GeForce 8800M or Dual GeForce 8700M

[PenGuin1362]

I'm gettin ready to get a new laptop however I'm not sure what to do for a graphics card. Company is Alienware, there are two different laptops, both are pretty much the same except for their graphics cards, and other things. One offers Dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT, SLI and DX10 of course >_>. The other has one 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX. The M15x (one with 8800 card) is about $200 more than the M9750 (one with the dual 8700). only other differences are the m15x is a 2.5 processor (6mb cache), 1gb turbo memory and the m9750 has 2.16 processor (4mb) cache, no turbo memory.

So my question is, what would be the better choice here?

[Xetsuei]

Get something other than alienshit.

[PenGuin1362]

what, an hp with the same specs for $5,000? no thanks >_>

[Mr Buckshot]

Trust me, SLI in laptops is not only expensive but also makes the laptop very prone to death by overheating. The cooling fan just isn't enough. Think of it as a PC version of the first-gen Xbox 360.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4290

It packs the 8800M into a 15.4" package - I recommend this for you.

The 8700M GT is really a higher-speed version of the 8600 - so if you truly want a graphical beat in your laptop, go for the 8800 instead, which is far more powerful than the 8700 (and far more battery-draining). A single 8800 beats dual 8700s, and consumes less battery.

One more thing, if you want a laptop, why do you want such powerful hardware in it? It's going to make the laptop heavy, very loud, and have low battery life - such laptops will probably spend most of their time plugged into the wall, in which case you might as well buy a desktop. For me, portability and battery are important, so I'm willing to sacrifice horsepower for improved battery and lighter weight (I bought an LG P300 with a Geforce 8600M GS).

Xetsuei's right, Alienware should be avoided, as should be HP/Compaq and Voodoo. Dell is improving, so that's an option (XPS M1530 looks good, as does the Vostro 1500). ASUS and Acer are also very reliable, wallet-friendly manufacturers, often giving you lots of bang for the buck in laptops. Cyberpower and iBuypower have the best prices so far but their reliability is questionable.

[PenGuin1362]

i work for dell and i still refuse their products. I don't need a laptop really for that much mobility, i just need one for college (easier to move back and forth, saves room in dorms), it can stay plugged into the wall as long as it wants. The reason for such power is because i do more than games and the kind of work i'm doing, i want to be able to do with no limitations. which means have what i need running without the computer dying. But thanks for that insight on the graphics card, that definitely helped me out. Unfortunately to get everything i want is only $3,000 from alienware, to get something even close from any other company is around $4,000 to $5,000. but i'll check out acer, also the link you posted looks interesting too. i'll look into that as well. thanks for the info buckshot

[Mr Buckshot]

Ah I see, Masters had the same situation in his dorm, and was using a desktop-replacement style laptop so that it could be moved around more easily. I know, it's not fun to pack a monitor, case, keyboard, speakers, mouse, and cables into a big bag and lug it around, which is why LAN parties don't happen very often in my neighborhood.

Alienware has poor reliability and customer support. Much like my dad does when he's buying a car, I often do a bit of research into the brand's reputation and the product's functionality if I'm buying something expensive that will be frequently used (i.e. laptops, PDAs, etc).

Well, go for it, just avoid Alienware. I recommend Clevo, Asus, Acer, MSI, and possibly Sager. Also, a number of companies actually sell Clevo and MSI notebooks with different badges, so look out for that.

$3000 to spend on a laptop...lucky! My dad has never spent over $2000 on any of his business laptops. Heh, reminds me of the time in 2000, when we paid $2000 for a 12" sony vaio with a 1.4Ghz AMD Duron, 256 MB RAM, 8 MB ATI Rage, and 30 GB hard drive...

By the way, hope you won't mind the loud-ass fans, and try to use one of those under-clocking utilities for when you're not gaming, otherwise there will be a serious heat problem.

[PenGuin1362]

i work in a room full of massive storage arrays, i can handle to the fan ;). but yea, when i'm not gaming or working under clocking shouldn't be a problem. but those companies never came to mind for some reason, thanks for the recommendation i'll definitely look into them.

[FRain]

Yeah, like Buckshot said, STAY AWAY FROM HP.

I've had the HP laptop for about 5 months now, and uh, it's a piece of junk.

It started well, it ran good for about a month, but then after that it started lagging behind (like 2 1/2 minutes to open an explorer window) and BSOD'd about 7 times in one day. It lags behind much more now, but hardly ever bsods.

Same happened with my Mom's HP. (different model tho)

[Reaper Man]

Similar happened with my Compaq (HP) laptop, with the BSOD issues, but I realized it was just an issue with the shitty new driver for the network adapter, so I rolled back that driver and it's been fine ever since. I also had problems with resuming from sleep, it took ages, but fixed that by defragging.

[Amit]

I find Toshiba laptops insanely reliable. Just don't pair any laptop with Vista. I believe I saw at Futureshop a month ago, a cool looking Toshiba laptop that had a red cover with some design on it with a GeForce 8700M GT for around $1100 CAD. The other specs were 2GB of RAM 160GB HDD and a 2.2GHz Centrino Duo. I'm not sure which CPU it was though.

[Zeph]

Now is not really a good time to buy a notebook because of a lack of great price/preformance GPU solutions.

[Mr Buckshot]

Unfortunately, Japanese-brand laptops are the least likely to have the insanely powerful GPUs in them. Those that do will be very, very, expensive - I guess that's a tradeoff for bullet-proof reliability. My dad paid $2500 USD for a Sony VAIO SZ 13.3" business laptop back in 2006...and it packs a Geforce 7400.

I'm using an LG P300 13.3" laptop with a Geforce 8600M GS. It's not as powerful as the GT version in many 15.4" laptops, but I like small and light laptops.

Actually Zeph, it's always a good time to get a laptop, barring those super powerful desktop replacements with Geforce 8800Ms. Midrange laptops can be had for pretty good prices this year.

[Patrickssj6]

Can't wait for GPU/CPU fusion by AMD...