gaming on the Zv6000

Hi folks,

well, I'm about to order a zv6000, a64 3500+, 1gb ram, 100gb hd, radeon 128mb xpress 200m, 15.4" brightview, dvd burner, bluetooth+wlan, 12 cell lithium ion battery, earbud headphones, a mouse, a wireless router and a backpack, for 1400.48 dollars. good deal?

i'm aware that this should more than enough for a desktop replacement. my main concern lies on the xpress 200m. is it shared memory, or is it dedicated? will i be able to play games such as hl2, doom3 and farcry without problems?



another issue is reliability. as i'm going back to brazil in december or january, i need the most reliable notebook i can get. if you think any other particular brand is more reliable, please tell me so, any help is greatly appreciated



Thanks in advance,

manero;

 

With the zv6000 you have the choice of 128 megs dedicated Vram or 32 megs Dedicated Ram. The 128 meg solution also has hypermemory that allows you to use up to 128 megs of RAM to increase your gpu Ram to 256 megs.

ITs about as strong as the X300 so it will play games but the really nasty 3d ones like Doom3 wont run well. If you are into high frame rate FPS games then the 200m is not the best solution.

 

"the really nasty 3d ones like Doom3 wont run well"

even in lower resolutions/detail settings? could you suggest any other brand/model with a better graphics card?

what about that price, is it a good deal?

any reliability issues?

 

Doom3 will run if you cut the detail and resolution back. Even my zv5000z can run it. Definitely get the 128MB dedicated video RAM, I don't know why they bother offering the modestly cheaper shared memory only option.

 

I have always had good luck with HP and the price looks good.

If your not one of the super gamers then I think you will get alot of fun and use out of an HP.

I dont understand the fuss. Even my desktop that I play EQ2 on only got a score of 1100 on 3dmark05 and the ATI 200m gets scores over 500 so it should be pretty good.

I know people that get 10000 and higher on the 3dmark05 scores but I have never had the money to make a system that fast and I dont feel like I have missed anything when it comes to game play.

 

I still don't quite get the hypermomory feature, so its shared and dedicated, how well does that work with 512md of RAM?

 

Yea thats basicly it EatSleepBlink.

128 megs are dedicated Vram and you can set up to 128 megs of system ram for video usage. So if you have 512 megs and if you use all 128 megs possible for cvideo then your total system RAM for the OS will be 512megs - 128megs = 384megs.

Personally if I had 512megs of RAM I would only use 64 megs for video then you would have 512megs - 64megs = 448megs of OS RAM.

 

Oh, and I'm not sure about this, but I think I remember somebody saying that the graphics card will use 1/4 of total system memory, so you can get 256 MB graphics memory off of 1 GB.

 

How about the ACER TM4402WLMi? It has a Turion and X700 graphics. I drooled over it for a while before my wife made me buy something cheaper.

 

I like the TM4402 but

I am going with the L2000 becuase I need something with a little more CPU rather then Graphics power and it needs to be small for portability.

If I wanted a Gaming system I would get the TM4402 in a second.

 

I agree. I stole your sig too!

 

what about the gateway 7510gx? here's a link:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...CategoryId=pcmcat39100050016&id=1117177722061

 

TM4402WLMi Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional; AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology ML-30; 512GB (256/256) DDR333 SDRAM; 100GB hard drive; integrated DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive; 6-in-1 card reader; 15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT display; ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X700 graphics; 802.11b/g WLAN, gigabit LAN, V.92 modem

don't need winxp pro, the processor should be a little faster, can't work with the double 256's, but the rest is sweet.

 

Both the Gateway and Acer notebooks will be better at gaming. The Acer's low-end Turion is balanced out by its much better GPU (64MB X700). The best option I can think of, short of the Acer Ferrari 4000, would be MSI's new notebook but it hasn't been reviewed yet.

That said, all of the above will likely cost more than the zv6000.

 

What makes a GPU better than another (besides video memory)?

 

Well some video cards can handle more because of their clock and memory speeds. Also cards all have a different aount of pixel pipelines.

 

Go to ATI's site and read up on the GPUs they have. The X700 has 8 pixel pipelines, X600 has 4 and I think the XPress200 has 2.
Also the X700 is based off the X800 and has features like SmoothvisionHD etc.
I know very little about NVidia's offerings.

 

So it uses system memory automatically or can you do it yourself.

 

Yes, you can control it so as to allow it to use hypermemory or no hypermemory.

 

There are 2 problems/hassles with using Hypermemory:

1. You have to change Hypermemory options in the BIOS (whether or not you want to use Hypermemory and if so how much)

2. The Hypermemory does not make that much of a difference while playing games. (At least from my experiences)

Hope this helps!