zx5000 vs r3000t dedicated

Hello, I had a couple questions concerning these two notebooks.

I will be using my notebook for work in 3DS Max6, but all the rendering will be done on my desktop computer, so processor speed isnt _that_ important too me. Im on a tight budget of say, 1,300-1,400 max. If at all possible I would like to find something with a P4M rather then the P4, with at least an ATI 9600 (128mb is a must).

1)How much hotter does a 3.0HT P4 run then the 2.8 P4? Also is the battery life significantly different on these two?

2)How much shorter is the 15.4" widescreen then the 15"? I think I would prefer just the 15" over the widesceen if its much shorter.

3)As I understand it the R3000T and ZX5000 are identical in everything except body and JBL vs H-K speakers. Correct?

I guess if I would like the 15" better and I got the 2.8 I would opt for 1gb of RAM.

Is there any other notebooks out in the >$1,400 category with a 128mb ATI 9600? Really hoping to get a P4M or P M to beef the battery life up a tad.

 

Other notebooks:

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=NB-BA20408

Several vendors sell these Uniwill notebooks under their brand names. 128MB Radeon 9700 video, 15.4" widescreen, AMD Athlon 64 CPU. Other vendors offer higher-speed CPUs than MWave does, I'm not sure why MWave doesn't. See the other/boutique forums on this site for more info.

 

There are not a lot of units that have the ATI 9600 w/128MB of video memory that costs under $1400. Most usually comes with only 64MB.

There are 2 units you may want to take a look at:

Averatec 6100 Series
eMachines M68xx Series

They only have only 64MB, but they're in the price range.

Yes, the speakers and outer body are the only difference between the 2 systems.
Battery life between a 15.4" & 15" screen are probably gonna be minimal. You will have shorter battery life with the wide, but maybe no more than 20mins (max).

Units that are above $1400 with an ATI 9600 (or higher) w/128MB:
Acer Aspire 2025WLMi (Pentium M)
Acer Ferrari 3200 (AMD64)
Acer Travelmate 8000 Series (Pentium M)
Dell 8600 Series (Pentium M)
Sager NP Series (P4)

I'd recommend getting the Pentium M notebooks if you want battery life, but that automatically increases the price.

-Vb-

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Venombite

 

Dimension wise, the 15" fits into the same housing as the 15.4" screen, there's just more of a plastic border around the LCD (I hope this is what you were looking for). [ ]

Battery life between a P4 2.8 & 3.0 w/HT, well, I'm not sure, but you're probably looking at 30-45mins difference. So a max time of 1.5-2hrs for the 3.0 w/HT CPU. (Guessing, anybody want to correct me?)

I'm not sure about 3DSMax or raytracing, but does any of them use OpenGL? I think they do, so in that case, an ATI 9600 is good, but a comparable NVidia GPu may be more suited. They produce higher OpenGL numbers than ATI. I think it's ATi's drivers that is causing the bottleneck. They had to release new Beta drivers so it'll perform better in Doom 3 (OpenGL game). I also heard that they're gonna redo all their drivers to produce better OpenGL numbers to compete with NVidia. If you have no hardware support for raytracing/3D rendering, I believe it's done by software (handled by CPU, slower), but if you have hardware support (GPU, faster), then the GPU takes over.

That's a pretty sweet looking system! The ZX5000's are a bit on the heavy side. If you had a higher spending limit, the HP NC8000 or NW8000 will be an excellent choice. It has the 128MB 9600 GPU (FireGL T2 for the NW8000, OpenGL suited card), Pentium M 1.8Ghz CPU and a battery runtime of over 3hrs in a unit that weighs under 6lbs. The unit starts at over $2000, so I don't think all the discounts will drop it to $1400. [V]

-Vb-

 

I don't think HT makes a lot of change in battery life, mine gets 2.5-3 hours depending what I'm doing.


Compaq R3000T (CTO)
P4 Desktop 3.0GHz w/HT
1 X 512MB RAM
Radeon 9600 128MB
60GB 5,400 RPM HD
AquaMark3: 24,257, 3DMark03: 3,115

 

HT probably won't affect the overall battery life, but jumping the CPU speed up should cause battery life to drop. My values are usually on the conservative side, so no one's disappointed when they get the unit and it doesn't perform as well as people have claimed.

