Highly undecisive for Asus purchase decision

Ok at now only two choices in the laptops I want
ASUS Z71V-S and Dell 9300

Dell has the 6800go
Asus has the 6600go
Both have 1G ram, Pentium M 740 (Could chose other for Asus though)
Dell 80G 4200RPM, Asus 40G 5200RPM

Now with canadian prices, I reached a 220$ price difference between the two.

Thing is, I play BF2 a lot, the game just came out, but im selling my PC to get a laptop (Life style changes, I cant keep a PC much longer, plus im gonna travel across the world ever 4 months)

The Dell has a nice graphic card, but the size of the thing is HUGE!!!!
The Asus looks sleeker and more portable.

Im just afraid to lose the fun I had with BF2 if I get a 6600.

I really dont know. I come for a biased opinion on Asus cause only my roomate is pushing me to get the dell since it still has a nice big monitor and better graphic card.


What are your opinions on this?

 

well the 9300's gpu will be much better for BF 2 which is one of the most demanding games currently out. The Go 6600 is roughly the same as a regular 6600 not GT, though it will still be slower. I'd look for a benchmark of nVidia's 128 MB 6600 for BF2 at tomshardware or other site and subtract a few fps from that to roughly estimate the performance for the Go 6600. The Asus is more portable with its smaller screen size, but atleast in the US it is also more expensive since Dell gives very large coupons. So my advice is go for whichever is cheapest since both will offer good gaming now, and the money you save can be invested in a ps3 or xbox 360 or something when those come out.

 

I managed to stretch the difference by 400$
I didnt realize I could remove the windows xp purchase from the asus custom build system.

I think ill end up with Asus
Plus dell only has 4200rpm and 7200rpm, one's too slow, the other's too loud and hot

 

What's the set up on your current PC? I played the BF2 demo on my PC (3.4Ghz P4, 512 RAM, 6600) and I was surprised that it ran fairly fluid at 1024 with medium to high settings. Of course it will be a step back if you are used to turning everything up high with a 6800, but you should still be able to get decent framerates if you're willing to scale back some of the settings.

Let us know how it goes.

 

Current pc is 3200xp, 2G DDR ram, x800xl 256mb

Everything is at max
I dont mind stepping back a bit though, it's the cost of portability and my lots of travel, but hey ill be able to play BF2 all over the world :O


Hey small question, if I buy every part seperately, is it easy to put it together on the barebone?

I can build desktop PCs with my eyes closed.

 

Check out this thread by ocn:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=19367

He has a link to some online assembly guides. Looks pretty easy, though I haven't tried building one myself.

 

I think ill build it myself
the place selling the parts requires 7-10 business day to build it and a deposit. Im only gonna be in the area next weekend and dont feel like waiting even more after. So Ill get there next weekend and buy all the parts myself.


LAST question
Im still hesitating between CPUs and ram amount
CPU I think ill get 1.7ghz since there doesnt seem to be much difference in performance anyways..
but for the ram
1G is touchy cause I like to run without a swap on the HDD
BF2 uses like... 1.2G of ram
Can I only buy one stick of 1G DDR and buy another one later? or I gotta run it in dual?
Or is the performance of running in dual DDR2 really good?

 

You can run on 1 stick fine.

Also, Dual Channel does not have a noticable effect on the Sonoma platform..

 

if I OC my Pentium-M at 533mhz, will my ram need to be 533mhz?
and if so, can DDR2 run solo? (I assume you answered only for DDR1)

 

yeah u can always run with one stick of ram. like coriolis said, dual channel doesnt have a noticeable performance boost on this platform. only like 3% or something.

 

Unless you know you'll never need more than 1gb in your system....... I wouldn't even go w/ two 512's ........ the price doesn't justify it and neither does the performance you'll pick up from the dual channel mode......... Now if you KNOW 1gb is enough, I'd get 2 x 512 and you'll know you're getting everything out of the system.

 

Actually, on my current PC, I reach about 1200mb ram usage (I run without a swap). That's because of BF2

I know the price wouldnt justify the 2G though, but this laptop will be lugged around with me around the world for a full year minimum as my sole PC machine.

but again I ask, if I get a 533mhz DDR2 stick, can it run solo? or the DDR2 run solely on dual?
Also, if my CPU is 533fsb, does my ram HAVE to be 533? or it can run at 400mhz? (meaning there is a divider somewhere)

 

You can run single pieces of memory, either DDR2 400 or 533MHz...but it must be DDR2. However if you are running a 533MHz processor, you should use 533MHz memory as well.

The only advantage of running two pieces of memory is the Dual Channel function that doubles the bandwidth. The memory isn't Dual Channel actually, it is just to get this function to be supported by the chipset, you need to run two pieces.