Which laptop cpu would be better (more powerful for gaming)

Hey everyone,
Brand new here first post. Love the site.
I am interested in a gaming laptop. I have gone to all the major sites including Dell, Gateway, Sager, Vodoo, Cyberpower, and a few others.

I have narrowed down my choice between one from Sager (NP5793) and one from Cyberpower (X7-SLI).

Question: Which seems better of the two: A) 45nm Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor X9000/6MB L2 chache, 2.80 GHz, 800Mhz FSB from the Sager offering (with GeForce 8800 GTX 512MB DDR3 card)

OR B) Cyberpower's Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 [email protected] GHz 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache 64-bit, and built-in NVIDIA Video ( Dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 8800 GTX MXM GDDR3 512MB PCI-E Vodep - SLI MODE)

I am essentially getting confused by some of the wording. Cyberpower has the word Go in their video card - is that a weaker version of Sager's or are we talking about the same card.

Also, I am confused about the centrino processors versus the Core 2 duo. (I know they are both dual core but I would think the E6850 is comparable (meaning it is the same exact thing??) to a desktop version and although this I believe is 65nm vs 45nm it is going to be faster???) I am really interested in watching DVDs and gaming (not super hard core but would like COD4 and crysis, etc. to look reasonable and smooth - again most settings about half way and not close to maxed out)

Any thoughts will be appreciated. I will try to figure out some of this on Tom's Hardware chart section but wanted more info from you guys before calling the salespersons and possibly getting fooled (or misunderstanding)

Thanks!!
Coleco

 

Yikes!! I am going to get a whipping I know. I apologize. I did not read the stickies - Sorry. I will do so now as I see there is a cpu section. If the info I need is in there again I apologize.

 

Score one for the sticky. Sticky: 1. Everyone Else: 10 Gagillion.

 

Well, I looked through the guide but my lack of knowledge about these things leaves me at a disadvantage. It seems that the Core 2 Duo E6850 is obviously a desktop cpu and now I have to figure out on my own if that is acceptable. How could one of these and 2 notebook cards in a laptop not go up in a fireball due to heat?

 

You can have a laptop with a desktop processor in it.
The system will have a much larger cpu heatsink and set of fans than a standard notebook will.
The Clevo D900C/D901C has a desktop Intel processor in it.

Otherwise, a core 2 based laptop will suit all of your needs. The new core 2 processors are built on 45/65nm technology, which means cooler running temperatures, and more battery life.

I have a AMD Server processor in my laptop, and it needs one of these to cool it:

and that 2lb copper heatsink is cooled by two massive impeller type fans:



K-TRON

 

Wow, K-Tron thanks for the pics and response. Now what I am wondering (now that I know it can be done) is if the E6850 3.00 GHz 1333FSB is better than the newest (more traditional) laptop cpu X9000 45nm Core 2 Extreme processor. I dont know how to compare the two.
Tom's Hardware now has mobile processor charts but not the newest cpus, unless I misread them. Thanks again.

 

Two words.

Massive! Impressive!

I wonder how this compares with the C90 heatsink. I can see that that is a full copper finned heatsink, so that already has an advantage there.

 

The c90s heatsink is really small.
The heatsink in teh picture is about 9.5" long
and like 3.5" thick
My heatsink is so big, cause my cpu burns 125 watts of power

Abd yes, any desktop processor will outpace a mobile processor in any tests.

My 2.6Ghz opteron is on par with the E6700 Intel processor, both of which are much faster than any mobile processor in the benchmarks

K-TRON

 

Well they will be very similar in performance since the x9000 would be operating at 2.8Ghz whereas the E6850 would be at 3.0Ghz. Given the difference with Mobile Penryn and Conroe, you're only looking at a less than 5% difference between the 2 processors in 3Dmark06. There is a significant difference when it comes to computing, rendering and encoding speed in the desktop Conroe will be much faster.

To be honest, I think you should focus more of your attention towards the GPU solutions rather than the processors as those are more likely to be upgradable compared to the video card and likely the bottleneck when it comes to gaming.

 

Ok, so are we just comparing the processors or processors and GPU? In the case of processor and GPU, the E6850 and SLI GTX definitely wins over the X9000 and single GTX hands down (though the performance gains of SLI are usually marginal; a crapshot like some people say). Of course the monetary cost and power consumption of the latter will be through the roof, but I assume that's not a concern.

Just comparing processors, the E6850 is still faster by a significant amount (based on wPrime scores; 20s for the E6850, 27s for the X9000), but again, as K-TRON mentioned, that comes at the cost of heat and those fatty heatsinks.

 

Its been shown time and time again the SLI score in 3D mark is not reflected in real world gaming the scaling of having a second GPU is a expensive add on for nothing much. Its more about Nvidia getting a high 3Dmark to shout about and use in marketing that they are the best.

 

Well, actually after I add up all the tax and shipping and so forth, the Cyber power X7-SLI with the Core 2 Duo E6850 and sli GeForce Go 8800 GTX MXM is about $450 more than the Sager NP5793 with the X9000 processor and a single 8800M GTX . So the $450 doesnt bother me if overall it is a superior system. I am just trying to compare apples to apples. What I am also hoping is the Geforce Go 8800 GTX MXM from cyberpower is the same card as Sager's GeForce 8800M GTX. The lettering is different but similar. The only reason I bring it up is because I recall years ago the titanium cards from gateway and dell had some lettering changes and it turned out these cards were not quite the same as the retail versions.

But you have really all been helpful and I do have to consider things like heat, long term health of th computer, etc. If having 2 cards and a desktop cpu in it means it poops out after 3 years, I will not do it for a slight performance gain.

 

The two cards are the same. CyperPower is just using Nvidia's old mobile nomenclature of adding the Go in there instead of an M somewhere. The MXM part just means that CyberPower card is replaceable with another MXM card with similar specifications.

 

Thanks everyone and thanks Commander. Now that I have the info I can start making some calls. Appreciate it everyone.