For $1000USD, which Asus should I get?

The only ones that appeal to me are the:

-N61JQ-X1 on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/N61JQ-X1-16-I...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1268293428&sr=1-1

-G60VX-RBBX05 from BestBuy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+...lack/9556072.p?id=1218124204092&skuId=9556072

-G72GX-RBBX05 from BestBuy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+...lack/9556125.p?id=1218124208054&skuId=9556125

and, -G60JX-RBBX05 from BestBuy: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+...lack/9736955.p?id=1218164036446&skuId=9736955

My only intention is to be able to play Starcraft 2 on ultra settings, not have a BSOD or overheating machine, and to be able to have a future-proof computer. I've been reading and reading and reading, and there doesnt seem to be a definitive answer on which is good.

What would you guys say is the best for my $1000price range? My favorite out of them all would be the amazon one.

If none of these is good, is there one available elsewhere for my range (xoticpc, etc.) ?

Thanks in advance!

 

http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Game...3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1268313859&sr=1-3 seems nice

 

I would say the N61 just because it has a i7 CPU but the GPU in it is weaker than the other models.
RTS's are more CPU dependent than GPU dependent.

 

that one. That's basically the best you can get for 1000. The screen is smaller than the other G models you listed which will help lessen the stress on the GPU allowing you to have higher graphic settings than the same card on a 17 inch screen. G series is also Asus' gaming series so go for that one.

 

I would recomend the G72GX-RBBX05 from Best Buy. I've had one for almost four weeks now, and so far it's awsome. There are a few dedicated threads on here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=432016
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=453437
and if you are interested in real world gaming performance than THIS thread will be a good read: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=455755

The G71 from earlier is also a good laptop, but the screen is not as good as the G72 and also, I would be hesitent to buy a refurb product myself.
I've had no problem running any of my games, old and new alike. Wings of Prey runs smooth and looks beautiful and even Dirt 2 and Need For Speed: Shift run smoothly. Older racing titles such as Nascar Racing 2K3 and rFactor are no match for this laptop, and I've had no trouble with any of my MAME ROMS yet. (not gonna answer any questions about those though, for obvious reasons)
For $999 plus tax the G72GX-RBBX05 is my choice for you to get the most out of your purchase. Read the above threads and I think you'll agree.

P.S: This is not to scare you off, but if you do pull the trigger on the G72, turn off the sleep mode. The only real "bug" with the laptop involves sleep. Turn it off and you are good to go. Also, and this would really apply to any of those choices you gave, but get a good cooler too. The G60's would actually be worse in the temp dept, as they are more compact and have an even harder time dissapating heat.

 

If you want a laptop ONLY for gaming buy Asus N61 series (within ur price tag), else for other works you will have tough time as the screen resolution is a crap ie, 1366x768. Infact Asus has only 1 laptop of FHD upto 16" screen size with a price tag of $1440 (approx).

 

See the quote above yours. This isn't $1440 and it has the FHD screen.

 

A budget and you want a future proof computer? heh...

 

Its not a model by Asus, rather the store modifies its configuration (downgrade from original G51JX-A1) and sells it with lower price and reduced warranty

 

If I were spending $1000 and wanted to game at all. I'd go for the G60JX. The i5 is very fast, and the 360M is quite a bit faster than the 5730... plus the G60JX might (not sure) have a second HDD bay.

Though if multi-touch and USB3 are important to you, you might want to go with teh N61JQ. They're both good machines.

 

OP here. So which of these current models would be best for SC2 (if SC2 came out today) ?

I do surf, watch movies, ya know regular stuff. But the only game I'll really be playing that'll hog the cpu/gpu would be SC2, and maybe dolphin emulator of pcsx2 if that works..

Thanks again

 

Any of these laptops can run any of those.

 

G60 or Nseries... hmmm... 360m or 5730 hmm... or GTX 260m? hmmmmmmm

So many choices. Does i5 trump any core2duo though?

 

GTS 360M seems to be better than both the 5730 and the GTX 260M because it uses less power and therefore is cooler. And you can overclock it by at least like 30%. Yes, the i5 is better than Core2Duo. That's so last gen! I had that like 4 years ago.

 

Some of us don't have money to burn and have to be price conscious about what we buy.

