Are "High end gaming" computers (like Sager) just for gaming?

I like to game too (Crysis, CO4, etc...), but not the main priority. I'm looking for a powerful laptop to handle my high end Cadd program (renderings is a big part) also; photoshop editing as well as other business programs, plus HD movies and web surfing, basically a multi-use laptop.

I like the 17" (NP5796 from Xotic) w/ keypad configured as powerful as I can get but running close to $4300... yikes!

I want some portability thereby passing up on the "beast". I like the 17" screen size, thereby passing up the NP8660.

I can't imagine spending this kind of money just to play games on. A concern is whether the video card 9800 GTX will work well with my CADD program, somewhere I read on here that it is not suitable for it

What do all of you use these laptops for besides gaming?

Thanks

 

You can get something that suits your needs for much less money. What you want in a 17" book with a powerful CPU and a Quadro graphics card. Check out the Thinkpad W700 or the W500 if the 700 is too much for your budget.

 

The 9800M GTX will work with your CAD program, but there are cards that would work better, like the Quadro series.

Edit: I see Hep! beat me to it!

 

I mainly use mine for Photoshop. The display is beautiful, crisp, clear, and renders an accurate color profile for what I need it to do. The 9800M GTX I'm sure has all the power you need for CAD. Especially now that CAD developers are programming to taking advantage of CUDA.

 

Isn't this suppose to be in the What to buy section?

Anyway, I believe that the advantage to buy from Clevo/Sager/Compal etc. is that you save some money on the "style and look" of the laptop. It just packs power. For a 17'' in SLI, I believe that's normal to reach the 4k, just check for the XPS m1730 or Alienware and its the same there.

 

Thanks for the reply.

If I go with what you are suggesting (Quadro graphics card) then would I then not be able to play Crysis and other games as well? Remember, I do like my games too thanks

 

Sorry, if I posted in the wrong forum category... but I thought this was the Clevo/Sager forum?
And since I am already interested in the Sager and wanted advice from those that own Sager's.. that is why I posted here..

 

since I am backed to school, I only use my 5793 for web and MS office now, oh and programming, but basically a $399 Dell will shows no difference on these tasks.
gaming laptop really means high performance laptop.

 

Thanks emike... that's what I wanted to know!

 

THE 9600M GT, 9700M AND 9800M are more than adequate for any cad program, especially now that most have switched to using dx. for rendering you want a strong processor.

i would suggest this http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_configurator.asp?PRID=11366
with the following selected: p8400 2.4 ghz, 250 5400rpm hd, wifi, and xp home sp3 = $2142.40

this will play any game you throw at it and run cad very smoothly

 

I use my np5796 for CAD work and photoshop but game as well. If I were to make CAD more of a priority I would select the Lenovo W700 but because I want really good performance in games I chose the np5796

 

i think if they were just for gaming (most) people would just buy desktops instead... you could get the same thing for half the price without cooling issues and such.

except for people who have money to throw around and just want to get one, we all get these laptops for portability, while keeping in mind that we will be gaming a decent amount

 

Are you only using 2d CAD based apps, or will you be using 3d modeling apps (NX 5, Inventor, Solidworks) as well? If you will be using the latter you are better off with a W500 or W700. While the card in the W500 wont be as powerful as the 9800 gt in gaming, it is optimized for OpenGL and will be superior at rendering. The Quadro and FireGL series cards are optimized for workstation programs, and produce a more accurate model when rotating. The cards are also able to take advantage of certain rendering features a standard GeForce cannot. If you are only doing 2d CAD work the Sager would be a fine choice.

To livesoft:
Think pads have much less style than sager. I was actually going to by a 5793, but when they switched to the 5796 they dropped the Quadro FX 1600. They are still great laptops though, I will buy one at some point.

 

Hi, thanks for your reply. Yes, I will be 3d modeling/rendering (w/ Softplan architectural program) as well as 2d drawings.
However, like I mentioned, I "do" want to play the high end games as well, so there is a slight conflict and I'm wondering which laptop is best suited to do both, if there is one? No one program or game has 100% priority for me and I don't want to have two laptops

With that said, I'm not going to be making my living with Cadd dedicated to just the laptop, I have a powerful desktop for that! But, I do want to occasionally use it when traveling for my business programs as well as Cadd and photoshop.
Basically, I want it to handle whatever I throw at it.

