About to order NP9262, quick question

Hi - apologies if this has been asked Ive been around the houses but cant seem to get consensus, first here is what I am about to order

SAGER NP9262 Ultimate Custom Laptop (Built on Clevo D900C / D901C)
- 17" WUXGA "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1920x1200)
- ~Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz w/ 4MB L2 Cache - 1333MHz FSB
- 512MB PCI-Express nVidia GeForce 8800GTX DX10
- ~ 4,096MB DDR2 800 (2 SODIMMS) Dual Channel Memory
- Panasonic UJ-220 Blu-Ray Super Multi DVD+/ -R/RW BD-R/RE Dual Layer Burner -
- ~ 320GB 5400RPM (Serial-ATA 300)
- Internal 7-in-1 Card Reader (MS/MS Pro/MS Duo/MS Pro Duo/SD/Mini-SD/MMC/RS)
- Internal Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR
- Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965 802.11 a/g/n
- Built in 2.0 Megapixel Camera
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi 7.1 Xtreme Audio Notebook Express Card
- ~Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit
$3648

My question to you guys is about CPU choices:

E6750
E6850 + $95
Q6600 + $100
Q6700 + $375

I want to play games (obviously) with this machine but from what I have read Quad doesnt really benefit gaming much (or anything yet) however I do want to play FSX which I hear does scale somewhat to 4 cpus.

I would be interested in what people think are the strong/weak points of my options? Specifically regarding heat/oc/compatability or upgradability concerns?

Thanks for any help.

 

As more multi-core apps come into the market, the quard cores are going to have an advantage. Currently, most applications are not designed to utilized multi cores, which gives the duo cores an advantage with the faster clock speeds.

Heat and OCing won't be a problem. The 9262 has excellent capabilities dealing with heat. Why a single 8800M instead of a GTX?

 

I think I said 8800 GTX not M?

but as for your answer yea thats whats in my head, i suppose the bet is 'will more than 2 core parallelism be that big in the next x months before an upgrade is sensible', that bet then also becomes what is the relative difference between Q6600 and Q6700, could it be worth 275 dollars more??

Where I am at the moment is Quad cannot be justified and for 100bucks Ill go with the E6850 even tho i really dont know if I would be able to differentiate from the E6750?

 

Uh guys, I'm pretty sure it's the 8800mGTX that's the fastest card available. I don't think the 8800gtx would fit into the case, nor would the motherboard support it.

 

oh right yea, blame the xoticpc site for being inaccurate and leaving out the m.

 

nice machine there, i went to xotic pc and found out there is a typo. maybe a new card "880 GTX"

 

Its a typo....

THe Q6600 is the best bang 4 buck card...

 

Yeah, I have a Q6600 in my Desktop that I built back in January, it's great for gaming and in my opinion, the better value going forward with multi core gaming. If you can manage to get the "G0" stepping version, it's much better for overclocking if you're interested, than again, it's in a lappy though.

 

I saw so many topics with dual core vs quad core. As I understand the game will play anyway at both 2.4 and 3GHz with almost no difference because they use the graphic card intensively. Even if there are no optimized applications having more cores is always good if the user is running lots of application. Windows will use one of the cores, play with two and there another one to perform some encoding or something else.

 

Overall, you'll get the best bang for your buck out of the Q6600. That's the basic consensus on the board here, as well as the basic conclusion of this review from AnandTech.com: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts.

Basically, both the Q6600 and the E6850 perform better than the E6750, so in all likelihood, one would not stick with the E6750 if given the choice (and the $$ ). However, notwithstanding it's higher clock speed, the E6850 does not consistently outperform the Q6600, and gets beat on a couple of the benchmarks used in the AnandTech review. So, once you decide to upgrade, the difference between the E6850 and the Q6600 is only $5, making it almost a no-brainer to go for the Q6600 given the results of the AnandTech review (which is pretty thorough).

In terms of how applications use the cores - right now most are having a hard enough time efficiently using two, let alone four; however, that is bound to change as you get through a complete game development cycle (so that the developers have had a chance to cut their teeth on 4 cores and get a feel for it). Also, a lot will depend on how the OS you're using takes advantage of the cores - with so much background stuff going on all the time (some of which can introduce significant performance costs if it involves a lot of interrupts or serialization). Notwithstanding how disappointing Vista is, MS will ultimately put out an OS that can use multicores efficiently even if the apps the user wants to run don't.

Also, as indicated in the review, the Q6700 is just not worth it - the marginal extra performance does not justify the huge jump in price.

All in all, unless you're going to stick with the base E6750, you'd be wasting your money if you didn't go with the Q6600.

 

Thank you for pointing out this typo , it is now corrected.

 

Thanks for the very comprehensive analsysis shyster, although the Q6600 wins some benchmarks looking at (page 15) Oblivion benchmarks:

E6850 : 83fps
Q6600 : 75fps

10% frame rate drop seems like quite a gamble: sacrifice performance now in the hope that developers concentrate on 4 cores soon?

The article also doesnt address the significant overclocking benefits of the E6850 I have been hearing about.

 

It is only about the one game that you play you might run also soome other application in the same time. Me for example I am running some work related fortran made programs. With 4 cores I will be able to use 2 for playing and 2 for work. In the desktop PC the q6600 will go very easy to 3GHz with air cooling with simple FSB change. On the D901C noone was succsesful in overclocking.

 

My bad, I meant to ask, why a single 8800M instead of SLI?

 

I thought that might have been what you meant; well its a whole other thread. In summary, my thoughts are from reading 1st hand experiences of SLI 7xxx & 8600 that the technology/drivers are not mature enough (even born yet ) to warrant $700, the whole dif. driver per game hassle is really not my thing rather spend the money on bluray and chill

Anyway after all this reading and comparing I think I will hold on for the 45nm (wolfdale/yorkfield) series. So it looks like more patience is required

Any ideas Xotic/Justin when this might be or have I missed an anouncement? My understanding is that these chips are not compatible with NP9262?

 

The E6850 uses less power as well and thus produces less heat. Although the NP9262 is a very cool rig, this may be advantageous. When I am convinced that the Q6600 or Q6700 would run my applications faster, I will get me one!

 

While we're at it, there's another little typo on the NP9262 configuration page - a misplaced comma - shouldn't that be $226.20 not $2,262.00?

 

you wish, hell even id order from america if they had prices like that lol

 

HAHA

@dellie Sager hasn't made a official release on this yet. We should hear some information on this soon.