A little laptop feedback?

Hey fellas whats up? I today ordered an Alienware m9750 (specs in a second) with an 8700m GT. Now all I've been hearing from the forums here is that the 8700m is a peice of junk and a major dissapointment, mainly because of the 128mb interface hampering gbs/per second. I'm really hoping this isn't too true and yes I've seen the benchmark tests and I am not impressed with them, though I didnt expect to be. Unfortunately, most of these test were performed in 1400x900 resolution and up, which is nice I'm sure but I usually play games in 1280x1024 (1280x800) res. At this resolution I really don't see much difference in medium to high settings in most games. All I'm asking for is perhaps some more feedback from people who have had experience with the card and their performance as well as specs so maybe I can get a closer comparison that hopefully won't be so negative. Also, and maybe more importantly, what do you estimate would be the maximum longevity, and I mean until the card is limping if it isn't already, of the 8700m GT? I would have posted this in the official 8700m GT discussion thread of course, but I want to avoid any "shifting" opinions. =P

A few things important to note, firstly I usually like to play games at medium-high setting with 2x AA/No AF. Obviously much lighter settings than the majority here who love to max everything, and I don't see the differences everyone else seems to. I will attempt to play BioShock and F.E.A.R. after receiving the system. FPS from similar systems has resulted in 30-40FPS but the configurations always differ from the one I've ordered, which is why I'm so curious. I went with a laptop instead of building my own dektop is because of much needed mobility, which is why I went and paid the extra cash for the brand name and that little glowing alien head on the front. You can't tell me that chasis isn't hiking the price unnecessarily. Hehe, I've had my current (ancient) desktop for five years and here are the specs for it: P4 2.4, 1gb ram, radeon 9800 pro. (Some ancient hardware catalogs list them as proof they existed.) Incredibly the card almost limped its way to present day games on medium settings, but is no longer supported by about anything. Anyone think that a single 8700m if used conservativly will last that long and perform that well? I would have loved to get the SLI option but I'm on a budget. Here are the important specs of the system I've ordered: Duo Core 2 T7400 (2.1ghz), 2GB DDR2, and a Single (Sigh) 8700m GT. I would like to know as well as the questions above, how well would this config perform used for medium-high settings on most games (estimate a consensus for me) at 1280x800?

 

Your fine then , don't worry.

 

Yea, indeed your 8700M will max out all games on 1280x800
Crysis will run on med/high (with most options on high) i think

I got a 8600M GT and i can play crysis on med/high (some options on high) with some OC ^.^

 

IIRC, the 128-bit bus is only an issue when playing with high resolution (1680x1050 or more) or when using a lot of AA.

You should be fine running modern games at a decent resolution, as long as you're not crazy about high-res gaming you should be fine.

My 7900gs runs everything at 1280x800 with good framerates, your 8700GT is a lot more powerful so I would expect it to blaze through pretty much everything (maybe except Crysis).

 

lol no..

I get maybe 5-10 FPS on high settings on an 8800GTS and a 3.3 GHz C2D when I'm not moving around. When I try to look around, it completely freezes up for a second. The game won't even let me put anything on "very high" because it'll probably crash the computer.

Even on medium the FPS drops significantly in certain parts of the game and creates very noticible lag.

A mobile 128mb 8700GT is much, much weaker.

I originally thought something was wrong with my computer when it couldn't run Crysis on high, but 3dmark06 still benched at 9k+. New games are just ridiculously resource demanding.

Fubio, if you really care about gaming, and it seems like you do, then return your Alienware and buy a desktop. For the price you're paying, you could probably get a desktop with 2 8800GT in SLI plus another cheap laptop for your portable needs.

 

Yea I really did want to build a desktop system initially since I've done it before for a buddy a couple years ago (SLI 7800 GTX cards with 2GB Ram, made me weep to give it to him after assembling it.) My needs for mobility in the next three years is just too great to have a home desktop system, though Clutch is absolutely right in that I could build a great desktop machine for about $450 dollars less, but buying both is not an option =[. Hmm, it looks like I'm just going to have to try the system myself and see how it performs. I would imagine it will work decently enough for me as I'm not looking to max out anything, I'd love to, but its not my number one priority in gaming. Just as long as things are around medium high I'm cool, cause as I said, I don't see a giant difference at the resolution I play at. Thanks guys, I really appreciate it.