Is your laptop powerful enough?

A little poll I thought could be interesting.

Now - a note to gamers, please don't skew this poll to much to one side - I know modern games need more calculating power than possible in a laptop, especially on maximum settings.

Also - don't make it a what if scenario - only look at what you are doing.

And if you think its not powerful enough because an application needs 20 seconds rather than 10 - well, these 10 seconds wont change your life.

I would like an open, well considered ansewr on the following question:

Is your current laptop powerful enough for your needs?

Edit:
A little update.
My vote is neutral - its really ideal.
Originally when I got it, I looked as "as much power as possible" - and lightweight.
It was originally overkill.

But since I found the panorama function in Photoshop and started creating huge Panormas (the largest is 120 Million Pixels) - it gets maxed out a tad.
It takes quite a few minute to complete the task, but as long as it doesn'T crash I'm OK with that.
Therefore neutral.

 

when i still have my sager, it has enough power to satisfy me. now, i resurrected both of my laptops. they are really too slow for me stupid economy

 

My laptop is excellent for anything but gaming I guess.

Well havent tried the hard games though.

played titan quest with highest setting with no problem, but the fan is noisy, it scares me.

 

I think a 9800m GS was a little much in retrospect, but for $999, I mean come on...

 

My laptop is more than enough for my needs, i expect it to keep me going for another 2 years at least

 

lol, I voted a tad too slow.

I'll get a dual-core notebook sometime this year... something with faster and more RAM, and hopefully with a dedicated graphics card, but the integrated alternatives of now aren't so bad.

 

laptops are never powerful enough
thats why i am building a more powerful laptop from scratch

K-TRON

 

Laptop processors have been more than enough for me since Core Duo... maybe even Pentium M... storage could still be faster/bigger/cheaper but I'm more interested in thinner/lighter/quieter/cooler these days. I've got a cheap desktop to take care of any heavy lifting I have to do.

 

If we're speaking of my old laptop, no it wasn't powerful enough, but mostly because it had overheating issues, which would make surfing the internet while chatting nearly impossible(i.e. it'd start lagging a lot).

But currently, I'll be honest and say my need for a laptop is near none. I really don't have that much need of a portable machine for any other use than perhaps surf the internet and for the sake of not having to drag around portable storage and reinstall my programs between my mom & my dad's places.

That'll change by next year though, but so will the technology lol

 

It is next year. Though I guess nothing much has changed in the notebook world/

 

That depends which type of year we're talking about now does it? lol

Nah I meant next school year, i.e. this fall so this year in numerical calendar years yes >.>

 

Mines fine for me. It does everything i want it to do since the x9000 upgrade.

I keep having to upgrade hard drives because i run out of space but once i cross the SSD threshold mid this year i wont have to worry about speed anymore there either

So i vote just perfect for me

 

I could have done with a smaller/lighter laptop, but the power is worth lugging around a cinder block comparatively speaking. I was sick of crap integrated graphics but now I'm kind of at the other extreme.

 

Whoever voted overkill, by the time you click on the vote button, the term overkill has expired.

 

I want a Core i7 in my notebook.

.. but a fully loaded D901C would due.

My D900K with FX-60 has spoiled me on mobile performance.

 

Somewhere along the last two years or so, a little switch flipped in my head that turned computers from hobby to tool.

My laptop is a work machine - programming, document processing for school, web browsing, email, etc. For that, it's more than sufficient. Instead I'm concentrating on battery life, size, and design for future purchases and not performance. At this point that's simply not the limiting factor for me.

 

Currently not powerful enough to play most of my games at high resolution. But that is all due to change~ Hopefully...

 

Everything I've thrown at my laptop, it's handled with aplomb (and the occasional overheat).
Runs like a charm.

 

With Radeon HD 3470, my Sony FW190 is too slow for all games but old one. I could have bought other laptops with faster GPU, but they don't come with other features that I must have. 16:9 XBrite HiColor at 1600x900, 16.4" and weigh less than 6.5 pounds.