-Vb-

 

Just some updates, going in to school this Tuesday to talk to the technology guy about even bringing a notebook to class(High School). Then I will be talking to various people about loans...and with the way eBay has been treating me I may have some more money to put towards one, maybe $1500 now.

I configured an mWave with 1gig DDR, 60gig HDD, A64m 3000 for something like $1,495 and emailed them about student pricing, which they do offer and I was happy till i got the reply and he said the student price for this model is $1,511. whaaaaat.... same specs and all, I checked. Awaiting a reply on that one.

As far as OpenGL vs DirectX in 3DS Max6, via the configuration utility your are allowed to choose between software, directx and openGL. Rendering is not a big deal really, I have a P200 MMX that renders just fine lol. And most my big rendering is done via a distributed render over the network on 4-5 computers.

Im still debating whether I'll use the laptop for gaming at all. Of course it would be a big plus if it could play most new games nicely, such as EQ2. I would really prefer to find a P4m if not a PM, but im not sure how the PM compares to a P4 as far as what a 1.5ghz PM is equivalent too. It would be nice to take this laptop outside for long periods of time while modeling (for inspiration, etc.) so the more battery life, the better. I will be using this laptop all the way through college (6yrs) and all it will ever run is 3DS Max6, IE, Trillian, GIMP, Word, Excel and other apps like that.

The system reqs on 3DS Max6 are:
-300mhz P3 or AMD (Dual AMD or Xeon recomended because it makes use of dual processors)
-min 512mb recomended 2gig
-Graphics card supporting 1024x768 at 16bit color, recomended Dx9 compatible >=32mb dedicated memory, supporting 1280x1024 resolution at 32bit color.

To give you an idea of what im upgrading from Im using currently:
Ath XP 2200+ Oc @ 1.95ghz
1.5gb DDR 2100
60gb 7200 HDD ATA-133
GeForce 4 Ti4200

This runs 3DS Max flawlessly and really doesnt bog down at all, rendering times are fairly good for single frames.

 

I would almost say I don't know my self but that last thing about the pc2100 ram makes me say HP plus I don't know much about that company and I know I trust HP notebooks. I think either will be great by there specs though and will have very simlar battery life so if you don't mind upgrading your ram the mwave sounds better. Just make sure the motherboard allows a faster ram.


Compaq R3000T (CTO)
P4 Desktop 3.0GHz w/HT
1 X 512MB RAM
Radeon 9600 128MB
60GB 5,400 RPM HD
AquaMark3: 24,257, 3DMark03: 3,115

 

OK I have narrowed it down to these two:

1)
HP Pavilion zx5000 series customize notebook
- Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 2.80 GHz
- 15.4" WXGA (1280x800)
- 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) 9600
- 1GB DDR SDRAM (1x512MB) + 512mb Crucial ($109)
- 60 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
- DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
- 802.11b Wireless LAN
- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

For $1,400 inc a 512DDR from Crucial (1gb total)

or

2)
MWAVE N258KA
AMD Athlon 64 Mobile 3000+
15.4" WXGA
ATI 9700 128MB
MODEM/LAN/3xUSB 2.0/1xIEEE 1394
1GB DDR (512MBX2)
60GB (5400RPM) HDD
DVD/CDRW COMBO
10 CELL LI-ION BATTERY

For $1500

Which would you choose? Its pretty up in the air to me, the mwave doesnt have WLAN so I would have to buy a PC card with wireless, but its a lot thinner and a litter lighter(its 1.4" vs 1.8" of the zx5000) However the speakers/sound card are not the greatest, whereas the zx has astounding speakers. The A64m i suppose might be a bit easier on the battery however it uses a 10cell vs a 12 in the HP. The MWave also uses PC2100 RAM from what i hear.

So which would you choose, and why?

 

Hmm, wonder why there's no WLAN listed, the Uniwill notebook MWave sells does have a miniPCI slot and antennas for a WLAN card... worst case, you can buy an Intel 802.11g miniPCI card from NewEgg for $40 (I'd prefer Atheros but I haven't found an inexpensive supplier yet). Ask MWave about WLAN for that notebook, and whether they're using the Mobile or DTR Athlon 64 CPUs. I should hope they use at least PC2700 RAM, ask them about that too.