 

We use Sager/Clevo for enterprise systems development. With multiple tools, app servers and DBs all running at the same time we can really stress a 2.8 Ghz Xeon x3360 quad core, especially with MTRON SSDs. I'm not sure your CAD load would fully load a quad.

The new Thinkpad W700s look nice and I'm thinking about getting one with the Intel SSD after the backlog is worked off. However, fully loaded it isn't really any cheaper and 8 pounds isn't light.

But if you don't mind the size the Clevo based notebooks are terrific and we own Lenovos also.

Phil Schaadt

 

I agree with you, that spending so much just to game is not for me. I can understand if others choose to do so, nothing wrong with that. I hardly game, but gaming is definitely not even the third choice of why I have a powerful computer. The main things I do on my computer is video editing, audio editing. I love to play around with web editing, and making different banners for CLAN players (girlfriend’s JOB ). I’m one of the few, which actually watch movies on my computer, as I do not have a HDMI 53” or better plasma. The 17” screen is marvelous, so work and play is really a treat especially being able to view a game match in window mode while doing other stuff at the same time. Besides, it was someone else who thought I needed something better than my D810, not me.

 

If you are running these apps, then you really want a workstation card imo. If you go with the W700, it comes stock with a FX 2700m and you can upgrade to a FX 3700m. Both are powerfull cards, and should breeze through games and workstation programs. The W700s are expensive, so its up to you. I'm a third year mechanical engineer student, and I've been using solid works a fair amount. The FX570m in my T61p, based off of an 8600gtm, handles solidworks better than the 8800gt in my desktop. If sager starts to offer quadro cards in their systems again it would be a viable alternative. Plus for $$$ you can stick a quad core in the W700.

 

Yep, that W700 looks great.. however, after pricing it out with my options I'm looking at 5-6K!.. hmmm, that's getting a little expensive anyway, thanks for all the replys. I will definately keep in mind the W700... but with a more than 4 week waiting list, I don't think I could stand waiting that long!!

 

Word documents.

but then again, that takes up less than 1% of the time i spend on my monster

 

currently i have a quadro fx 1600m in mine, waiting to upgrade to the 3700m if it comes out for clevo systems, but as of now I haven't been experiencing problems with extremely intense 3d-modeling.

My one problem is in the memory, at 4gb (with only a 32-bit system though) I get many OOM errors, the processor is amazing, but still takes time with renders. Even with mobile quad cores coming out, the desktop CPU of the 9262 (q9650) will still crush them for the time being

specs in my sig totaled 3700.00, a bit steep but well worth it I think... then again I still have a week before my 30 days are up to return in desired...

and having a TB of storage in a laptop is awesome


side note: are/would quadro gpu's be available in SLI for clevo's?

 

They aren't currently, but its very possible for Clevo to decide to release Quadros in SLI.

 

So is it my understanding that I could have the best of both worlds?
If I were to get the W700 with the FX 3700m card, it could handle crysis with no problems and also shine in my 3d renderings when I'm working in my CADD program? Essentially handling anything I through at it? Any limitations?

I really want the best of both worlds...
Which one?

Lenevo W700
or
Sager 5796

 

The FX3700 will play crysis, yes. At highest settings, no.

If you really want the best of both worlds, get a NP9262 with a SLI configuration. It will outperform everything in 3d rendering and gaming.

 

sounds like you have a low budjet and want high end..

clevo is your only option then really for a high end quadro/geforce at a good price.


Go clevo..
lenovo are nice... but only if u have the money... i wouldnt be suprized if the majority of Clevo owners are students once they get jobs they upgrade to alienware or lenvo lol... (man those names dont go beside each other well )


i would die for a W700 lenvo with a 9800m GTX in it... i love the idea of the built in tablet... as a artist/cad/gamer

 

I don't really have a budget, I was leaning towards the 5796 but that
W700 looks like something that would handle all my business needs as well as gaming.

