Need advice fast, buying HP laptop tonight

I'll be buying my laptop for college tonight, and I'm probably going to take the zd7000 w/ p4 3 ghz and geforce fx go5700. I like this notebook a lot, but I would prefer an amd 64 processor, but the old video card is a deal breaker. I wanted to know if it was possible to upgrade to the go5700 or ati 9700. The HP guy on the phone said it was possible, but i wanted to make sure before i bought it. Thanks in advance.

 

I doubt you will be able to upgrade the graphics card. I think you can on some high end gaming laptops, but not on the HP.

Check out this link:

http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3927&SearchTerms=upgrade,video,card

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Fujitsu S6210: 1.6Ghz PM ~ 768MB RAM ~ 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
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sorry, i forgot to ask what will be faster, gaming and other wise, the p4 3 ghz or amd 64 3400, both with 512 ram, one with the 5700 128mb and one with the 440 64mb. And I also wanted to know roughly how much faster 64 windows will be. Thanks

 

Well the HP guy is a good salesman. But he's wrong if what you're asking is if you can upgrade the processor after you've bought the notebook, because you can't, it's not plug and play, the motherboard will be unique based on the processor and graphics card that you configure.

Until 64-bit programs come out, the AMD 64 does not have much speed advantage over the P4 3GHz, but once games and OS' are out then the nod goes to the AMD 64 3400+...it's a little ahead of the software industry!

 

I'm playing 64-bit UT2004 under Linux now. 64-bit WinXP won't be out until late this year, but expect games to make the jump to 64-bit real quick when Microsoft is done.

The 440 Go is soldered onto the motherboard. It's not upgradable. I still owe some HP marketing weasle a cluestick beating for that decision. It's totally inadequate for serious gaming unless you're really tolerant of mediocre/slow framerate and low detail.

Unless you want to wait until fall and see who does what with the mobile version of the GeForce 6800 (if the rumor posted on theinquirer.net is true), the zd7000 w/GeForce 5700 is awfully tough to beat. Check the Clevo D470K 17" Athlon 64 notebooks with Radeon 9700's, but those are much more expensive... Acer's Ferarri 3200 is worth a look but that's probably more $$$ too.

 

I went with the zd7000. specs are 3.2 p4, 512 ram, fx go5700 w/128, 40 gig 5400 rpm HD, 2x DVD+R, i think that's about it. What can I expect as far as benchmark numbers?

 

These links should make some interesting reading for you:

http://www.zd7000forums.com/

http://reviews.cnet.com/HP_Pavilion_zd7000/4505-3121_7-30557633-8.html

http://www.maximumpc.com/reviews/notebooks/review_2004-01-02.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1369034,00.asp

http://www.g4techtv.com/feature.aspx?article_key=47222

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Fujitsu S6210: 1.6Ghz PM ~ 768MB RAM ~ 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
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