help me decide: z70v or Z71v

There is no doubt about it that my first notebook will be an ASUS, but I cant decide which one to get. I had originally decided on the 1.8ghz Z71v but as I read more about the Z70v I started considering it more. I have a decent desktop so I really don’t need the 128mb graphics card that the Z71v offers and having never owned a notebook before I want to make sure it is very portable. I love the construction of the Z70v, I like that it’s a bit lighter and has a bit better battery life than the z71v but I always come back to the 64mb graphics. Although Id rather have an ATI gpu than an nVidia (don’t ask me why its just preference) I get worried that I wont even be able to play current rts’s like dawn of war. I guess I would love to get the Z70v and I will if I know that ill be fine with the 64mb gpu.
Ive posted questions about the x600 on a few threads but I never seem to get any replies that vary detailed. My graphic needs are like I said above rts/rpg gaming, and some solid modeling (eg. Autocad, rhino).
Please help make my decision easier.

 

Actually I think the Battery life for the z71v is a bit longer, unless I got it mixed up. Someone help?

If you can wait until Mid August, the so called, x700va should be ouot, as it has a comparable card to the z71v, the x700 with 128mb of vram.

There are dozens of threads about the z70v here

 

Unfortunately I cant wait, and I dont really want to spend that much more when they raise the price for the refresh. I just need to know if the 64mb will be fine for what I need to do. I also plan on having 1gig of system ram so if that helps with the hypermemory function in the ati card than let me know.

 

I know there are tons of threads its casue its such a great notebook and really covers all the bases for a really good price.

 

The z70v will do fine.

It has hypermemory so the modeling should be good.

RTS and RPG will run fine, the FPS games may lag a bit more, but on low res, FPS will do fine.

For mid Resolution RTS/RPG's, the x600 will do great.


The z71v isn't bad looking, I find it more eye catching then the z70v, as its pretty different. And the size isn't really noticable.

I'd go for the z71v :asus:

 

I dont have any problem with the way the Z71 looks. I actually went and checked it out in the store a week before I even looked up teh Z70. It only looks worse compared to the Z70, its not as crisp looking and that carbon fiber chassis is really cool. I guess I should go with my gut, if the fact that the Z70 doesnt have a 128mb card keeps nagging at me then I shouldnt get it. But I thought that the Z70 was that much more portable (lighter thinner). Man choosing my first notebook is nothing like getting a desktop, Ive been researching this choice for about a month straight, I just want to make sure I make the right decidion.

 

Im going to have to go see them side by side in the shop and then make a decision. Ive the Z70 is that much better looking then thats the one ill get, but if its not as great as I hear (ive only seen the Z71 in person not the Z70) then its Z71. Thanks for the advice.

 

If you plan to play game...128MB is important.

Though you could get by with 64MB, that is the same delima I had when I bought my laptop a few years back thinking 16MB was a lot. That quickly went to dust the minute I got it when StarCraft came out....hehehehe

Anyhow...

If you could wait for Z70V refresh, then wait for it. If you can't wait for it. Go with Z71V

 

Z71v specs edge out current Z70v specs, but the Z70v is thinner, lighter, has a better screen, and in my opinion looks better. There are several happy users of both systems, so whichever one you choose, you'll be fine.

 

I was in your position Furiousfairs. I wanted the much hyped Z71v, until the Z70V came along. Trust me, there are so much plus's than minus's. The only "minus" is the video card, but is it really a minus? People may consider the video card as a minus, but come on, it's an x600- totally better than any integrated graphics that you find in a random HP, toshiba, or whatever at a local Best Buy. It's a great card, it'll play plenty of high end games without a hiccup.
As for the styling- it's totally wins over the Z71V, and has an awesome screen. I haven't seen a complaint about the Z70V on any forum. Actually, if you do a search right now, there's no one even complaining about the Z70V. I even put out a thread on that topic: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=20349

 

yo watch wut u say mad mike...certain toshibas such as the m40 class and the qosmio and the p30 have great gpus. i for one noe becuz i have m40 sf3 with go 6600. and as for the asus z71v, it is a good laptop. i am (sorry was) personally an ati fan but now after i bought a laptop with the go6600 i am leaning towards nvidia. the z71v is really good when configured and it doesnt look too bad either. heck the only reason i didnt get it was cuz the store didnt have ne left and i cudnt wait a day longer.

 

I am happy with my z71v.Looks great if not sleek.Add 2 gb Ram and 7200k rpm HDD and you have a 'Ferrari Maranello' on your hands

 

Im set on getting the Z70v. That 6600 nVidia card is nice but Ill be hanging on to my desktop (which still does well against D3 and HL2) so this laptop wont be for heavy gaming, just work and light rts gaming.
I find I can play rts games anywhere but for fps games I need to be at my desk and on my computer...wierd. Anyway I saw both the Z70 and Z71 side by side running a video benchmark test and Im going with the Z70 for looks, the fact that its slightly more portable and its still powerfull despite the X600 64mb gpu.

 

Well the current Z70V actually has 64+64 dedicated = 128mb of video. Some earlier specs on it listed it as 64mb, but when it was released it was corrected as 128.

 

Sorry, didnt mean to offend. What I meant was going to a local Best Buy and looking at the laptops in the same price range. Most of them are just shared memory. The Z70V can easily blow them away with it's GPU. Best Buy is known to have a lot of low - mid range laptops, I guess its the ones that really sell. A lot of regular users buy in the $900-1400 price range. If I was Best Buy, I'd probably do the same too.

I love the Qosmio also, beautiful screen and sound- too bad it's in such a gigantic form factor.

 

I went to look at the Qosmio's. i thought id be alot more impressed they seemed to be cheaply made compared to asus. and the keyboards were the worst i have ever tried. It was so mushy i couldnt imagine ever typing on it.

 

It has 64mb of dedicated. Anything more is just shared memory.

 

Yes I know, but its 64 dedicated+64 shared- that's with a total of 128. It does make a difference.

If you check out other laptops that have 64 or 128 mb of video (which is shared), are you going to list the specs of the computer as "0 mb of video"?

 

I just didn't find it that clear. Those laptops with shared memory clearly say they're an integrated solution or that the memory is shared. When you're dealing with powerful GPU's such as the x600, the additional shared memory is almost useless because it's so slow. The reason GPU's have onboard memory is because there is a major bottleneck in feeding the GPU data from the RAM. But AGP and PCI-Express support shared memory natively anyway (that's what the "AGP aperture size" and "fast-writes" in your bios is all about). So essentially, you have way more than just 64mb shared, but who cares.. it's uselessly slow. When I talk to people about my computer, I say it has 1gb of RAM, i don't say, i have 3gb of RAM (1gb of RAm and 2gb paged virtual memory on my hard drive, because the latter is useless in terms of performance)

 

Hmmm... Useless? Really? I'm sure that a video card with 128MB of dedicated memory is faster than a card that is '64+64' as in the Z70V. But on the other hand, I'm also pretty sure that a '64+64' would be faster than a plain '64'. We'd, of course, have to run some real world tests rather than rely on what anyone thinks, but I'd care to wager....

As far as the virtual memory thing is concerned, I think that's a very good analogy, but probably not nearly to the same to degree for video cards. The sustained data throughput rate of the fastest (notebook) hard drives can be measured in the tens of megabytes per second, while data retrieval from RAM is measured in gigabytes per second - a difference of a couple of orders of magnitude. While there's a big difference between dedicated video RAM and system memory, would it be a couple of orders of magnitude different? (I don't know, I'm asking.)