 

Well, if it helps, I've got a Killernotebook Executioneer (clevo m570u). T7400 2.14 GHz, 2 gigs ram, 7950 GTX. The rig is over two years old now, so slow compared to new offerings.
But, every day I use it at my architectural firm. So it does Autocad Desktop 2007, full Adobe Creative Suite, Sketchup, 3dStudio (rarely because I like sketchup for modeling better) and normal office applications. It then goes home with me and games; COD4, WoW (so not the latest which I haven't tried). It does all these things just as good as our dedicated drafting stations with quadro desktop cards.
As for cost of the notebook... who cares? I've got over $10k in software on it that can be loaded on one machine only. Hence if you work outside the office, it's cheaper to get a single high end notebook than buy two desktops and two full versions of the software. Hardware cost are minimal. I recommend getting the fastest machine out there. I'd also highly recommend an external monitor, keyboard and mouse for a "docking station" since working on a 17" is gonna slowly drive you insane. (I went all out and did the matrox triplehead2go with three 19" lcd's for my office setup).

 

Thanks for your insight... especially your experience in how your laptop performs with Autocadd!
I agree, when you have spent as much money in software as "we" have, the laptop is just the tool to run it, and you want the best out there.

 

I know nothing about CAD or any other programs that might be used for graphic design or 3D modeling, so I will not pretend to. What I do know, is that when I switched from a dual core CPU to a Quad core in my desktop (the lappy will get a Q9650 next month) rendering times for UT3 Unreal Editor dropped alot. Recalculating the light maps and what not takes half the time now. It had nothing to with the GPU, it only displays the pretty shapes on the screen.

Now if I were looking for a workstation type mobile platform, I would go for a Quadcore lappy and not worry too much about the GPU.

A 9262 with a Quad core and a Quadro GPU (9800 GT is a few bucks cheaper) could be had for about $2,700 or less depending on HDD and screen selection.

FYI, my lappy is used for nothing but gaming

 

rendering is all cpu, the quad core will literally cut your render time in half (that is if your program is coded well for multi-threaded cpu, like maya) plus also RAM (at the beginning of the render when it has to store all those photon reflections and what not)

real-time orbiting is all gpu, and the fx 1600m performs very well, based off a 8700 gts if i recall right, but it does keep up for now. My models are becoming exponentially more complex, and with rhino files around 200mb right now it seems sluggish, although the maya models are extremely smooth (rhino is really badly programmed, only uses one of my cores which really stinks)

IMO the quad core is the way to go, even if you dont decide on the 3 HDD's, you can always add more later. The RAM limitation is 8gb, which can be a problem later on, but not for a few years in which case i'll probably be building a desktop by then.

The size/weight of the 9262 really isn't that bad... it's well proportioned and actually has a very sleek professional look to it. I say go for that... plus the 1920 by 1200 res, it's well needed desktop space

 

Other thoughts I've had: I don't really like lugging around a 17" notebook. It isn't bad, but doing it everyday for a couple years makes me eyeball some of the 15" ones out there now that you can get a decent gpu/cpu setup (that will handle autocad just fine).
As mentioned above, this is my office setup: Server enviroment (so no data on my machine allows me small fast harddrives). USB wireless keyboard/mouse setup. Matrox triplehead2go (three monitors, which is very handy since I can have outlook on one, sketchup or image viewer on another, and autocad in the middle).. I do a lot of multitasking like looking at photos/reports and entering the data; and the constant email. So it's very nice to have everything open, visible and running without toggling windows.
Giving presentations I use a quality NEC projector.
At home for gaming, I use a large external monitor, external G15 keyboard, and a gaming mouse.

Point is basically even though I have a 17" screen on the laptop, I never use it. I'm on an external monitor 90% of the time (I only use it like a notebook when I do odd things like go outside and play on the deck). I'm almost always plugged in. So for years I've been lugging around a large laptop for no real benefit (other than at the time, you could not get a good gpu in a 15")... Now and these days, you can get a good single gpu solution in a small footprint. Something to consider anyway.

edit; Oh, and back to budget. Just guessing here, but most around here don't really consider office budgets. Bottom line is I make money using this equipment. If it saves time and makes my job easier, I make more money which offsets the cost and I'll be a happier worker since I'm not fighting my equipment.

 

Since it seems you plan to move it around on a daily basis, the 9262 would become quite a burden. Size and portability are the first things I look at when deciding what to purchase. When I was doing alot of traveling overseas, I had a 15.4" Asus G1 (almost a year ago) for mobile gaming and what not. Once I got my feet planted stateside, I decided to go for the 17" beast since I was not going to be moving it around much. I don't care what they say, size does matter. A 15.4" lappy makes it much easy when you have to haul it around on a daily basis.

edit: mobile quads should be coming out soon.....I would not be surprised to see those puppys in a 15.4 chassis soon.