I'm looking for a 15,4" Centrino with longetivity. I'm going to use it as an all-around entertainment notebook, and my game of choice would be Half-Life 2. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hardcore gamer and don't want a notebook like Alienware or Sager, which are targeted for hardcore gamers.
Acer TravelMate 8104 has been my first choice for a long time, but then someone recommended me this notebook by HP, NW8240. Of course it is a business/CAD/workstation notebook, but it's really well made and has great features.
Of course my main concern is the fact that this notebook uses Ati's FireGL V5000 GPU which is for graphic designers and such, not so much for gamers. However, somebody told me that it is essentially like Ati Mobility Radeon X700, which Acer TM8104 uses, but for CAD-users. The main difference between Acer's X700 and V5000 is that X700 uses DDR1 memory (part of Acer's strategy to prevent heat) and V5000 uses DDR3 memory. This would make it a better choice for games but it only scored 160 points higher than TM8104 in 3DMARK05 (also, HP had 1,5GB of RAM against Acer's 1GB of RAM).
What do you guys think? Is NW8240 a good laptop for general entertainment use with no intentions of using it with CAD-application or business?
Also, you could comment on this: A person told me that NW8240 has this potential gaming handicap: apparently you can only have TWO simultanious keypresses (not counting Shift or Control). So you can't push A, W and space at the same time. This could be a problem in Half-Life 2 for example (run+duck+jump).
Links:
HP NW8240
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-89315-321838-f1-462857.html
Acer TM8104
http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/tm8100.htm
Ati Mobility FireGL V5000
http://www.ati.com/products/Mobilityfireglv5000/index.html
HP NW8240 - Suitable for Gamers?
Discussion in 'HP' started by JesseGaron, May 30, 2005.