Is the 7900 gs enough......

...to play all current games with good fps if combined with 2gb ram and core 2 duo 2.16 ghz?

 

In short: Yes, very yes!

 

I agree with TT2007. Yes, it should play very well.

 

Ofcourse yes. With my G1's Geforce 7700 I am more than happy, and I can confirm the Geforce 7900 is a little bit better. My friend bought a 17' Toshiba Sattellite 120 laptop with the specs you mentioned, he uses settings slightly higher when playing games. Personally I am happy with my Geforce 7700 because it's runs smoothly in all the games I play with high settings, so why go for a bigger laptop with little bit difference in GPU. I like portability more so its up to you.

 

Great....now that I've got the graphics card settled on, I can't decide between the 2.16 ghz processor and a smaller hard drive, or the 2.0ghz processor and a larger hard drive.

 

The difference between the T7200 and T7400 isn't really worth the extra price. It will only perform faster in processor dependant tasks, and even then, the difference won't be massive. They should both perform about the same in gaming, because the graphics card is still the limiting factor in gaming most of the time. I would advise you to go with the T7200 and the larger hard disk.

 

the only time your going to notice the .16 difference in your processor would be if you encode video a lot. other than that you will hardly notice at all.

 

Depends on what you call "current games" are.
Also depends on what resolution/image quality settings you want.

For me, it is not enough.

 

well it's between performance and space. If the hard drives are at the same RPM, then the larger hard drive shouldn't have any advantage over the smaller hard drive. The higher clock processor will have a small performance boost. It comes down to what you want to use your computer for. Do you have tons of music, videos and games? Do you like doing stuff like video editing and DVD ripping and encoding?

 

Well, i play games a ton, and i plan on storing at least 20 games on the hard drive. So far, I've heard the 2.0ghz processor will still run games fine, and the larger hard drive space would allow me to store more games on it. On another question, what are the advantages of a 7200rpm hd over a 5400rpm in terms of gaming?

 

thrust me, you won't notice any difference in games at all. The performance increase in theory of a 2.17Ghz processor is (2.17/2)*100-100 = 8,5%

But ingame you will never get that 8.5% performance boost! it will be only 3 to 5% performance boost you will get!

even better: my 7900GTX with a 1.83Ghz coreduo processer gets 4500-4550 3dmark06 points while a 2Ghz core2duo gets 4700-4800 points. The core2duo is a bit more efficient then a coreduo and the coreduo has even more speed in Ghz too. But the difference in the benchmark is <6.7%!

When i had the choise between a 1.83Ghz and 2Ghz processor (in that case both coreduo) i had to pay 150 euro extra for the 2Ghz processor. So i have chosen for the 183Ghz and i'm glad i made that choice

 

Or it might be even lesser, because the main bottleneck is usually the GPU.

 

Well, by "current" games i mean stuff like Oblivion, Company of Heroes, CnC3, and even Supreme Commander....it would be able to run those fine right?

1 more question, if the 7900GS is a DX9 card does that mean it cant and will never be able to play a dx10 game? So if a company produced a dx10 game sometime within a few months from now and i bought this laptop...then the only way i would be able to play it is by buying a completely new laptop? If so,...then that really pisses me off....

 

For current games you listed, you won't be able to play @ 1920*1200HQ all settings maxed out.
With my 7900GS, I played CoH @ 1680*1050 with med. setting, SupCom @ 1440*900 @ low setting.

DirectX10 games will have DirectX 9 renderer so you don't need to worry.

 

You know, I'm glad you mentioned that because earlier I was reading some people's posts, and they said the higher the screen res the harder it is for the video card to keep up, so i changed my configuration from the WUXGA to WXGA

Besides, the only computers ive ever used are 1024x768, so i think the lower WXGA will be easier to get used ot than the massive 1920x1200

 

Well IMO (and this is what I am going to do when I buy a laptop), is to get the WUXGA, you will be very happy when you go online, play lesser quality games, watch movies, or other stuff on WUXGA, and if you want to then play a game on lower resolution then you can simply downgrade that game to the lower resolution, and it looks *almost* as good as if you had the native resolution as that lower resolution.

However if you just get WXGA, then you will be restricted to a low resolution, that means even in games where you will usually be able to play high resolution no problem (HL2, Civ4, C&C3 (with almost all ultra high settings), notable exception being SupCom, BTW I know this because I have a laptop wiht the exact specs you mentioned (T7200)) you won't be able to.

 

but do you see the difference in that res? I don't know it because i never play above 1280*1024 or above 1440*900.

 

There's nothing wrong with playing a game at non-native resolution on WUXGA. I can play most of my games, including oblivion, at 1920x1200. But for the few games that I can't, I just turn it down to 1280x800, turn up 4xAA and 8xAF, and they look and play just fine. I don't know why some people are so afraid to run games at a resolution that's not native that they're willing to ditch the WUXGA screen entirely.

 

Alright, so you suggest getting the WUXGA...but the only problem is that its about 170$ more...so which component should I drop(current setup is the limit im willing to spend)? I can consider dropping the hd from 160gb to 80 to save a bit, or i could drop the ram from 2gb to 1gb...which do you think would be best? (the reason i only mention the hd and ram is because they are aftermarket upgradeable and i want to make sure to get the best of the non upgradeable stuff first, i.e. the screen)

 

I just purchused my new laptop today, I'm not to worried, espically with the way things are going right now with video tehcnology, a geforce 7900 is the best "affordable" high end card right now

I opted for the slightly higher clockrate processor just because it wasn't to much more expensive. I'll let you know how it plays in a few weeks

 

Dont forget that your 7900go gs is extremely overclockable and you'll be able to squeeze alot more power out of it, trust me.

 

First of all: if you play at 1920x1200 you must use low settings, no doubt about that.

Ontopic: You wont notice the scaling of lower resolutions because you use AA. If you disable AA the screen won't look very nice. Some people hate it some other people don't care about it. BTW is it possible for us to show some screenshos of the blurry effects of lower resolutions without AA?

 

Well, either way i've pretty much decided to get the WUXGA, and just turn down the res on games that might get laggy. So im decided on all of the components except the hard drive. Between either a 250gb hd and the 6 cell battery, or a 160gb and car power adapter, bluetooth internal card, and the 9cell battery. 160gb is alot, but i feel like it might eventually run out, and i still haven't found a place on the internet selling 2.5inch 250gb hds. But im still leaning towards the 160gb combo at the moment.

So far my config is:

t7200 2.0 ghz

2gb ram 533mhz

17" WUXGA

8x CD/DVD Burner

7900GS

Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy HD

Backpack carrying case

Intel Pro/Wireless 3945 a/g

(and the other accessories and hd depending on what I said earlier)

I am sorry if this has kind of moved off topic, i sort of wanted it to be a thread just asking for advice on my configuration, so if someone feels the need to move it, please do so.

 

You can definatly buy a cheaper (same brand/model) backpack somewhere else for less.

but that looks like a pretty nice setup.

You are wise for going for the WUXGA. T7200 is a great processor, 7900gs is a good video card, and 2gb ram is great.

I'd say go for the blu-tooth internal if you use alot of wireless accessories, I don't really, because I hate replacing batterys, but if its your cup of tea then its nicer not to have an ugly thing to plug into your laptop. And the 9 cell is nice. Of course an extra 90GB of HDD is pretty sweet too.