so whats the most portable gaming laptop anyways?

the new lg p310 has the 9600 gt at about 3.5 pounds? and thats just a high end class 2 card, maybe not even worthy of the hardcore phrase "gaming". are there any cheaper, older, slightly heavier models around with high end class 2 cards? how heavy does class 1 have to be? who invented those classes on notebookcheck anyway? someone should make a line graph haha

 

there's the 15" Alienware m15

 

The 10" N10?

 

I'd say - Clevo M860TU is the best if u're looking for a 15incher!

 

at 7 pounds, i dont think the m15 is really very portable, whether or not its a 15 inch... i guess the n10 would make the most sense but- let me rephrase, whats the *best portable gaming laptop?

 

The problem is how you define gaming

Light gaming most mobile would be the Asus N10 with the 9300m GS and at 10 inches its tiny

Medium gaming would be the LG P310 with its 13 inch body and 9600m GT

High end gaming most portable would be the Sager NP8660 15.4" monster with its 9800 GT(S) ( i believe its that card not positive but a variety of the 9800 series)

 

the m17x is freaking heavy, but it is so freaking nice!! dual sli can you say ownage?

 

i wouldn't consider a 9600m gt as a gaming gpu

 

Pretty much sums it up

Why not

I play pretty much everything on med/high @1280x800 and it's stock ATM
Looks good enough on 15" and the price and portability are good
Should be good enough for the "average gamer "

i throw it in a backpack and take it with me

 

i'll consider the 8700m gt as a gaming gpu, but not the 8600 since it cant run crysis on med settings

 

The 8700M GT is just an overclocked 8600M GT. Roughly...15% faster?

 

its not even much better, same 128bit bandwith, just higher clocks. only 15% faster as said

 

I believe that if you mean real portability then the LG P310 is the only way to go. That's why I bought one

I also think the new lappy from ASUS - the F6ve might be quite an interesting option. It's 13,3" and features a T9550 processor and Radeon HD4570...

 

For the record, I competed crysis on my rig @1280x800 everything medium , and only had to lower the res for one part of the second last level [in the plane]

good enough

 

I think, for the money, you can't beat the Asus N10J. It's weak point is the Atom CPU, but if you overclock to 2.0 or 2.1GHz, it's very capable of gaming. Can even play Crysis at low/med settings at 1024x600.

Only downfall I've seen so far with the N10 is lack of 1024x768 support. I'm petitioning to add this support like they do on the Eee's to fit the 1024x768 on the 1024x600 screen for gaming.

That LG looks great, but not available in North America for some reason. Plus it costs 2x much. For $700 you can't beat the N10 in portability for performance.

 

This is the whole reason I ordered the P310

 

There's the Asus N81 and N80 series.

 

kind of a different take on this, but out of the two laptops I've got (listed in signature), I do 90% of my gaming on my tablet believe it or not. Granted, nowhere near as powerful as even the 9600 that's posted above, but for anything a couple years older, and shoot, even Crysis on low and Call of Duty, all source games, FSX, Lock-On, GRID, Fear 1&2, it's fun and kinda cool to have a 12" tablet and be playing some decent games on it.

The 17" X205 does run everything significantly better, but the tablet's always with me as I need it for work, and as mentioned above, on the 12" screen, lower settings don't look a whole lot worse than high settings on a bigger screen.

So, assuming the Asus N10 is as fast or faster than my tablet, which I suspect it is, I'd definately say it's a great small option for gaming.

 

I second the N80/81 especially the N81 once it comes out, but for the price of a cheap N80 you get the power of a 8700mGT without all the heat.

 

I saw a youtube clip of the N10J running Crysis Warhead at 1024x600 and I do not consider that anywhere near playable at all. It looked like it was running about 10fps.

So unless I am missing something Crysis is not really playable on the N10J. It might be on the new model though.

 

MacBook Air

 

C'mon you can't be serious With the integrated X3100?

 

According to their website, the Macbook Air has a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M but the older model may have had an X3100.

 

hmm what it seems like to me is that there are just no medium sized notebooks with decent cards, like theres the p310, 9600 gt, 3.5 lbs and then the asus n81 at 5.2. granted it has a better card and everything, but thats almost 2 pounds difference, the difference between say, something you carry around in one hand and pick up easily and something thats too much of a strain for one hand at any length. theres no middle ground?

 

Are people ignoring the Asus N10? It may not sound too spectacular, but it's a great portable machine that plays games very well. Granted, I wouldn't expect miracles with games released over the next year, but in most cases, they'll probably work effectively.

 

The N10 has been mentioned but it is still let down too much by the weak Atom in my opinion. It could be so much better with a decent CPU. Surely the Atom is too much of a bottleneck.

