Best laptop for FSX for under $1500 Can.?

So what is the best bet for playing FSX, for less than 1500 Canadian?
I've been scouring the web, looking at graphics cards benchmarks, and also trying to find out if there is a real diff. in performance for FSX between Core 2 Duo and i5 or i7 processors. Some say 50% better with i7, some say worse!

I'm more confused than when I started...
Lately browsing at Asus, Dell Studio, Dell Studio XPS, and Alienware M15.

Help!!

 

If you look in my sig, there are benchmarks of Fsx on the same system but comparing Core2Quad Vs a higher clocked Core2Duo. I will also be benchmarking Fsx after I receive my new W860CU (on Monday) with the 1.73 Ghz Core i7-820QM CPU and the GTX 285M. The benchmarks are demonstrative of real life in game performance and I will be testing before and after the multicore patch.

If you can find an NP8662 with the 2.8 Ghz or 3.0 Ghz Core2Duo, a 15'' 1680 X 1050 screen and the GTX 260M that will give you very good performance in Fsx. I do get a feeling that the new Core i7-820QM paired with the GTX 285M will do better though.

The only question is whether the multicore patch will reduce performance or increase it, when considering the i7's Turbo Boost. Before the multicore patch, Fsx uses only 2 Cores so potentially the i7 will use a higher clock rate Turbo Boosted but after the multicore patch, it may use more Cores at a lower Clock rate which Fsx may not like.

In Fsx, the clock rate is more important than the number of Cores.

 

Asus G73JH-X1

This will be the answer to every single question with a budget under $1500 USD.

 

Yea, except it's $1759 Canadian here without taxes and wont be in stock until March. Everything except wood is more expensive here in Canada.

 

get it in states, get it shipped to receiving company near the border, and go and pick it up yourself, u can save a lot of $$$, unless u want to do everything by the book then look for lower model.

 

If you live in Ontario or nearby, drive to buffalo and get it!!

 

That is bigger than I wanted anyway (17"), I'm really interested in a 15.

This one looked tempting:
http://www.pccanada.com/viewitem.asp?id=24985

But is the GTS 360M really any better than the GTX 240 or 260? From what I read, it is a rebadged lower end card...

It has some nicer specs for the money that an Alienware M15, but some I can do without (6G instead of 4, higher resolution). So wondering if the base M15 (i3, 4g, 240 graphics) will lag much behind this asus?

As well, the Studio 16 XPS can be had with an i7 processor and an ATI 1G 4670 (which seems to be better than the 360M from benchmarks, I think), for about $1449 Can.

 

how about SAGER NP8690 ? http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8690-built-clevo-w860cu-custom-gaming-laptop-p-2659.html

 

i have the same question.

Anyway of getting the asus g73jh in canada?

and does newegg.com sell to canada because i know they have a newegg.ca site. and no newegg.ca does not have any g73jhs just the .com site

 

Why was my post deleted?

 

G73 is what u want... i would buy it xoticpc.com and ship to canada...should have no problems...

 

ncix and pccanada has them if u want to buy in Canada, also there's option of buying them from states and then few ways of bringim them over, it will come out cheaper that way, but it takes more time and more work, i'll pm u few ways...

 

NCIX has this listed, but they have 'A1', not X1. Whats the diff?

Also, when looking at their site, the ASUS N61JQ-A1 caught my eye..

 

there's only a1 to my knowledge and it's the model with blu-ray player
the other model has cd/dvd drive, but it's not listed on ncix.

 

I've had great success with my G51, which has a T9300 Core2Duo that I overclock to 2.9ghz and a 260GTX. It's a great 15" for the money, easily found for $8-900.

Only complaint anyone ever really has with it is the GPU runs a bit warmer than other machines. But, it's still well within Nvidia specs and is perfectly fine per Asus, but with a few minutes work it can be resolved completely. I switched the thermal compound to MX-3, and my GPU temps never leave the 80's, and usually are upper 70's in most games.

Just a thought.

 

Do you want to play with max settings?

Let me put it this way. My current laptop (Alienware m5790) with a ATI 1800, T5500 1.66ghz, 2gigs of ram. Can run the graphics portion on max settings while at the same time the scenery (cars, boats and some buildings) on medium to almost off With smooth gameplay. I dont recall the fps but depending on the aircraft im using and where im at it will varry in fps but playable.

 

How about AW M11x

 

Too small!

 

In Canada I can't find a G51 for less than about $1350....

 

Great to hear your planning to do a review on the np8690 for fsx, its the one im after, but couldnt find any reviews anywhere. Really looking forward to yours lol.
Hope your laptop is all you hoped, if you could let me know when the review will be up that would be great. Thanks
Will

 

I will be doing detailed benchmarks but that won't be any time soon. I will do some quick tests of Fsx performance tomorrow at some point though. The laptop is arriving tomorrow morning.

 

Yeah that would be great, Personally im only really interested in FSX, if you could send that or post on here that would be awesome.
Just looking at FPS with different settings, and if you have time is it better with sp2 or without.
Just to add, if you use any traffic programs if you could do some figures with that would be great.
really appreciate this. Hope the laptop is awesome!
Im traveling to USA to see family and pick mine up, so i need to check its all good lol!
Will

 

Details of the benchmark we used for Fsx which is actually indicative of real game performance can be found here in case you haven't already seen the procedure

You can also see results of the Core 2 Duo and the Q9000 on the link in my sig.

 

So how do you think the Intel i5 or i7 would do against the above two?

Thx!