 

Mine has enough power for me, but if I can upgrade I will!!! Not because I need it, but because I can!!!!

 

The integrated graphics are a bit slow but I think the x4500 or 9300 would be prefect for me.

 

I voted neutral - my laptop runs everything well. I considered voting "a bit more powerful than needed", which it probably was when I first got it in mid-2007, but I'm not sure the next step down (8600 GS) would actually be certainly powerful enough still, and I doubt 8400 GT would be, so neutral made sense graphics-wise. And the CPU is a mixed bag - most things it handles with aplomb, but I have one game that it's far too slow for. But an E8600 overclocked by 1 GHz (to 4.33 GHz) would still be a bit too slow, so on the whole it's certainly still adequate. Not that I wouldn't like the speed boost from a T9500 ! Hard drive speed is quite good too.

Considering what was available at the time, though, I think I balanced the options pretty well. T7700 was a way overpriced upgrade at the time, so the lost 200 MHz is a good loss. And I have no plans to upgrade anytime soon, just because I don't see a good reason to.

 

I am nuetral, I play Crysis at 1440*900 (No AA) with all settings on high and two settings on medium. I have no problems, except when trying to create levels in the editor. That is the reason I am seeking a 9800MGTX. The stock proc wasnt good enough for me with it's paultry 3mb of cache, but thats okay, because I just dropped an aftermarket Intel C2D T9600 in. The cooling was subpar, so I added a secondary custom fan.

 

my 9300M GS card not that outstanding....changing to new more power laptop...hahahahah

 

Mine is OK for my needs. I actually use laptop for pretty basic tasks of whom most demanding is playing Syberia 2. Mostly I net surf on it, doing office things and watching movies (15.4" glossy screen fits my needs perfectly regarding this). Some MS Word typing and that is it.

I use Window XP SP3, so 1GB of RAM memory is enoguh for it. Although I will consider upgrading it to 2GB since I like to have multiple aplications open in the same time. Dual Core processor is the biggest plus in my system, it is pretty weak compared to other C2D and DC processor, but gives my system a bit of freshness during the long working on it.

Radeon X2300 is OK, but honestly, it just makes battery even more low, making this Asus having horrible battery life.

 

My 1420 and 1520 work just fine for what I need - in fact, for a class project, I had each of them running SIX virtual machines each!

Although the 1520 struggles with GTA4. I guess the only game I'm concerned about is the new Call of Duty game coming out next year. But by then, I might have something else

 

I'm perfectly fine with the performance of my laptop - haven't had a situation in which I wanted more speed yet.
the ddr3 in my 9600m gives it a major boost, I had an asus with 9650m and ddr2 before, and it was way slower when it came to gaming, even with a faster cpu and lower native resolution (1680x1050)

 

I voted Neutral = ideal for me. As my notebook is enough for anything i do today, mostly video encoding/decoding and things like that.
Though i'd want to play crysis or so from time to time, as i cannot do with this notebook, but it's not a need.

So the only thing i could think of is that with a better GPU my notebook would be overkill, like 88/96/9800M GT or something would had been " the" notebook for me. I do WOULD be playing more games if i had a better GPU and i know it. But as said, not a need for me. So that's why i voted for ideal as it is now, it does work great with cod4 and alot of car games etc.

 

Overkill, at least on my new notebook when it comes

MBP 2.93 ghz + DDR3 mem e.t.c - But i want it to last at least 5 years

 

Mine is more than powerful enough for me. Actually I wish that I had gone for a less powerful model and saved my money(though I got it for a great deal and it is an awesome machine). I got mine with a good GPU thinking I was going to play games and do graphics stuff, but I have found myself not having much time to do so. So for basic web surfing and documents etc, it is more than enough. The only thing I wish that was faster is the harddrive(not willing to go for an SSD yet), but it is pretty decent. I am not going to replace it till it breaks

 

the parts in my notebook came out in 2006, yet, my notebook still maxes new games.

with little upgrades that i will be doing in the future (3870x2, SSD, OC t7600), i should be able to keep my laptop running games on high/max at 1920x1200 for quite a while.

everything else is and overkill, except super high res photoshop stuff.

i voted nuetral.

