The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
I've had both on the NP8690, and for me, yes it's worth the extra $60. I didn't see a noticeable difference in gaming between panels, but I didn't try more than a couple games, and I didn't max out the settings to ridiculous either.
As far as the 720 vs 820, it depends on what you'll be doing. For most, the ~10-15% gain is not worth the $200. Again, I don't know what "considerable" means, but my initial reaction is that the difference will not be "considerable" enough to warrant $200.
You won't notice much difference in gaming performance today. People usually go with the 1600X900 so they can play on native resolution longer into the future. As for the i7-820 Vs i7-720, I don't think it is worth the extra cost since most games are heavily GPU dependent and current games that are CPU dependent will work fine with the lower clocked i7.
Wait, why would a lower res be better for longer? Because when more taxing games come out there won't be the extra performance loss from the higher res?
Also, I've been playing on a 1920x1200 monitor, with most games either at 1680x1050 and manually scaled up or on 1600x1200, which seems to automatically scale itself up to 1920x1200 without me changing anything.
The thing that worries me is on the games that have a max res of 1600x1200, it looks kinda crappy, so 1600x900 should look worse no?
Unless it just looks crappy because it's been scaling itself up to fit my 1920x1200 monitor?
Sorry for all the questions but I gotta be sure about what I'm doing before I shell out $2000 for this lappy.
Because the rule is, you always want to play your games at native resolution, or higher. As games become more demanding, trying to play them at your native resolution of 1920x1080 is going to be harder than someone trying to play it at native resolution of 1600x900...This is one reason I chose the 1600x900 screen
There's a quality difference between the 900p and 1080p panels for Sager systems. The 900p has a weak max brightness of around 170 cd/m2 if I remember correctly while the 1080p panel has a brightness of 240 cd/m2. For that reason alone I'd choose the 1080p display for the Sager. I also believe the black levels on the 1080p display are better. Don't worry so much about the future, you can always toss in a newer graphics card and sell the GTX 280m to cover part of the cost.
The 1080p panel will be brighter and that alone for me was the reason why I went with it.
Hey 5150Joker, I'm suprised you're going to settle with the M15x after all when you were being very distasteful about the looks at first. Honestly, it was one of my top choices also but I just couldn't get pass the aesthitic part of it. Either you love or hate the looks but for me being 29 years old I just couldn't imagine lugging it around without the feeling of embarrassment. But that just me and you got pass that so I hope you enjoy it my friend.
I don't have a problem with Alienware's aesthetics, but I don't take my laptop anywhere outside of my home.. I think I might be a bit self conscious working on it while on a plane, or at starbucks, so I see where you're coming from Suade. It is a bit... youthful. Nothing wrong with that, just not my preference.
Most of the time when I game/watch films, I will be using my HDTV as the monitor, therefore the quality of the panel that comes with the laptop isn't the greatest concern for me. Also, as BrandonSI noted, even the 1600x900 screen is pretty damn decent anyway.
I was hesitant at first (I'm a bit older than you) but I went for it because the lights can be shut off if I ever need to take it out. My work doesn't require it so it will stay home 99% of the time. I watched a few videos of it and started liking the design. It gets here tomorrow, which is the ultimate test of whether I love it or hate it. I'm betting on the former though.
This is the video that helped push me in favor of buying it:
Sager owners should do some videos of their 8690 as well. There's not many to be found aside from the muted xotic ones. I'm probably going to delete my 8690 fan video from youtube since it makes the system look bad when in fact it is far from it.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