Yet, the ATI 5730 is the only one on that list with native support for DX11.

 

How does the 1366x768 and glare look on these models?

 

Good question. I've been wondering that also, cuz ppl keep capping on the 1366x768 displays on the Asus notebooks that I like. Also, what does "native direct x 11" mean? Does that mean on the other cards, we cant upgrade the software to dx11?

Thanks

 

Id like to see some benches on the i5 430m vs the core 2duo p8700.
My guess is it would be negligible, on the other hand efficiency and cooling should be better on the i5 but i wouldnt simply assume that either in real world applications.

As for the video card debate, again im not sure your going to see any real world difference between the 3 although i do think your going to see higher frames from the gtx 260m and the whole "GTS 360M seems to be better than both the 5730 and the GTX 260M because it uses less power and therefore is cooler. And you can overclock it by at least like 30%." statement seems silly to me, if you OC it then your right back to using more power and generating alot more heat.

 

To put it simply, only DX11 cards (ATI 5000 series GPU for now) can pull DX11 Tesselation, multi-threaded rendering, and compute shaders features. If a card is not a DX11 card, it can't do those.

 

What is a "DX11" card? I thought DirectX was software which you could just upgrade, not the hardware itself... Should I worry about it if I'm only gonna play SC2?

 

Direct X is an API developers use to send instructions to the video card. While it is true that the Direct X SDK is software, what is meant by a card being a DX11 or DX whatever is that the video card supports all the features of the API for that version of the API. As far as I know SC2 will not support any DX11 features. If all you're worried about is SC2 and games like it any of those laptops will be sufficient.

As far as future proof, it's not possible. Something can couple out in a month completely unexpectedly and make every current generation of that particular technology obsolete.

 

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX#DirectX_11:

some comments;
1) compute shader features (directcompute, openCL) run on dx10 hardware and not just 11
2) the bottleneck in 99% of situations is the GPU, making mutlicore optimizations negligible (offloading flops to the CPU = no-go)

the only benefit is tessellation. that will help in high-res textures, but a weak memory bus will cripple it before it can provide any benefit (128/gqdr5 and 256/gddr3). it's the reason why my 4890/dx10 can beat out my friends 5770/dx11 at 1080p+maxed by almost 25% in bc2. note that both cards are at the same price point.

a 30% oc on the gts360m? even if you oc it the impossible 650 from asus' 550, that's 100/550 = 18%. a gtx260m can go up usually around 20% from asus 500 to 600.

a 50W saving in power on both idle and load (5830 vs 4890 desktop)... say you keep it running 24/7 - that comes out to 24*50*30 = 36kWh. with the average power cost in ontario at 8c/kWh, that saves you a whopping $2.88 a month. given that the difference in price is $50 or so, you would need to idle it for 2 full years (4 years if you turn it off at night) to have it pay off. in a laptop, expect maybe 1/5th of that.

running cooler, mostly peace of mind. nvidia/intel wouldn't rate the chips so high if they didn't think they were capable of it. sure, it may bring the lifespan down a bit, but keep in mind they end up paying warranty.

edit1: dx11 might get a lot more interesting once nvidia releases their cards, and i strongly suggest holding out til then if you plan on going that route. don't forget dx10.1 isn't 100% compatible with dx10 hardware.

 

Where did you read this?
I know other GPGPU APIs have been emerging in this recent years, but I guess you don't mean to use compute shader as substitute for GPGPU, do you?

 

ahh, i did confuse it with gpgpu

http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/tag/compute-shader/
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...ster-than-DX101-due-to-Local-Data-Share/News/

i don't expect it to hit mainstream until dx11 cards are as common as dx9 today.

 

If all this computer is going to be doing is gaming then get the one with the fastest graphics chip! I would look at DX 10.1 as a minimum, but that is just an opinion. DX 9 as the mainstream isn't changing anytime soon. As far as the i7 that comes in handy if you do any video encoding/decoding but for most games it's a waste. Of course the turbo boost really is a nice feature for multi-core cpus.

 

Thanks for the helpful words, guys.

So which of these computers would be the best for running SC2? Also, which of these would be the best for pcsx2 or dolphin emulators?

Thanks again