dv9500t Gaming (NWN 2; Oblivion)

I'm thinking about retiring my ZD8000 and getting a new notebook. I've been thinking seriously about the m9750 Alienware buy am starting to balk a bit at the price.

I've been the proud owner of a zd8000 for a couple of years and have been completely satisfied with it. I've thought about going to the dv9500t. The main reason would be gaming as I am completely happy in its performance with my regular applications.

Two games that I'm frustated that I can't play are NWN 2 and Oblivion. Has anyone played these games on the 9500?

 

My friend has a dv6000z with the Geforce Go 7200 (with XP) he plays Oblivion perfectly fine under medium setting so with the 8600 you should have no trouble at all. Not sure about NWN 2 though.

 

NWN 2 will play fine at low settings with a Go7400, so the 8600GS should be able to handle them at at least medium settings. However, have you considered a laptop like the Clevo M570RU? It's cheaper than the alienware, but still a very good 17" machine.

 

Since very few people actually post about NWN2 here, I figured I'd chip in even though I don't have a dv9500t.

On my MBP, which has a 8600M GT running Vista and using 163.11 drivers, I can play the game perfectly at native resolution (1440x900) with everything to the max except AA, which I keep at 4X. There's a slight lag if I turn it up to 8X especially when the action gets high (i.e. a lot of buffs too) though.

The 8600M GS isn't quite as good, but it should be able to handle medium settings just fine at lower resolutions.

I second odin's recommendation of the M570ru however. It's the best value for your buck gaming rig with a 17" screen right now.

 

I've been doing a bit of research on some of the ODM suppliers but its a new thing to me. I know very little about them. I had actually glanced at that particular model and configured one to get an idea of pricing, but it seemed to come out within a couple hundred of the alienware anyway.

The HP I configured was about 1500 - the bare bones m9750 was about 2500 after tax and shipping (what utter rot). I guess its either feast or famine


Edit: Just configured

CPU Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7300 / 4MB L2 Cache, 2.0 GHz, 800MHz FSB
Video Controller Nvidia GeForce GO 7950 GTX PCI-Express 16X with 512MB DDR3 Video Memory
Memory 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 X 512MB
Primary Hard Drive 80.0GB (SATA 5400rpm) SATA 150 Hard Drive
CD-ROM/DVD-ROM 8X DVD ± R/RW/ 4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Softwares
Battery Smart Li-ION Battery
Modem Integrated 56K V.90 Internal Fax/Modem
Network Adapter Integrated 1000Mbps Ethernet LAN & Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN LAN 802.11n Module & Bluetooth Module
Operating System Genuine Windows VISTA Home Premium 32/64-Bit Edition
Warranty Sager 1 Year Standard Warranty

Price was 2049 ....

I guess that I'll get substantially better performance out of this than a dv9500t? God that orange stripe is ugly.

 

Yes, you will get substantially better performance out of that machine. If you want to save some money and avoid the orange stripe, you could look at the slightly older Clevo M570U, also with the Go7950GTX.

 

Keep in mind NWN does not support multi cores.

 

So what about Oblivion? Has anyone played this game on the 9500t with the 8600 GS? I know this isn't a particularly good card...and I'm looking at some other notebooks with better ones... but I think the price is right on this machine....And it'd be good for the next couple years... by which time things will have completely changed again!

 

I don't have a 9500t but I would think that it would play Oblivion fine under at least medium settings, maybe even high settings. I know the 7400 will play it at medium settings so I would think the 8600 should have no problems with Oblivion. Good luck and happy computing!

 

That's encouraging. I was originally looking at a sager 5790 (570RU) but my budget has dropped a bit ( I want to get my gf's daughter a basic laptop for school) and I've been happy in the past... but I've run up against a wall with my zd8k with x300. Oblivion is probably the most advanced game I would like to play. It seems like I work ALL the time so I rarely have hours to dedicate to gaming. Mostly I'm purchasing it as a multimedia laptop but since I'm upgrading I'd still like to be able to play some games I haven't been able to play. Other than that - my ZD8k does everything I need it to. I am pretty excited about having real battery life!