holding out for 8800?

I am a soldier currently deployed in Iraq. I am getting a gaming laptop but my decision involves a couple things, firstly i want to spend at most 2000... I found some good deals around the net, on Powerbooks building a 8600 rig around 13500 and Newegg has a 8700 rig going for 1500 along with a dual sli 8600 for 1900. BUT i want to know what my price range will go to if I get an 8800gtx. Do you think sager will be able to offer a computer thats basically there 8700 or 8600 rigs with a 8800 in place and keep it at sub2000? Just thoughts. Sorry for the rambling just trying to get a feel for what the community feels and what someone would do in my situation seeing as that I want to start gaming ASAP with crysis cod4 and ut3 all released. Any opinions are welcome.

 

Well the alienware decked out was around 5500 i believe. I'd say around 3,000 for one not specc'd to the max, atleast from alienware.

 

An 8600m rig will let you play all of the new games at medium-ish settings and low-ish (1200x800) resolution.

I think you could probably find a laptop with the 8800GTX in it for just about 2000 dollars, and it would perform more than twice as well as my 8600m. In other words, you'd be set playing everything at high for the next few months.

I'd keep my eye on Sager, as they are the ones most likely to hit the 2000 price point while still throwing in an 8800GTX.

Just make sure you get AT LEAST 2gb of RAM, whatever you decide to purchase.

Just to be clear though, it'll be a VERY close margin if you want that 8800GTX. You'll probably need to get a 17inch screen, although it is possible they (sager) might release a 15.4 inch version. Just get the cheaper one.

If the 8800 is only about $100 more than the 8700m, you'll be fine. Otherwise it is going to be a tiny bit over 2000.

I'd get one of these with an upgraded hard drive (160gb 7200rpm) and upgraded ram (2GB). That puts you just below $1900, with a little bit of room for he 8800GTX to supplant the 8700m. It'd be great to upgrade the processor to the 7500, but that I would leave for last.

 

the 8700 is really a 8600 gtx... ii am really disappointed in its

yeah ill probaly get the sager 5791...

besides 2 gigs of ram is the intel turbo cache worth it for 35?

also what about 64bit OS?

 

From what I have heard, the intel built in turbobooster thing doesn't help much unless you are lacking in RAM, I.E. below 2GB.

Also, I added some extra stuff to my post above in an edit, see if you missed anything.

I don't think I'd spend 35 bucks on the TurboBoost. That money would do better upgrading the processor, ram, or hard drive.

EDIT: 64-bit Vista works fairly well from what I have been hearing from various forum members. It is very hit-or-miss really. For some, it works perfectly without a glitch. For others, it is an impossible mess. It really is the way of the future, though, and it will become increasingly popular and practical over the next year (we'll start to see +50% adoption rate by the end of next year).

 

interesting, how much did your macbook run you, and what games can you play?

o and what are the o/c capabilities on something like a sager... ram, mxm, gpu, and cpu

one more question, can that sager use ddr2 800mhz ram?

 

$3000+, easily. Unless he has connections.

Edit: Sager/Clevo BIOS offerings are pretty lame. Locked multiplier, very few options for fine-tuning. The only clock adjustment that's going to happen with the NP9261 is driver-level GPU overclocking. I don't think anyone has been able to find a way to OC any other components. Don't know about their other models, though.

 

Make sure you make full use of Veteran's discounts. You can get MPBs for $2299 (15.4) and up to a 29% discount on Dells using the Veterans Advantage discount as well as Employee Purchase pricing (I got a huge amount off of my XPS 1730).


There are good deals out there now but if you want to hold out for the 8800, you may be waiting a while unless you want to throw money away. Excercising a little patience as well as the benefits that are available will net you a lot in the long run.

 

Yes holding out and saving up for an 8800
one thing to remember is that there is a slightly slower 8800m GTS part which would make it into midrange but still above 8600/8700m GT's (in fact double stream processors and memory bandwidth!!!)
so that might be the card that hits your pricepoint!

 

If the soldier is willing to wait until late January or early February thereabouts there should be several options in the market with the 8800GTS.

The laptops might not be purchasable if you can only spare US$2000 max, you might have to follow some advice from the others about what to prioritise when looking over the specifications.

Here's my recommendation on what not to compromise on:
1. 8800 card (Obvious but if you choose the 17" alienware and get a cheap upgrade to the SLi option go for it)
2. 2GB RAM at the absolute minimum.
3. A decent C2D processor, preferably extreme.
4. Either a large capacity 5400rpm drive or a slightly smaller 7200rpm HDD. RAID options might be out of the price range.

 

interesting, does alienware offer military discounts being that they are owned by dell. also what c2d is best bang for the buck, im guessing the 7500 2.2ghz with 4mb cache... considering 2.4 is 140 more...

and you talk about not compromising on ram, i know 2 gigs minimum set up for dual channel. what about speed and latency, does the ram matter for notebooks or would they never know the difference between 667 and 800 or 667 cheap ram and 667 brand name? same for 800.

 

Don't hold my word for it, but if IIRC the Santa Rosa chips only work with 667 and downclock the 800 Mhz ones. I'm not even 50% sure that's it true though! Not even sure if it was Santa Rosa chips either.

 

better to get 2gb of 667 ram than 1gb of 800
the speed of the ram compared to the rest of the FSB should be fine
I would reckon 800mhz would be more useful should the user be overclocking the fsb? but I am just speculating there

January will see a glut of new releases no doubt, and I dont know about the US but in the UK buying in April tends to offer extra discounts due to tax year-end.

 

Alienware should be releasing a 15.4 inch 8800gtx lappie (actually its confirmed) and with pretty good settings it ran me up to $2300 I believe its an amazing deal... but then again... that was on their temporary config. url.... so prices may go up... and they say release is Q1 so theres a large timeframe