say?

thanx again for all the helps guys

BTW battery life won't be much important for me.because most of the time it will be on my desk.

 

[Zorg]

I think the big improvement is with video, but the Penryn is showing improvement with Photoshop.

Intel details Penryn performance, new SSE4 extensions

 

[Maziar]

Thanks for the link,also Penryn is for Mobile CPUs and these are desktop CPUS
btw Zorg,by big impovement with video u mean about 2 8800MGTX vs my current 8800GTX right?

Also i was reading the reviews of XPS M1730 and SAGER NP5793 in anandtech and although 8800MGTX has fewer stream processors than 8800GTX(Desktop) with lower memory but anandtech said that a 8800MGTX performs like a desktop 8800GT 512 which is very good and 2 of them perform awesome,here is the link of XPS M1730 with 2x8800MGTX and a X9000 CPU which performs @ 2.8:

Now, let's take a step back and actually consider what you're buying with the M1730. The 8800M GTX offers similar performance to the desktop 8800 GT 512MB. It has slightly slower clock speeds on the core and slower memory, but it still delivers good performance - great performance in a notebook. The X9000 is also very fast for a mobile CPU, clocked at 2.8GHz.
That puts it roughly on par with the E6750, once we take into account the slower bus and memory speeds of notebooks. If you purchase the M1730 as tested, then you get roughly the equivalent of a desktop system with an E6750 and 8800 GT SLI.

 

[frozenlead]

The dell notebook will cost you more than the sager and actually deliver less performance - the sager has a desktop cpu and is configured with 800mhz ram. The dell configured more cheaply will be less powerful than an sager np5793, and is likely still to be more expensive.

 

[Zorg]

Thanks for the link,also Penryn is for Mobile CPUs and these are desktop CPUS
btw Zorg,by big impovement with video u mean about 2 8800MGTX vs my current 8800GTX right?

the Penryn is the whole family, desktop and mobile.

Intel_New_Processor_Generations.pdf


I haven't really looked into it in great detail, because I have a Q6600 and I'm not going to upgrade until the Nehalem with the IMC, so it doesn't really affect me. Here is more detail from Intel on the SSE4.

45nm Next Generation Intel® Core™ 2 Processor Family (Penryn) and Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (Intel® SSE4)

 

[Maziar]

Oh yeah i forgot :d thanx for that

and also u didn't answer my question about the GPU, by big imporvement with video u mean 2 8800MGTX vs my current card right?

 

[Zorg]

I wasn't talking about the GPU. I was saying that I thought that SSE4 would have the biggest improvement on video encoding, as opposed to Photoshop.

The speedups for HL2 and DivX encoding are impressive, while the speedups for on the other benchmarks are modest but respectable.

The Vectorizing Compiler and Media Accelerator instructions should improve the performance of audio, video, and image editing applications, video encoders, 3-D applications, and games.

 

[Maziar]

Oh sorry 😀 so let me ask now,what do u say about the GPU ?
2 8800MGTX will be a good boost right?

 

[frozenlead]

A decent boost, yes - the 8800m GTX is less powerful than it's desktop counterpart, but you do have two of them!

 

[Zorg]

I'm not really the one to comment on that. I think you would know better than me, it appears you have been doing your research.

 

[enmaalvb]

I'm soon to buy the sager too. My configuration is going to be, sli 8800gtx and the q9450. I'm not going with the pixel policy (I'm gonna risk it). But I'm also kinda undecided because I also like the single 8800gtx and the q9650. I don't know, depends on how money stacks up.

Anyway good luck and when you get it post on how it is.

 

[nukemaster]

Well looks like everything has already been covered.

just gonna drop 2 cents.

For now SSE4 is only good for video encoding from what i have seen. It does give a serious boost for that.

Because you are coming from a fairly overclocked system any of the quads may be slower at single threaded apps(as games tend to be and i do not see then being quad ready for a while, hell they cant even get DX 10 optimized).

I can almost bet photoshop would be faster on the 8400 as most of its filters do not use more then 2 cpus. There may be some exceptions.

The quad core is more future proof as thats where software should be heading, but for the next year or 2 the 8400 is going to be faster at most things. If you plan to ever encode video a quad shines(but the price difference starts to get up there, can you upgrade this laptop later?).

Video wise, 2 mobile 8800GTX's are fast, that's for sure. This may be slightly offset by the higher resolution of your screen. I have not used SLI, so i have no clue how well it scales(this is your area😛) with all games, but Nvidia tries to keep on top of the newest stuff. You should get a boost.

As mentioned above that screen resolution may be hard on the eyes with a 17 inch screen. If you do not have glasses yet, you may just need them.

Hard drive wise, more space is good. especially if you are running vista + games. Notebook drives have come a long way since the 60 gig 22+ms access time thing I have sitting here.

To sum it all up, you are getting desktop power in a notebook with no need for a UPS. how can you go wrong(well you can go bankrupt, but at least you have a fast computer...).

 

[Maziar]

Thanks for all the replies guys, really appricated it Well as for 1920x1200 resolution,i wont set it as default for my screen,i will use it only for gaming,also i have glasses too 😀

About the E8400 vs Quads and upgrade paths, well the good thing about SAGER NP9262 is that u can upgrade it, for example SAGER NP9261 had 2x7950GTX which could be upgraded to 2x8800MGTX.So i think i will go with the quad now,because the Q9450 is @ 2.6 with 12mb cache and E8400 is @ 3.0 with 8mb cache

Also about 2 8800MGTX vs my current 8800GTX,well i see many benchmarks and because 2 8800MGTX are mostly a 8800GT(Or lets say they fall between the old 8800GTS and current 8800GT 512) then even it wont perform bad, but i will get 2 and i think 2 of these cards outperform many current single cards out there.

Thanks again for all the replies,really appreciated

 

[nukemaster]

With it being very similar to a 8800GTS(the 640MB on with 512 ram and a higher shader speed and the 256-bit memory controller like that one the 8800GTS 512)

I do not think you will be disappointed.

8800GTS(640) SLI review
http/www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=335&type=expert&pid=6

 

[Maziar]

Yep 2 of this little beasts beat my 8800GTX and i get the change to play @ 1920x1200 :d thanks for the link