 

Really tiny, 10", Asus N10 (1.6GHz Atom & 9300M GS DDR2)
Small, 13", LG P310 (2.4Ghz C2D & 9600M GT DDR3)

 

I know where you're going, and I wasn't much of a believer until I bought one. Overclocks to 2GHz no problem, and pretty much any game will run fine. I'd say performance for gaming at 1024x600 is comparable to a core 2 duo and 9500m GS at 1440x900.

I'm not a "fanboy" or anything, but so far have been thoroughly impressed. I initally bought it to replace my Eee 1000h since I wanted a better keyboard, and ability to play Battlefield 2 and C&C Generals on the road. It has proven to do that without a problem, and much more.

 

I am glad to hear you are enjoying your N10. I am still really interested in this unit but did not buy it due to the CPU. I heard an updated model of this N10 is on the FCC site and apparently will be using the Nvidia Ion and a dual core.

 

I've got the 12inch U6sg with the 9300m and i completed crysis with pretty much all settings low at 1024x768, 30ish fps most of the time. Did dip bit during intensive fighting. I think it's the atom processor in the N10 which is holding it back.

 

And what about your own Samsung Q210? I've heard it's quite capable due to the DDR3 memory on the GPU.


Also, how do the older games support the odd screen resolution in N10? Any scaling necessary or everything runs fine?

 

Just another thing I'd like to point out

15" arent that hard to move around

When I move around in my house from one room to another, I just hold it like a book and it's not THAT heavy

Anything smaller should be even easier to tote around say 13.3 and smaller

 

For the most part, it works fine. Many games natively support it, or you have to edit a cfg file to adjust the resolution, the same way you have to for many other widescreen resolutions.

I think you'll start to see support for this resolution as all netbooks have this resolution. Unless they change it, which I hope they do, to 1366x768, to support 1024x768 apps and games.

 

30% faster clocks save the memory. (8600m DDR3 only) Results are about 20-25% faster.
Overclocking results may vary, but 8700m were usually built in much better heat-resistant chassis and with better cooling and wih more power to them.

Later revision 8600 DDR3 could be OC'd closer to the ceiling of the original 8700m's.

Note faster was still faster and the 8700m's still defeated 8600m's by a decent margin.


As for portability... something people have't mentioned. Smaller is not always better.. that's a smaller screen and chassis which handles heat less well. Lighter weight means less overall cooling and less durability as well.

Pretty much anything less than 15" and 5-7lbs is a fraction of a gaming computer at this point in time.

 

I suppose the Q210 should be added but seeing as the P310 has a 9600M GT DDR3 its totally outclassed. The P310 it's a force to be reckoned with

PS: Does anyone here have a P310? I'd love to see some benchmarks and OCing ability

 

Your only moving it from room to room, I could do that with a 17". Small form factors are very important for people who are constantly on the go.

I remember my 1st laptop was a 17" and my 2nd is my current one, 12", and its just soo much easier to move around

 

Any laptop can be used for gaming, it just depends on what games you want to play/plan on playing.

Just remember that laptops cannot be upgraded as easily as desktops and it may be more difficult to get future games to run since some components (ironically, the ones most critical to gaming) like the GPU cannot be upgraded.

 

15.4" its definitely the M860TU, M15x, and a little less powerful but still good the Asus G50 or MSI GT625.

Its worth waiting for a 15.4" laptop with the 4850/4870 though, currently there are none.

 

Yes, that 13 inches LG is the best.
I play without problems with my little Samsung p210 (overclocked =) ).

 

LG P310, meet Asus F6Ve-b1. T9550 + 9650M GT

 

Apart from the FSC Amilo SA3650 Notebook with the external Graphic Booster.

 

Standard 3DMark06 test gives 5900.

Games:

• GTAIV - 1280x800 medium/low settings in 25fps.
• Mirror's Edge - 1280x800 high 2xAA & PhsyX
• Burnout Paradise - 1280x800 high 4xAA
• The Witcher - 1280x800 high 4xAA 8xAF

As you can see the machine is quite capable. And I have the version with less powerful processor. I imagine the results with P9500 onboard would be even better

I don't OC because it is can get quite hot (especially in GTA) even on standard clocks...

I agree, the new ASUS is very interesting, but the LG is still better with P9500 (less heat with very similar performance) and DDR3 on the GPU (I believe ASUS puts only DDR2).

On the other hand the 9650 should be a bit cooler...

 

+1 4 U TrueSilvo

Yes, it looks very capable, seeing as GTA IV is a more CPU dependent game.

I also have the P8400 in my Q210, its not a bad proc. and undervolts exceptionally well (Have you undervolted it yet? You could lower the CPU temps and in effect nudge the GPU temps down with it )

 

i'll consider the 8700m gt as a gaming gpu, but not the 8600 since it cant run crysis on med settings

 

I played through both Crysis games on medium settings at 1280x800 on my Vostro 1500 with 8600m GT with DDR2 video RAM. Other than the final battle, it ran well and looked very good. I had to drop down to low settings to finish the final battle though.