 

Yeah thanks ive looked at that in detail, but with all the new technology in the i7 820qm im interested to see how much better it is with fsx. Thanks in advance
Will

 

I didn't plan to do any detailed gaming benchs until all of my games had been installed but I have done some detailed Fsx ones since you are basing a purchase on this game. I will add these to the benchmark thread I will be doing later.

The results are very surprising and after the first patch the 1.73 Ghz Intel®Core i7-820QM has surpassed both the Q9000 and the 2.8 Ghz Core2duo. After the results of the benchmark after the SP2 patch I will post up the results.

 

Very exciting news! Great stuff. Please let me know when its up.
Do you have an eta? Im on GMT time if that helps, it saves me refreshing the page all day!
This is greatly appreciated thanks!

 

Will be done in about 5 mins or so, will be benchmarking SP2 but will do DX 10 as well since that doubed frame rates last time. Actually longer, I forgot that each benchmark run takes about 5 mins, it is a thorough user created benchmark. The same one used in our previous benchmarks for Fsx since it doesn't have a built in one.

 

Ah thanks, its really helpful and appreciated. Are you using any ai traffic programmes? Or addons at all that affect fps?

 

I don't play Fsx much so it doesn't have any addons at all. I do the benchark 3 times each for SP1, SP2 etc etc just to make sure results are reliable. You will also find that the i7 Turbo Boost can effect results.

 

Oh ok, destined pilot here lol.
Please let me know when its up
Thanks

 

Results so far:

Microsoft Fsx Benchmarks 1.73 Ghz Intel®Core i7-820QM

Unpatched default install


820QM: Min 20, Max 50, Avg 29.607

Patched to SP1


820QM: Min 26, Max 61, Avg 52.217


Previous Core2Duo Vs Core2Quad SP2 results

P9700: Min: 28, Max: 66, Avg: 45
Q9000: Min: 21, Max: 56, Avg: 37


Patched to SP2


820QM: Min 27, Max 83, Avg 52.83

Forcing the Affinity to 2 Cores with SP2 gives the following:

Min, 35, Max 82, Avg 56.343



DX 10 Enabled (new feature of SP2)

820QM: Min 25, Max 73, Avg 46.66

 

Ok thanks, see what SP2 has to offer! Seems more variation in the figures, higher average than the P9700. Sp2 will decide everything then i guess. Up or down...................

 

What settings are you using? Thanks

 

Settings used are here

I was expecting SP2 to offer less performance since that patch was multicore so potentially could cause a mobile i7 to use a lower clock due to how Turbo Boost works when more Cores are in use.

 

Yes very surprising, but great figures from my point of view!
Surely you are using 1600x900 resolution though? Not 1050? I know its minor, but il have a 1080p screen, do you think that will make much difference?

 

Hows the DX10 going?

 

how does the g71s p8700 OCd to 2.88 ghz compare to the p9700s stock 2.8ghz? should I upgrade my cpu or is the p8700 ocs good enough??

 

DX 10 looks good but the performance wasn't higher as I expected it to be.

 

That kinda sucks, but its still good for a laptop. Thanks for your help.

 

Just finally would you recommend the laptop?

 

I noticed forcing affinity to specific Cores effects results as well. Interesting. Check original results for the additional details. Since I have no idea if I forced Fsx to use 2 physical or Virtual Cores I will test on the others now too lol. Can't resist really.

 

I recommend the laptop 100%, the fans are almost silent in normal use, I can hardly hear them during gaming, the screen is great, build quality is solid and performance is excellent. 52fps+ in GTA IV on native resolution and high settings for example.

Temps are cool, HDD idle at 30C, has not gone beyond 40C so far, GPU idles at 40C, CPU's idle at 40-44C, maxing out at 70C so far.

I like the keyboard but sometimes the spacebar seems a bit stiff and some others have reported that their space bar misses keys occasionally so I would ask your reseller to check this. I wonder if it is a keyboard buffer issue.

 

Gotta love FSX, cant get away from it lol. I think im going to get this laptop but with 1080p, i can always put it at 720p if it gets a bit slow on the old fps right?
All info is great if you have the time im abit of a noob with some of it so please explain what you have done Thanks

 

Im abit confused on the affinity bit. How did you force it to use 2 cores? Please explain lol.
Also can you force it to use 2 cores with dx10? What result does that give?
Thanks

 

The 1080p screen reduces performance in some games by about 10 fps but it will vary in all games. The GPU will have to work a lot harder so a reduction in performance is inevitable.

 

I could always use a 720p resolution though and it not looked stretched? Its kinda a lower ratio of the 1080p isnt it?

 

The core i7 has 4 Cores with 2 threads per Core. Windows 7 has been designed to take advantage of multicore / threads so will show 8 Cores. You can set affinity and force a program or application to use any number of Cores you wish by using Taskmanager, right clicking on a process and selecting set affinity. Whether it is DX10 or DX9 makes no difference so you can do this regardless.

There is a freeware program that can set custom Core affinity automatically but I don't think it is compatible with Windows 7, however there are probably alternatives.

So if I force a single Core, the Clock rate could potentially reach 3.0 Ghz.

The problem is if you force it to use virtual Cores instead of physical ones, you will get reduced performance.

 

You could do but you would still get blur and less definition in all graphics. It depends on how fussy you are.

 

Oh i see. But surely if you enable DX10 for FSX with 2 cores the fps will go down a bit? Based on the other results?
Maybe im making no sense but surely you can force FSX to run on 2 cores, then decide if you want Dx10 off or on?