dv8000 graphic card question

My wife and I have finally decided to buy a laptop computer as a second computer for the house (basically a desktop replacement). We had been seriously considering buying the zd8000, but were scared off because of the P4 chip and heat issues, however, we very much like all other aspects of the computer. I was, therefore, happy to hear that hp came out with a Turion AMD chip version for their 17"-screen laptops the dv8000 series with a 64-bit chip and less problems with heat generation.

Unfortunately, after reading reviews of the dv8000 another potential problem sprang up. There is no choice but to take the subpar graphics card packaged with the machine. I do plan on gaming on this machine, but the games that I play are not necessarily very graphic intensive. I cannot play the high-end 1st-person shooter games (because of motion sickness symptoms while playing), but I do play sports simulation games (like NHL hockey) and overhead RPG (like Neverwinter nights) on the PC. Should I think twice about purchasin the dv8000, because of the less than optimal graphics card? Or are my gaming requirements not going to be affected by this?

Your suggestions would be appreciated.

 

A 128MB X600 isn't terrible. It's not the greatest card on the market but it should be more than enough for what you need.

 

Dell 9300 with the 6800 go card offers much better graphics performance if you'd like another option.

 

The DV8000 uses the Radeon X200M graphics card right? I know it can play Neverwinter Nights very well for sure. It can even play some first person shooters decently.

 

Yes, it will play all games, but on low settings. I played BF2, Doom 3 and even F.E.A.R. on my old zv6000 before I got rid of it. I still think the card isn't that good, and could be punched up to an X700 which is the reason I unloaded my zv6000. HP really dissapoints in the VCard department of their notebooks and are almost always underpowered (barring the dv4000 with the X700 of course).

 

I would recommend the Dell i9300 as posted by zazonz for the best price/performance gaming notebook.

And, for 15.4", I like the Compaq V4000t, or, for better quality, the MSI-1029. There's a review on this site - check that out.

 

Yes, I highly agree with you, this is the one major issue I have with HP. I am a big fan of their notebooks, but their avoidance of putting good GPUs in their notebooks really ticks me off.
I'm glad they finally put a good GPU in the DV4000, lets hope this trend can continue.
The ZV6000/R4000 notebooks are desktop replacements and so deserve at least X700s themselves, same goes for the DV8000. And HP, could you at least put an X600 in the DV1000 please??

 

HP is going to lose me as a customer (likely to Acer or MSI) if they don't have a decent GPU option on their AMD64 notebooks when I'm ready to upgrade. MSI's new 17" MS-1036 Turion notebook with 256MB X700 looks particularly appealing, whenever it makes its way to North America, though the dv8000z appears to have a better screen option. Maybe HP will build us a nice Turion notebook with nVidia GPU when nVidia's new notebook chipset is ready next year.

 

X600 is not that bad. It can handle NFSMW pretty well.

 

I have the HP zv6000 with the same graphics card as the DV8000. I play Neverwinter nights and it looks very good and very smooth. No problems there. Also, I have never played NHL Hockey but I play Madden NFL 2004 and it works great. I think at least with these games you will have no problems. you might want to consider looking at the HP DV4000 with the ATI X700 graphics card. The biggest difference between these two is that the DV4000 only has a 15.4" screen and it has a Pentium M chip instead of the Turion 64. Nothing wrong with Pentium M except that it will not be able to fully utilize 64 bit applications when Windows Vista becomes available.

 

The Pentium M won't be able to run 64-bit applications, period, nor 64-bit Windows Vista for that matter. You'll be stuck with the 32-bit Vista version that I suspect will be widely ignored. Make your guess on how long the changeover to 64-bit will take and buy accordingly.

If you're into Linux, 64-bit Linux has been up and running for quite some time now. 64-bit WinXP has been out for months but it's missing a lot of drivers.

 

Very strange thing came in the mail today: an HP Shopping catalog that was solely advertising AMD processors. Great way to start the day!

The day was on a roll when I saw the next thing: the dv8000z was listed with a 128MB X600 card! Wow!

However, the website makes no mention of this. The catalog configurations were listed with the Turion 64 and other appropriate hardware, but the picture used was that of the zd8000. I smell a typo...

Maybe HP just employs idiots or something. Further inspection with the Quick Shop codes didn't confirm what was in the catalog and there's this weird "AMD Fusion 64" thing in the HP Shopping front page claiming that all of the dv8000z units contain it. Wtf?

I really hope they're just slow at updating the site when they just shouldn't have said anything in any form until all of the updates were ready.

 

Hey - that's a first, HP advertising AMD-based machines...maybe they finally broke free of the Intel chains.

Might be a typo, HP sometimes confueses the zd8000 with the dv8000z. Well, I would expect that it would be on their website if it was true. Let's hope it wasn't a typo.

Thanks for the news.

 

I've noticed typo's before on HP's circular's. They listed one time recently a zd8000 as having the X700 available and that turned out to be a typo. I suspect this is a typo too ,though I do think that the AMD processor's will before too long begin having something besides just the xpress 200M. I hope so anyway.

 

I wonder who proofreads their circulars...makes me wonder who is in charge over there.