Should I get the NP8130 or NP8150?

I will be getting this laptop mostly for gaming, I have a macbook for work.

On this laptop, I will like to play RPG's like the Witcher 2 and Skyrim and FPS's like BFBC2 and BF3 at ultra settings with smooth fps(above 30- prefer 40 and above).

Could the NP8130 handle this with the 460m, or should I make my purchase futureproof by going for the NP8150 with the 6970m?

Thanks

 

The 460M could handle those listed games at ultra settings with smooth FPS if you do not enable antialiasing.

If antialiasing is important to you, get the NP8150 with the 6970M.

I decided on the NP8130 because I decided to use the saved money for an SSD. With the super dense pixel density of a 1080p screen in only 15.6", I found that AA is not needed for myself but some jaggies still do appear but I can live with them.

 

Do you feel like the 460m will be a bottleneck in the next year?

And really? I mean the 460m is a great card but those games seem like they are gonna be really hard to run. Dont you think? I need something that can last, but I don't know if I should spend $300 more.

 

I can run Crysis on ultra without AA. The only game I cannot run smoothly is Metro 2033 which is incredibly demanding in terms of DX11 tesselation and is one of the only games to come out since 2007 that actually makes use of next-generation features.

Developers are all developing for consoles now and the PC games we do get are ports. Skyrim doesn't even have any DX11 features. Battlefield was designed to run well on console technology as well. Of all the games you listed, only the Witcher 2 is a PC exclusive and that is not that graphically intense of a game.

Keep in mind that PC requirements plateaued years ago and almost all games that come out are focused on console sales first and are not demanding. You will not see PC games that stress you computer again until the consoles are refreshed around 2014 and even then, it will take months for good games to be developed.

I don't see myself still using this laptop 4 years from now. That's my reasoning for this.

If you like the feeling that your laptop can run everything (I get the feeling that I am on the very edge of being able to run a few things like Crysis on ultra and Metro 2033 is the only game that is choppy), get the 6970M. For me, I decided that with the state of PC gaming, it's not worth it to future proof because basically aside from Metro, we haven't had a game that has challenged PC requirements for 4 years now.

The GTX 460M is easily overclocked to 800MHz core, 1400MHz memory, and 1600MHz shader. It makes a big difference to me and it will suffice for the next 3-4 years easily. If I really want to play a game on max settings, I will do it on my desktop with a big screen and a nice mechanical keyboard for a fraction of the cost (high performance videocards are really cheap nowadays).

 

Freaking console ports. How much of a big deal is AA? Is it noticeable with it off? And we don't know the video settings for Witcher 2 yet, but what makes you think it isn't graphically demanding? The visuals look stunning, which has to require some sort of gpu to push it.

 

That said, the biggest reasons for me getting the NP8130 and not the NP8150 were not issues with the graphics cards (which you can upgrade in the future BTW).

The reason for getting the NP8130 wasn't even the lower cost. It was because the NP8130 has a matte plastic body and a matte screen. I am done with glossy screens. They make sense for a desktop or TV that don't move. They are so irritating to use in a notebook that has to be used in many different lighting locations.

Many people dislike the rubberized feeling of the NP8150 body as well. Even the trackpad is rubberized which may cause friction for some people.

Even the XoticPC reviewer on Youtube said he preferred the NP8130's screen and body over the NP8150's screen and body.

True, you could buy a matte screen separately for the NP8150 but that would be another ~$200 cost on top of the ~$300 cost for the 6970M which is another $500-$600 when you factor in everything. It made much more sense for me to use the savings to buy an SSD which makes everything load so quickly that it changes how I use the computer.

 

And you don't think pc games are going to get any more advanced in the next year to come? Unfortunately I'm a student so I can't afford a computer with a tower, I'll just buy a monitor to play it on.

 

I am sorry I really have limited knowledge with Pc's. To me the thing is already incredibly fast so I would rather put money towards an upgraded gpu than a SSD. I just merely want to know if the 460m will be a bottleneck in the years to come.. and I'm not sure you can upgrade the 8130... the power supply is lower than the 8150 so it might not be able to handle better cards without switching out the power supply.

I'm not biased towards the 8150, I just don't know which is the better choice for gaming, because I thought games will continue to get more demanding rather than stay the same.

