Poll: W3j vs. A8Jm

There is nothing wrong with integrated. I can even play WoW on low settings with an old intel extreme graphics 2 that is on my notebook with the old 845 chipset (2 generations old). If the purpose of the laptop is to be used around campus, you should be using it for school related purposes only and I don't know of any school related programs that run slow on integrated. Gamer obsessed people who want to play WoW at full settings on their inspiron 9300 (I've seen millions of them in lecture halls) and not actually use their laptops for their original purpose can do whatever they want, but the smarter person would worry about battery life, heat, noise, and most of all FUNCTIONALITY. Yeah go play BF2 with your touchpad while the stupid Physics guy who is turning 80 lectures on about nothing important.

 

I'm not "gamer obsessed" or anything, I'm realistic in my views that eye candy should be left to the desktop, or else I would be looking at the 20" 20 pounders that came out recently. I just want my nimble 14" with a good graphics card so I don't puke everytime I run a game. I currently am using a almost 6 year old Compaq laptop and I can tell you, YES it runs WoW, but it gets to the point where theres NO POINT OF PLAYING IT IF YOU'RE SICK TO YOUR STOMACH LOOKING AT IT. Sorry about the rant, its just that I HATE people who labels people as "gamers". I would NOT be going where I'm going if I was your "gamer", period.

 

Man, i don't see how the x1600 can equal the 7600 when the 7600 has double the RAM. Is it because the x1600 has 1.5x more pixel pipelines than the 7600?

I bet if you actually loaded a game that exceeded far more than 256 mb of textures and stuff, the Go7600 would come out ahead of the x1600??

 

Oh, a far more important question: does anyone find either of the laptops (W3J or A8JM) gets too hot on the bottom, especially in one area??

I ask because my Satellite 5150 on the first day of operation already got hot in the same one area, and after 4 years, it now freezes unless I:
1) hit the keyboard at the 'J' key area
2) Tilt the bottom up and then down
3) Tilt the LCD up and down

Then it magically unfreezes and Xp continues running as if time unfroze..

anyways, sorry for the digression.. i just dont want my possible ASUS NB to do that stuff 4 years down the line!

 

Whoah, easy with the caps lock there sonny...

I honestly don't think people are lambasting you as being "gaming obsessed", I think you're just not being clear in what you require in a notebook. Several times now you've stated battery life is important, while eye candy is not so important because you have a gonzo desktop rig. Then when somebody suggests integrated graphics you seem upset with the idea...

You need to ask yourself (we can't answer this for you), do I need a laptop for gaming and occasional schoolwork, or a laptop for schoolwork and occasional gaming? If it's the latter, then perhaps a model with the nVidia go7400 would be a suitable comprimise.

<troll> And you're right of course, gamers never go onto to tertiary education. We're all escapee slackers from the latest Kevin Smith movie. I can understand your resentment of being labeled a "gamer"... you don't seem to hold them in very high regard. </troll>

 

I don't think silverwolf was intentionally labeling us or anyone as 'gamer', nor was he being a jerk about. Actually, I appreciate his viewpoint, as his point is simply that as students who supposedly want to buy a laptop to use around campus (portable) and yet powerful, we should consider those issues that he mentioned as primary and consider the graphics card secondary or tertiary.

Its a good slap back to reality because, really, there is no need to have a geforce 7600 or x1600 UNLESS you are going to be playing games (or programming graphics, or photoshopping i guess). I mean, I bought my Toshiba Satellite 5150 with Go 420 at a premium price 4 years ago, when it was TOP of the line, and immediately my NB was outdated and useless to play games as it didn't even have shader support... and yes, I bought it for college but also with hidden intentions of being a game machine (i didnt have a desktop, and still don't), but it was totally useless after 1 year as a game machine due to no shader support..

Although, I would like my NB to be upgradeable to vista and run vista at 110%, so I dunno about that Geforce Go 7200. At least a Go 7400 if i want it to be vista proof... which, I guess, rules out the HP DV2000 (a shame, i love its style and 5-6 hour battery life with the 12 cell batt), and this leaves the Asus 13" W7J then...

 

the major brands, unfortunately, cannot squeeze good graphics cards into 14" lappy's..but on that last subject the w7J will be 10x better than the dv2000 you may have to spend a slight premium but it will be worth it down the road

 

Actually, last time I checked Photoshop is CPU intensive rather than GPU intensive. As long as your GPU can handle 2D at your desired resolution (1600x1200+ for serious work), you're good to go. This is one of the reasons that Apple has always shipped very modest GPUs in their Powermacs, beloved of graphic designers everywhere. Heck, even an ancient GeForce4 card will handle it.

