Getting ready to buy an NP5793 - several important questions

Hey everybody,

This is my first post but I've been a reader of NBR for years. I became a fan of the forum many years ago, back when I got my first laptop, an eMachines m6805 (LOL now but it ran BF1942 and at the time, that's all I wanted). I'm onto a decent HP dv9000t now, but I feel that it's time for an upgrade.

From doing my research on this board and a few other sources, I found that the Sager NP5793 might be exactly what I'm looking for. With my tax refund coming in and starting a new job within the next few weeks (and by selling my dv9000t), I should be comfortably able to buy a new NP5793 before the end of April.

In the meantime,the NP5793 configuration has changed some since a lot of the reviews and threads were originally made, and I've got a few important questions for the good folks here at NBR.

How does the 9800m GTS compare to the old 8800m GTX? In terms of performance with the newest games. I will most likely be running my old standby's like Battlefield 2, Medieval 2: Total War, and WoW. I know the NP5793 probably will eat these up (or not?), but how will it do with the newest games like Call of Duty World at War (I might be behind on my games here).

Also, how is the NP5793 in its current configuration at XoticPC and Powernotebooks able to deal with DV editing. This will definitely not be my primary concern, but I would like it to be able to handle some degree of DV editing for projects that pop up here and there.

Finally, this might be a question that Justin or Donald might be able to answer:

Can I reasonably expect the NP5793 to be in stock a month from now? I'm planning to but this because of the strength of the product, but my budget is a huge factor, and I would hate to lose out on this great laptop.

Thank you very much for any help you guys might be able to give me, or relate any experience you might have with the new style configuration of NP5793.

 

Welcome to the NBR forums.

the 9800M GTS is actually slightly slower than the 8800M GTX.

the 8800M GTX was re-branded as the 9800M GT

so.... 9800M GTX > 9800M GT (8800M GTX) > 9800M GTS

video editing will mainly be determined by CPU, RAM, and even HDD for access speeds.

as long as you have a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo and up, with 4GB of RAM... DV editing should be fine.

 

Not looking at specs here, from a personal standpoint, editing's great fun on this system. I tend to lean towards wma outputs while still working on a project as they're comparitively tiny and easy to share. A fifteen minute wma output took under an hour to complete two passes.

 

I am not sure if the screen is good enough for DV editing, color accuracy and brightness (Oh yes I said it again).

 

I'm very happy with my 5793. Had for about 2 months now and running Mass Effect on high settings.

Also coming from an HP DV 9000 series notebook here. A huge difference in quality between the Sager and HP !

BTW.........my defective 7600go, in my HP, took a crap on me before christmas, the reason I bought this Sager ! There is a class action suit against Nvidia, HP and Dell ! HP told me to take a hike, as far as replacing the video card, since it was out of warranty !

Guess I'll just wait 'til the suit is finalized as far as the HP goes !

 

Thank you guys for the quick response, this is exactly the kind of help I need to make my final decision.

This could be a potential dealbreaker then...I was under the impression that the 9800M GTS was a small step up from the 8800M GTX in the older NP5793's.

From what I can tell, the older models used to come with the 8800M GTX 512MB card...and the one currently on sale at the most popular resellers is a 9800M GTS 1gig. Is that correct or am I missing something here?

And if that is the case (1gig 9800M GTS on the current NP5793 model vs. 512mb 8800M GTX on the older models from reviews etc.), what will the impact be on real-world gaming performance?

I apologize if these are noobish questions but I have been out of the computer hardware loop for quite some time. Thanks in advance!

 

Video memory is a gimmick, its the GPU itself that is what one should consider.

The size of video memory that can even be utilized will be up to the GPU.

It still tricks many unsuspecting consumers today.... "oh, my Nvidia 9400 has 512MB.... that should beat a 256MB 9600 GT... right?" ..... WRONG.

Real world example for picking on younger siblings:
"I'll trade you three $1 bills for your measly single $5 bill.... because 3 is more than 1."

in any case, the difference in performance between the 9800M GT (8800M GTX) and the GTS is almost 2% in recent tests and benchmarks.

 

And a 2% performance difference is like saying "What can I buy for that dollar, that I can't buy with $00.98 cents. A moot point !

 

You guys are the best...I was bummed because I was starting to doubt if the NP5793 was a good choice, but that definitely puts me at ease about it and it looks like I'll be getting this awesome machine as soon as my money is right.

Now I just hope that they are still available when I'm ready to buy a month from now.

 

Speaking about the games, most of them run great, unless you want to run Crysis on max resolution, but besides that game, almost every game runs great. For personal experience, i've played FarCry2, Deadspace, CoD World at War, etc, at about 40fps on max settings.

 

That's definitely encouraging, thanks Hagen; I wouldn't expect Crysis to run blazing fast at max resolution and probably won't be playing it anyway other than to test the hardware.

Which GPU do you have in your system, the 8800M GTX or the 9800M GTS?

 

The 9800m gts, i've had this laptop for about 3 months only, when I bought it the 8800m gtx wasn't available anymore (and I didn't want to spend the extra dollars for the 9800m gtx, the increase in performance was not worth in my opinion).