 

The Witcher 2 Miminum System Requirements:
· OS: Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista SP2 / Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
· Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 Ghz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
· Memory: 1 GB Windows XP / 2 GB Windows Vista and Windows 7
· Video Card: 512 MB RAM, supporting Pixel Shader 3.0 (Nvidia GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon HD3850)

The Witcher 2 Recommended System Requirements:
· OS: Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista SP2 / Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
· Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad or AMD Phenom X4
· Memory: 3 GB Windows XP / 4 GB Windows Vista and Windows 7
· Video Card: 1 GB RAM, supporting Pixel Shader 3.0 (Nvidia GeForce GTX260 or ATI Radeon HD4850)

The game also supports XBox 360 controller and the devs have hinted it's going to consoles so the engine must scale.

As far as AA goes, it depends on the game. Certainly it would be nice to have the AA if you decide to output the HDMI to a larger monitor or TV. On the small 15.6" screen with such a high pixel density, I can't really tell most of the time. For me, the only game with jaggies that I really see is GTA IV because the city is so busy with so many straight edges all over the place. In most fast paced games and FPS's, I don't notice at all. Remember, the best form of anti-aliasing is higher resolution and 1920x1080 on a 15.6" screen makes jaggies hard to see unless you really look closely. I actually feel the screen is a little too small for that resolution for desktop comfort.

Nvidia has SRAA (Subpixel Reconstruction Anti-Aliasing) in their new drivers. I'm actually not sure if it's working or not in my current drivers and I have to do some more testing. It's basically their version of AMD's MLAA (Morphological Anti-Aliasing) which will smooth the edges of aliased objects with a special filter without much hit to performance.

Remember, that due to many games being console ports, they run on the Unreal Engine 3.0 which does deferred shading as a way to get light and shadows on limited console power very easily. Deferred shading cannot have AA so many games are not programmed to allow AA. You have to force AA to be on if the drivers have been updated with a DX10/DX11 path or you use SRAA.

Basically my experience is that with AA off, I can run everything maxed but I know I am on the edge of performance range so sometimes a game that is smooth 90% of the time will be choppy in certain busy scenes (Crysis' famous last level). I'll turn settings down slightly in that case. The 460M is not going to play every game at high FPS and ultra settings but it can play 95% of them and that's all I need for the next few years because again, I doubt anything seriously demanding will come out.

A 6970M would allow you to play worry free of that and also maybe have some AA if you want to hook up your laptop to a bigger monitor or TV sometimes.

 

The 8150 is definitely the better choice for gaming. You will be able to play everything at max settings and have maybe 2x AA with the majority of them.

I can safely say that I personally believe the GTX 460M will not bottleneck the laptop for another 3 years or so because I believe that barely any demanding games will come out that require more than what we have today. That is just for me though. The 6970M is definitely much more powerful and more future proof. It's like 30-40% faster.

If 40 FPS is playable FPS to you, get the 6970M. I find the 460M is more in the 30 FPS range for maxed out games. 10 FPS = a 33% difference in power but that's at the cost of $500 more. I worked out the price difference between an NP8130 and an NP8150 with the same options aside from the 8150 having a 6970M and the difference was almost $500 which is like 33% of the cost of the laptop.

For upgrading, the NP8130 and the NP8150 are identically hardware wise. The difference is the NP8150 has a larger power brick that provides more power to the videocard as it demands it. The NP8150 also runs hotter. If you get an NP8130, your upgrade options are limited unless you buy a new power brick and you won't be able to really sell the GTX 460M for much of anything. The 8150 w/6970M is much more futureproof.

 

Just looking at the last 5 years of PC gaming you can see how many games are designed for consoles. Only in 2007 did we have a demanding game like Crysis come out. Now in 2011, Crysis 2 comes out which is designed for consoles first, before the PC. It has lower resolution textures, lower physics models, smaller maps, and lower system requirements...It even ran only in DirectX 9 out of the box! Games actually got less demanding!

The only aberration to this is Metro 2033 which is from Russia. Those guys are great for PC gaming. The new Stalker might be demanding as well. Most companies are afraid to make a game that has high requirements as it may mean a larger portion of the market cannot play and will not buy their games.

Most analysts predict the next console refresh to be around 2014 or 2015 so I decided that a 460M will last me until then in my portable system.

I'm just going by my own view of things however to justify my own purchase. I can't predict if a game coming out in the future will really stress our current level of graphics. Maybe some poor console ports will have bad PC code and therefore poor performance also so a more powerful GPU will take care of that.

However, if you want to play on a 22" or bigger monitor, no anti-aliasing will mean some games will have noticeable jagged edges and artifacts if that is something that is important to you. I think more developers will take advantage of DX11 features if they are daring (like heavy tesselation) and allow greater scaling. Mods can also add a lot to games. Skyrim will probably be fan modded to hell like Oblivion was with insane LoD and view distances and super high resolution textures and that would definitely require more power.

