Should I look elsewhere?

Hi, I have been following the G1 since Christmas and am anticipating the Santa Rosa refresh, the G1S. It appeared that all the reviews I read of the G1 and the 7700 held it in very high esteem and I was about to purchase the G1 when I decided to wait for the refresh. However, all the benchmarks Im seeing on the 8600GT do not appear to be the same step up in performance, especially since it only has 256mb VRAM and not 512 such as the Compal IFL 90, among others. To summarize, will the new Asus G1S be most powerful, gaming wise, 15.4" laptop?
I know it still might be to early to tell, but speculation from others would be helpful.

 

I think the G1 is a really nice laptop and it will surely handle whatever game you throw at it now. Plus the price of a new G1P is fairly cheap, about 1700 shipped. I guess the question would be are you willing to pay an extra 300 dollar for the G1S or just pay 1700 for the G1P. According to benchmarks the C2D Santa Rosa is up to par with desktops...but that just what i read from another thread.

 

I've actually been wondering about this, and I'm sure its been discussed somewhere but why is it that the Compal has a 512 and the G1 only a 256? nVidia's site only lists a 512 as an option for the 8600GT. How much of a gaming power difference will this represent?

 

I think his question was "Is the G1S going to be as powerful compared to other 15.4 inchers as the G1 was?" and the answer is that it remains to be seen. If in fact the card does come in a 256 variety, which I am not sure of [see note below], I believe Asus made the right choice. They had to choose between pushing the G1S up to $2150 or more and the G2S into the $2300 category. That goes against the sub-2000 dollar mean machine that the G series is supposed to be. Indeed pre launch price estimates are above that 2000 dollar theshold but: A) not that much and B) pre release prices are always exorbitant compared to the price of the system 2 or 3 months down.

Lastly, on a less objective note, I believe the 8600 GT would be hard pressed to utilize a whole 512MB, it COULD use it, and from what I have seen to a pretty good gain, but not worth the extra money. The same thing with the Go 7700, I believe that it was noted that 512 was not really able to be really squeezed for every MegaFlop it could handle on the mobile platform. This is because of heat/voltage issues and more importantly the 128-bit memory interface. With that bottleneck in the system having 512 in that card is akin to putting 4GB of RAM in a computer with a 32-bit processor. It will use the full potential of the system but a quarter of it would still go unused and with no options in the middle it was probably best to go with the cheaper option.

In conclusion, will it be the most powerful...probably not. How much more powerful will the other systems (running 512) be? not much. I would expect 3dMarks in the 4200s for the G1S and the others about 4500. There is an increase there but let me say this:
The G1 has a very heat efficient chassis and the 8600M GT overclocks like a monster. If you catch my drift.

EDIT: Keep in mind that this could be a typo that has simply been copy/pasted over all of the websites from Asus.

EDIT 2: See here it says "Maximum memory" not how much has to be in it.

EDIT 3: I have submitted a question to nVidia about this particular issue and about the 8600M GT in general, to see if we can get any help knowing what to expect.

EDIT 4: nVidia said that the only ones who can answer questions about their cards are the manufacturers themselves. I think that they have a privacy agreement with their clientele.

 

Until both have been released and benchmarked, it'd hard to compare the two. 512mb of Video Ram sounds good, yes, but will it be able to use it?

 

Those are very valid and insightful points. I was thinking along those lines, thank you all for your responses.

 

Hope things go well! Both are great machines you can't go too wrong!

 

According to what I've read, ASUS decided to go with 256 because tests showed that performance gain with 512 (vs. 256) is marginal, and TurboCache can kick in adding an extra 256 if needed be.

However if I had the option I would still prefer to have 512 than 256 even if it's a bit more expensive.

Cheers!
RayanMX