Heck, I could buy a barebones N258KA and build you a proper notebook (I have a PayPal Premier account for credit card payment if needed)... I have a two week break after Summer semester ends on Wednesday. I wouldn't mind playing with one of these but I can't afford to keep it.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, i will get an email out to mwave here in a minute, but I just wanted to ask another question.

The main reason I want the A64 is for futureproofing, this notebook will have to last me a long while and I believe having a 64bitprocessor would help that a lot. Agree?

I'm going to look into building one from a barebones, since I build desktops for pretty much a living now, just never wanted to venture into the compactness of a notebook.

Does anyone know where the best place to get the n258ka barebones is?

I'll reply later today with more info, thanks.

 

UPDATE:

I've found a site that sells the barebones(EKM Store) and I have the other parts in my cart on newegg.

The barebones are $950 + $35 for the mini PCI wireless = $985, so say $1,000.

Newegg cart is $485.
-60gb 5400 HDD
-2x 512mb DDR PC3200
-AMD Mobile Ath64 2800+ (35w low power one) 512 l2

This is just below my limit without an OS. So supposing I can find a copy of XP around here this may be the way I go.

Not sure about how this will be in terms of buying new batteries(as in.. where do you get them from) or where I would send it for repairs, so it might just be less headache to get the HP and not have as much batt life/32bit cpu, but those H-K speakers sounded really nice at the store.

I cant decide!

 

Sounds like you've got the right idea. Check newegg.com and zipzoomfly.com for parts too. See crucial.com for memory, or find Corsair XMS series PC3200 CL2.5 memory (pcprogress.com is the only source I know of, $110 per 512MB SODIMM currently). I'd go with Corsair. Newegg has Panasonic slot-loading 4x notebook (slimline) DVD burners, ultradrives.com has Toshiba 4x burners (which I have, didn't know about the Panasonic drives, don't know anyone who's tried those). Don't forget to buy a tube of Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound. Consider Hitachi's 7200RPM HDs, I have one, almost as fast as a desktop drive, currently idling at 38C in my zv5000z.

Yes, you're absolutely right about the Athlon 64 being the most future-proof CPU, not to mention being the best CPU you can buy today. The Low-Voltage 2800+ has become pretty inexpensive too.

See if you can get WinXP on academic discount from your university bookstore, same with Office 2003 Pro if you need it. You can get Office from Newegg but I didn't see the WinXP academic edition last I checked.

 

What kind of battery life should I expect with a 35w A64m and a 10cell battery?

Also, we may be able to work something out if you wanted to assemble a list and get me a price? least the shipping would be fast, going from ann arbor to over here between GR and KZoo.

 

I should think around 3 hours of battery time, assuming the Radeon 9700 isn't too much of a drag while not playing games. My 12 cell gets 3-4. PowerNOW! works very well.

Wireless... are you going to be using Linux? If so, you probably want an Atheros-based miniPCI card, and those are more expensive. Tough to find too. I bought one for my zv5000z but sold it because HP locks out non-HP wireless cards (idiots!). It looks like there are Linux drivers for the Intel card in early development (as in version 0.3).

If I'm going to put anything on my credit card, I need to wait until next week when I'm in the next billing period. Well, maybe not, I'm probably not going to be able to pay off the full amount this month anyhow. You'd want, what, the notebook, 60GB 7200RPM HD, Intel WiFi (or Atheros for probably twice as much?), go with their DVD burner (looks like they're going to make you buy an optical drive, might as well get a matching bezel anyhow), the LV A64 2800+, pair of Corsair XMS 512MB SODIMMs, tube of Arctic Silver 5, WinXP Home or Pro (unless you can find an academic version?)... that sound about right?

I'd say you could make a trip down I-94 to pick up the notebook from me (I'm a short hop off one of the exits) but I'm not sure which sections are under construction now [ ]. I avoid the whole thing.

 

Its OK im still debating between a few options, I'll contact you later this week and tell you what I decide to go with, thanks for the help!

 

hp zx5280 question/problem: how do i burn DATA onto a DVD? it doesn't recognize the disc!? i need to archive some of my videos for use on later projects, but i can only write to DVD using 'DVD Creator' type software. is there another setting inside the win dvd creator software that i haven't found? i can write Data fine to CD media but it takes too many discs and many of the files i work with are larger than the 680mb size limit for cd's. you dig? any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

http://www.nero.com
http://www.burnatonce.com
http://www.cdburnerxp.se

The last two are free, the first one has a 30-day free trial.