 

Coming from an aluminum MBP with, I really don't know this rubberized finish you speak of Like I've never touched it, but I've seen it on the Asus G series. Do you feel like the plastic body on the NP8130 is cheap?

And I honestly don't know what matte is(never had one), but is it better than glossy? My MPB is glossy, and I really don't have any problems with it when gaming(my reflection is unnoticeable) but on white pages such as these forums it is, but its not a bother. The first option for the NP8150 is a "clear glare screen," so I'm guessing its glossy? Is that screen not as impressive as the matte? Why would they offer a better stock screen on a lower end model?

I might get the 8130 then if the body is annoying and the screen is less adaptable to lighting, but how cheap/easy is it to switch out a power supply for a better gpu? I feel like I get more of a bargain with the NP8150 because the power supply and the gpu are already in there, and probably for a lot cheaper too.

So far this is how I see it. The +/- just means I'm still wondering if it's more of a pro or more of a con for me.

NP8130:
+/- Matte screen vs Super clear glare type screen
+/- Plastic finish
+/- Lower power supply, not as easy to upgrade
+/-460m is good card, but I'm not sure yet if it suits my needs.

NP8150:
+/- Matte screen vs Super clear glare type screen
+/-Rubberized finish sounds nicer than a plastic body, but not sure to what extent.
+/- Higher power supply(easier to upgrade) and better gpu, however not sure if its worth the extra $245 to get the NP8150.
+/- More futureproof? I am looking to keep it the way it is for 2-3 more years and upgrade the gpu when games get more demanding.

 

The Witcher 2 is Polish, does that count

 

Clear glare screen = glossy.

If you have a MBP now and don't notice any problems with the glossy, then you probably won't mind glossy on the 8150 either. Some people like it more because it (artificially) makes colors appear richer and improves contrast just a bit over an equal matte screen. Matte is better if you work in harsh lighting/outdoors, or have eyestrain using glossy.

It's much more a personal preference than anything.

As for the finish, the 8150 rubberized finish feels something like a really nice mousepad, or one of those rubberized phone cases. It's not exactly tacky, but it's not smooth and slippery like plastic. The best way to describe it would be similar in feeling to a wetsuit, but that reference might not help most out. It's not as tacky as say, a rubber eraser.

The plastic on the 8130 is a rugged industrial plastic, similar to that in thinkpads and other quality laptops. It's not "cheap" but it's not as elegant as the rubberized finish looks either.

For horsepower, the choice is up to you. The 485m/6970 are both ~2x faster than a 460m and could potentially last you a bit longer.

 

My take:

NP8130:
+ Matte screen comes with system
+ Plastic finish
- 120W powersupply is smaller and easier to carry
- 460M is decent card that can run 95% of games at high settings without AA

NP8150:
- Glossy screen comes with system
- Rubberized finish
+ 180W powersupply is larger but supports more powerful graphics cards
+ More futureproof

You said:

That's what I am planning to do if I keep my notebook for more than 3 years but I suspect I will have sold it by then and moved onto the Ivy Bridge platform and hopefully they will have GPU switching or Optimus working by then because the battery life will be many, many times longer.

The new CPUs from Intel actually have a GPU built into them. On some Alienware and MBP models with these CPUs, the system can intelligently switch to the GPU on the Intel Sandy Bridge core. This uses much less power than the discrete graphics card.

On the current Sager/Clevo high end models, this feature is not implemented at a hardware level and so the system uses a lot more power than it should. Also, the Ivy Bridge CPUs are 22nm versus 34nm and I believe have 3D transistor technology so power consumption will also be lower.

But if I do still have this notebook in 3 years, I would just upgrade my GPU as well because an extra powersupply (it's just the brick that comes with the power cord) is only $95 for the 180W version from resellers right now.

As far as the matte screen and rubber finish, there are some 8150 owners on this forum who have wanted to trade with 8130 owners for their bodies and screens. It can be done.

The rubber finish is not something I like, it just feel bad to me, it feels kind of uncomfortable when I slide my hand across it. It's the same kind as on some ASUS models but I think it more like the rubber coating on Lenovo laptops.

I don't like glossy screens and cannot use them on laptops anymore. My desktop has a glossy screen and it's beautiful but it never moves and sun doesn't shine on it. If you can see your reflection in your screen when it's displaying dark colors or when it's off, that's a glossy screen. Do you remember LCD monitors before most of them became glossy? Maybe the ones at your work or office are matte. Those are matte screens.