A few Notebook gaming questions

I just have a few newbie notebook gaming questions. I am not nearly as knowledgeable in the notebook field as in the PC field.

Basically, I want to build a really good notebook for a decent price, no more than $3000. I've been looking online for a long time now, dell, alienware, and a ton of reseller sites. I especially liked http://www.ibuypower.com notebooks; they are redicilously cheap but seem way too good to be true. They also unfortunately have a lot of negative reviews.

So my questions are, in terms of notebook gaming:
AMD or Intel?
SLI or single video card? (which ones anyways, I read the thread about the 7950 vs the 8700 or whatever it was)
Is there any point to 4gb of ram versus 2?
Vista or XP? Any specual problems with Vista/dx10 on laptops?
Are laptops buildable, in the way you can put your PC together?

Also, feel free to recommend any notebooks in the $3000 range if you know of any.

Thanks!

 

Intel Processor is good for gaming
SLI is better if you have money
I'm recommend 8700M GT SLi b'coz of it's DX10 support(Future proof)
Vista have some game playback issues,but DX10 games need Vista
I'm recommend TOSHIBA X205 SLi Notebook

 

A lot of people say that SLI and duo core don't even really make a difference, because applications/games don't even take advantage of them?

 

I agree with bigspin,

I also recommend the Dell Inspiron 1520.

Avoid Alienware, they're ass holes.. lol, sorry but it's true, I've had better success making pigs fly.

SLI is great but meh, seems gimmicky to me.

Have a 7950gtx in my Alienware, over heats, it's honestly deformed the laptop and left marks on my legs.

got a 8600m GT and it rocks, so I can only imagine how much better a 8700 can be.

You mentioned building your own? Get a barebone kit. Asus makes them, that way you can jam you're own cpu, graphics card and such in (notebook hardware only), pretty cool.

 

new games take advantage of dual core and sli(they are optimised for it)

 

A dual core processor is definitely a must for mobile gaming, I'd say get an Intel Socket-P Core 2 Duo (T7300 or T7500 preferably) so that you can upgrade to Penryn down the line.

For a video card, I'd get nothing less than a Go7950GTX or even an SLI system (SLI 8700M-GT's or SLI Go7950GTX's preferably). A single 8700M-GT might be acceptable, depending on how hard core you are about gaming.

I'd get 3GB (or 4GB if you get Vista 64bit) to have the best experience possible.

If you get a DX10 card, go ahead and get Vista so you can take advantage of it. Otherwise, XP is probably fine, and is lighter on your system resources. However, as new games and drivers come out, they will be optimized for Vista, so you'll want to upgrade eventually. Unless you have something in particular against Vista, you might as well get it now.

If portability is of the upmost importance, look at the Alienware M9750 (older tech, but great power and portability), the Clevo M570RU (only a single graphics card, but also quite portable, and upgradeable graphics via the MXM-IV slot), or even the HP 8710p (the least powerful, but extremely portable, with good weight and battery life, extremely well built, and good prices). If you're looking for pure performance, the Clevo D900c/D901c (Sager NP9261) and the Dell XPS M1730 are your only real options.

 

Thanks for the replies so far, I'm looking at all the laptops you have mentioned.

What about Quad core CPUs for laptops? I also see a few resellers offering those, specifically for the D901cs

 

They're probably not necessary for gaming. To be honest, a mobile processor would probably even be better, as it has more upgrade options. Something like a T7500 would be fine for most games.

 

Gotcha. Getting really annoyed how a lot of these resellers don't offer 8700s in SLI or just singles!

 

More powerful processors usually have in influence in games that go into the hundreds like Supreme Commander. The processor becomes the bottleneck when the units run too high. An 8700 usually offered in a laptop that can handle it and its the company that deides that not the reseller.