 

Sorry about the major rant there, it's just that I really don't like to be classified by people who has never met me. Its not because I don't hold gamers in high regard, heck I play games all day long sometimes, it's just the brand of "being a gamer, you're playing games all the time, not doing anything worthwhile" that bothers me. I pretty much got that idea from this quote from silverwolf0 "Gamer obsessed people who want to play WoW at full settings on their inspiron 9300 (I've seen millions of them in lecture halls) and not actually use their laptops for their original purpose can do whatever they want, but the smarter person would worry about battery life, heat, noise, and most of all FUNCTIONALITY. Yeah go play BF2 with your touchpad while the stupid Physics guy who is turning 80 lectures on about nothing important." I've bolded the words that bothered me that I think justifies me being pissed off.

Anyways, about the resentment towards integrated graphics, I guess it's a latent hatred developed by years of using a laptop that has crappy integrated graphics. I mean I do contradict myself a tad bit but since it's me buying the laptop and I have the money to do whatever I wish for now, I'll just justify myself on the graphics card issue as "I want to" =X

Sorry about this major shift in focus on this thread, I started it being a thread which you fellow NBR forum members can post your preference instead of discussing mine.

 

You've already made up your mind then W3J w/ Merom as you stated in the group buy thread.

Now Merom is a couple months away so that's something to think about....plus you have to wait for everyone in the group buy. But again, if you have the funds, by all means buy the W3J.

I would have waited for the group buy but I got an unbeatable deal for the A8Jm I have on order. I definately like the webcam feature as I do a lot of video chats with friends. Definately couldn't have waited 'til Merom at that price.

 

Yeah, I've pretty much decided on getting the W3j with Merom since I do have the cash to spend and would definitely take the quality for the extra hundred bucks or so. Thx for all your support guys, you've made my decision much easier by laying it out for me and all, I will definitely contribute more once I get my laptop =P

 

does anyone know when and where i can order the W3J with Merom? Newegg? In how many weeks?

 

There might be some interesting analysis on the A8Jm vs W3J video card performance in a few days

 

If you search around here and read some other threads, you'll find that current estimates are late Sept to October at the earliest for import date. There are other models that were released earlier in the Spring ahead of the W3 that are due to get the proc upgrades first.

 

You can be one of the first to order and get a discount if you're a student or faculty member with the Asus Group Buy!

 

I'm going to put my money on Thanksgiving (11/23) in the notebookreview.com pool

 

zydus- are you doing an extensive research on the difference between x1600 and 7600go? or is some else doing it and about to post it? I thought the consensus was that they were pretty much the exactly the same?

 

I think Mastha212 is the one doing the x1600 and Go7600 comparison...

 

ah icic, when is Mastha212 finishing his extensive comparision?

 

Me and Mastha are working closely together to bring the results. We are hoping to be done by Saturday. As of right now we are getting some very interesting/wierd results with HL2 and HL2: Lost Coast. They are very close...but keeping in mind the 7600 is clocked lower than the x1600, its pushing out some very good numbers

 

from what I know, the source engine is not multithreaded and does not support dual core processrors. They don't have any ways of working it out other than turning off multithreading altogether. My comp is officially capped at 30 fps and as you can see, it should be at 100 at all times.

 

i dont know what you are talking about but i've never heard of source being capped at 30 fps. On my A8J i easily get 100fps in cs:source without installing any special patches or anything

 

include some overclocking results too please

 

dont know what ur talking about...in cs:s i have a radeon 8500 that can do better than 30fps....it does like 70 all the time @ 10x7...so ur computer is messed up.

what computer are u on if not a notebook?

 

No worries. I initially skimmed over silverwolf's post... Looking back on it, I can see that he probably could have worded it better. Looking at his rep, I'm guessing he's been careless in phrasing his replies a few times now.

Well, I can understand where you're coming from there too. It's your money and your decision in the end, we can only offer advice... not tell you what you need, or should buy. That's where silverwolf went off the rails in his post, by telling you what "you should be using it for", then implying that people who didn't were stupid.

That's OK... just don't let it happen again. Or else.

 

Any A8Jm owners playing NFSMW? How many fps do you get (with native resolution 1280x768, using NFSMWRes) and what display settings do you apply?

 

trust me, you saw my system specs, I'm truly capped at 30fps. My fps hovers around 28-32. Heres a thread in the CS:S forums that discusses this problem.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=456160&highlight=dualcore

you can see that there's numerous people that are capped at 30fps -__- not cool for me lol.

 

well rest assured ur w3j will show u the joy of 100fps

 

yup with max settings too..cept for full out AA..then your fps may not be 100.

 

im getting very strange results with AA and AF in HL2 and HL2: Lost Coast...i dont see any major reduction in performance with AA and AF enabled...and that doesn't seem right

 

check mastha's review he explains why

 

I've been looking for a 14" laptop for sometime now. I think I'm getting the w3j after reading this thread. Thanks for the useful information guys!

 

If you can find one! newegg did a price drop recently to 1598 i think, but you cant upgrade cpu with them. If you're looking to upgrade, try Milestonepc.

 

Just wondering which notebook is heavier, between the W3J and A8Jm/p?

Has anyone actually measured these notebooks, and does the actual weight match the reported weight on the Asus website?