H3lp! Notebook purchase

[=Someone=]

So, yea - having f***ed up my last one, I need to buy a new notebook again. :(

Initally I wanted to buy the ASUS G50V (http://www.redcoon.at/index.php/cmd/shop/a/ProductDetail/pid/B161079/cid/8021/refId/geizhals/et_cid/1/et_lid/2/), but as it turns out, they don't have those in stock in Austria/Germany yet and I'd have to wait 4 weeks till it ships.

That'd be 4 weeks till I can start to finish Panaka and several models I promised to weight and till I can start to play and ultimately work for TE. 4 weeks too much to be forced to twiddle my thumbs, tbh. :|

So now I'm looking for an equally good and cheap notebook to buy that can play Crysis in decent settings (I need that for TE) and costs 1200,-- Euro maximum.

Any ideas?

[Supa]

HP laptops are good... I know most people freak out when I mention HP because they had "bad experiences" with it. But you can get an extremely good laptop that can run Crysis on medium at least for about that much.

[Oliver1799]

I have a Dell XPS 1530 with extra RAM and I love it. It plays Crysis nicely and all the reviews seem to indicate that it's reliable in the long term.

[Lindsey]

I'd check out the refurbished "outlet" section on dells site and see if you can find a good XPS laptop or something. I've been quite happy with the two that I have :)

[Ender]

Agreed with Oliver and Lindsey. I got a refurbished XPS 1530 and it's been running pretty well for the most part. Reinstalled XP on it and got some XP drivers.

The only issues I have are some performance issues on some higher end games, though that may be due to my video card memory size (256mb).

[=Someone=]

Got to say, I'm a bit amazed how popular Dell is. When I started looking, I was kinda thrown off by the fact that Dell still sells their gaming notebooks with the rather old nVidia 8700 GT.

Different story with price gap when buying a refurbished model tho (I didn't know about those, tbh), but as it turns out, neither Dell US nor Dell UK got any good XPS in store atm. :(

I wish I lived in the States right now, Dell Austria doesn't even know refurbished notebooks exist...

[Supa]

Go with XP. You can get a notebook with a 512 MB Geforce 8600 GS. Not the highest card, but you'd need to be willing to spend near 1500 (US dollars) for a higher end card like the 9400 which is what they put in their high performance notebooks.

[Deathspike]

HP has a great customer support (holy ****, i actually used one once - and they knew exactly what was going on), so there are no issues there. The quality of the machines is really good, the keyboard and mouse pad respond very well and the designs are very slick. HP machines are one of the only machines with a good keyboard layout which doesn't compromise on anything. The screens are clear with a decent angle, lets face it - the 2000 USD one's have a far better screen.

My machine is a HP Pavillion dv9790 and i'm quite happy with it - running Vista with full gaming capability without any sort of problems. Crysis is no problem whatsoever, DX10 is quite good in that perspective. I would fully recommend to go for a HP machine, quality over quantity. Dell is lacking in every perspective, its a machine of compromises. Thats my opinion, at least.

[TigerZeta]

HP has a "great contract" with Microsoft that makes it nigh impossible to downgrade to XP from Vista, missing SATA drivers, missing useful functionality (some keyboard buttons go poof, etc with XP). So keep that in mind.

[Hawk]

Good things come to those who wait.

[=Someone=]

Just found this one: ASUS G2SV-7R011J (http://geizhals.at/eu/a348755.html)

pro: 2,6 Ghz dual core
con: 9650 GS

Anyone got experience with ASUS and the 9650m GS?

or maybe this one? ASUS G71V-7S033C (http://geizhals.at/eu/a364933.html)

pro: 9700 GT
con: 2,4 Ghz

or this one? ASUS L50VN-AK005C (http://geizhals.at/eu/a364969.html)

pro: 2,53 Ghz, best resolution so far: 1680x1050, Blu-ray (not that I really need it)
con: 9650 GT with 1GB vRAM? (Really a con?)

[Frog]

HP has a great customer support (holy ****, i actually used one once - and they knew exactly what was going on), so there are no issues there. The quality of the machines is really good, the keyboard and mouse pad respond very well and the designs are very slick. HP machines are one of the only machines with a good keyboard layout which doesn't compromise on anything. The screens are clear with a decent angle, lets face it - the 2000 USD one's have a far better screen.

My machine is a HP Pavillion dv9790 and i'm quite happy with it - running Vista with full gaming capability without any sort of problems. Crysis is no problem whatsoever, DX10 is quite good in that perspective. I would fully recommend to go for a HP machine, quality over quantity. Dell is lacking in every perspective, its a machine of compromises. Thats my opinion, at least.

i have the same laptop, so i agree, its good :P

[=Someone=]

i have the same laptop, so i agree, its good :P
For some weird reason, I can't find any place where the dv9790 is available within the EU. Plus it only has a 8600... pfft.

pfft.

hehe

[Deathspike]

HP has a "great contract" with Microsoft that makes it nigh impossible to downgrade to XP from Vista, missing SATA drivers, missing useful functionality (some keyboard buttons go poof, etc with XP). So keep that in mind.

Its not impossible at all, and it isnt only common for HP machines. You need to add SATA drivers to the windows XP CD (or get SP3 as install disk), otherwise no cd can ever find the sata disk.


For some weird reason, I can't find any place where the dv9790 is available within the EU. Plus it only has a 8600... pfft.

Check out one of the newer models of the same series. Its decency remains, the design of the thing does not change at all - only hardware gets upgraded. There is your improved 8600..

[Supa]

How much is 1600 US dollars translated to euros?

This is what I got off the HP site. This is a dv7t, entertainment powerhouse.

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T9400 (2.53 GHz)
17.0" diagonal WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050)
4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
320GB 7200RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (160GB x 2) with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection

That's the important stuff.

[Supa]

Scratch that.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3329744-64354-64354-3725232-3763148.html

You can probably upgrade the GHz. But it comes with an 8800 GTS. :P

[=Someone=]

Check out one of the newer models of the same series. Its decency remains, the design of the thing does not change at all - only hardware gets upgraded. There is your improved 8600..
The only affordable one I found was the HP Pavilion dv7-1045eg (http://geizhals.at/eu/a350468.html) and with 1141,34, it's as expensive as the ASUS, which has a faster cpu and a better gfx card.

[Supa]

Look at the one I found. D; It's big, but it should fit your needs just fine. :>

[Hawk]

How much is 1600 US dollars translated to euros?

Well at this moment it equals 1,095.37 euros.

[=Someone=]

Scratch that.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF06b/321957-321957-3329744-64354-64354-3725232-3763148.html

You can probably upgrade the GHz. But it comes with an 8800 GTS. :P
I really don't know what to think of the 8800 GTS. According to these benchmarks (http://www.notebookcheck.com/Mobile-Grafikkarten-Benchmarkliste.735.0.html), it's superior to a 9700 GT, but at the same time, it obviously sucks major balls at some games (note the results of the FEAR benchmark).

[Deathspike]

Well if you want the best hardware for the lowest price, don't look at HP. Everything is quality material and you pay for that, however you never need to worry about the keyboard breaking, the screen not being properly visible, overheating.. etc.