Best for A Gamer...

I will be purchasing a Sager for my son for Christmas. He will be using it 90% of the time for games (COD:World at War; Half-Life 2 Garrys Mod; Left 4 Dead; etc...) I have pretty much decided that the NP9262 will be the system...but I have a question on the "guts". For a processor, and keeping in mind that this is going to be primarily used for games, is it better to go with the Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHZ processor w/6M L2 cache or with the Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHZ processor w/12M L2 cache? Also, if I go with the 9800M GTX (1024mb), would there be enough benefit (performance) to warrant going with two of them for SLI, keeping in mind the games that my son will be playing? I will go with a 320GB 7200 rpm hard disk (only 1, as I can add more later) and will be running Windows XP Pro. Any responses will be welcome.

 

All perfect choices, go with the core 2 duo. Games are more graphic processor dependant than cpu dependant. In fact, I'd suggest you go with an SLI 9800mGT rig if the money you save from not picking the quad and GTX equals that.

XP Pro, decent choice. Its a stable and proven OS and the 320GB drive is enough and at 7200rpm, excellent for games. Unless he was doing video editing, where you should have footage on a different hard drive to the editing software, I see no reason why he'd want anything more hard drives than a single one.

I must say, lucky kid, I would have had to work to get a rig like that

 

Hm...don't buy him any laptop and let him have friends and a social life?

Nah, seriously, SLI just worth it. Its like 1.8x the performance. For the CPU, the Core2Quad have twice the cache but I don't think its really noticeable in FPS. As for the hard drive, the 7200rpm wouldn't hurt although for budget config, you won't see big differences with a 5400rpm.

 

Thanks for the reply...the only choice I have is either a single 9800M GTX or two..as the 9800M GT is not offered on either Xotic or PowerNotebooks in the configurator.

 

The nice thing with the NP9262 is that, among many other things, you can go with the minimal system now, and - provided parts are still available - upgrade to the more serious components later on. Thus, while you might ultimately want to end up with a quad-core cpu, you can start off with the less expensive core 2 and, at a later date (and provided they're still available) upgrade to a quad-core without too much hassle (you can even DIY provided you know how to use a screw-driver - no, not the liquid kind - and follow written instructions ). The same goes for the GPUs - if you wish, you can start off with a singleton 9800GTX, and step up to dual 9800GTX in SLi at a later date, again as a DIY project.

 

this should work the best for you
Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33GHZ processor w/6M L2 cache

 

Basically go single for a single GPU and core 2 duo right now for great gaming. in the future though it might be better to have a quad core and GTX in sli. they are basically too new and most games are using them to their full extent and capabilities.