 

My notebook (in my signature) is more than enough for what I do on a daily basis. It is well suited for just about everything except hardcore gaming.

 

My sentiments exactly.

My next laptop will be thinner, lighter, and hopefully faster (due to new tech) than what I've got now.

 

Sometimes, I would like to play my games with a little more performance

 

my hp 2710p is great for about any task. together with the ssd at least. there's one thing that doesn't work well, and that is ableton live. it just maxes out the cpu (while doing essentially nothing). i guess that's more a problem of ableton actually. it works great on any system which is a bit faster.

edit: i chose a tad slow.

 

No issues with my processors being 'powerful' enough. But I sure wouldn't mind a faster hard drive (and going SSD really isn't in my budget), and more capable graphics (ie: triple or quad-screen capable....at least let me use a docking station with 2 LCDs without shutting down my laptop LCD, lol. Dell/Nvidia still don't do triple-head in their mobile chips yet).

 

for me, its neutral, heck the game I play only cs 1.6 and diablo 2.
as long it still manage to play 720p and those two games then its no more problem

 

Any more votes?

I'm noticing how this poll approaches a normal distribution
(sorry, I do study maths - but I normally strongly dislike statistics)

 

Wow, that's a lot of virtual machines! I think I may have had three open at once? What all OS'es are you running to need six of them? I mostly have Linux VM's that prefer to have lots of memory, so two is the most I really want to run, though a light Win9x in addition to that is doable as well. But I can't think of any reason I'd need six at once!

Uh-oh, estimated delivery of February 29th? Dude, you better cancel that order - they aren't going to give it to you until 2012!

 

Neutral. It's just suitable for my needs. I know it can't run the latest games at max, but for what I ask it to do, it's doing well. I just need to upgrade the hard drive because I feel that it's kind of slow [and of course running out of space ]

 

I need a 4670 under 14.1". A very rare case

 

Way too slow/weak for me; then again, what would one expect from a 6 year-old _Sony VAIO Z1A with a 1.3GHz centrino, a maximum RAM limit of 768 MB of PC-2700 RAM, and a pithed ATi Radeon video chip with only 16MB of video memory. At least the hdd is no longer the 4,200rpm snail that was OEM on it.

Hopefully, that'll be changing shortly, though.

 

I put down neutral, I tried the QX9300 form my p9500 and that didn't really do anything much better, I would say for me the mobility 4870's need to come out, then I will be cooking!

 

Bumping this thread - just to see if I can get a few more votes.

 

Powerful enough except where graphics are concerned but an upgrade is possible.

 

neutral for me, just the right amount of power i need
and i just noticed the poll results kinda follow a normal distribution curve >.>

 

Considering I just bought it, I would say it's more than enough and clearly more powerful than my desktop. It'll handle the older games I want to throw on it such as the first Far Cry, The Orange Box, and Call of Duty 2 with ease. Judging by the benchmarks I've found, it can handle a lot more, like Crysis and the bloated code PC port of Assassin's Creed, but I'm reluctant to buy newer games because of invasive DRM tactics. However, my laptop will nicely serve its most demanding purpose as a home theater gaming PC and classic console emulator. The most intense work-related use would be Photoshop and maybe some Flash development.

 

Very true - it did that pretty much for the beginning.

PS: I'm a maths student who doesn't like stats.

 

The 9800M GTS plays all games at high settings. If only my CPU was a quad-core, I could transcode videos 24/7 on my laptop.

 

I plan on downgrading from what's in my sig to a Lenovo X200 Tablet.

I do mild Photoshop, some Visual Studio .NET Programming, iTunes, email, AIM, and youtube mostly.

I want mobility and power, and I think the Lenovo is a much better balance than what my Dell offers. Especially battery life wise.