6850-FX Questions

I'm thinking of picking up one of these tomorrow at Best Buy and I have a few questions for owners of them.

1. Battery life - how good is it? The sales rep told me that it was around 2-2.5 hours in balanced mode.

2. Gaming Performance - Again, how good is it? I'm (for sure) going to be running The Orange Box, Guild Wars, possibly Mass Effect or other UE3 games, and others. Could this possibly in any way run Assassin's Creed or Crysis?

3. Bulk - Is it easy to carry it around? I'm getting this a year early for college since our desktop is crapping out.

Thanks for the help!

Edit: What are the Vista Experience Index scores? Just want to get an idea.

 

1, the sales rep was right. with the cell it can do this.2, its good. it will play all games very well(except for crysis that's on medium.)3, well its 17 inches a weighs about 9.5 pounds.so it depends. i would and check it out personally.

 

He's talking about the 6850...not the 6860. The 6850 is only 15" or 15.4" I can't remember exactly. It won't run games quite as good as the 6860 because it has a bit lower quality ATI card vs. the 8800GTS in the 6860.

I haven't heard anything relatively bad about it. I'm sure it would run Orange Box and Guild Wars with hardly any problems on relatively good settings. Mass Effect you may have to lower your resolution or turn down some settings.

As far as portability I'm sure you shouldn't have a problem trucking it around in a decent bag, it's weighs a couple pounds less than it's 17" older brother which I have no problem carrying around campus and I'm really not a big guy or anything. I'd pick one up if I were you if you just wanted some decent gaming and more portability than a 17" notebook.

 

I have one,
the Vista Experience Index Scores are:
cpu: 4,8
ram: 4,5
graphics: 5,9
gaming graphics: 5,1
hd: 5,3

About the first question, he's right.
And the third, yeah, it's very easy to carry it.