T9900 waste of money? (np8662)

I have been reading alot and for gaming most everyone has been going with the P9600/9700. So my question is the T9900 worth the money for gaming?

Ive been looking at this config-

GTX 260M
4GB DDR3
1920 x 1200 screen
320GB 7200RPM
T9900 3.06 Ghz
Blu-ray

I have the money to spend. Is it worth spending though?

 

dude the T9900 kickass but idk how much it costs... but i would go with the QX9300

 

I think it is a waste of money. I would get a Q9000 personally. Gaming is, for the most part, heavily GPU dependent. And for the games which are CPU intensive, they will use QC( Maybe not as of now, but more and more games are using multiple cores).

For the Games which use 2 cores, The diff bw the Q9000/ P9700 would not the that much, for the most part.

 

the t9900 IMHO is overpriced, and too much of a power hog in a laptop that puts 98% of 17" laptops and 90% of desktops to shame. For me, what tipped me away from it was that it uses 35w TDP and generates more heat than the 25w P9700, yet only generates .26GHz more CPU speed. You could EASILY make up the performance gap in gaming by changing to a WSXGA screen / DVD player, a P9700, and then use the difference towards more legitimate vista / win7 upgrades such as a larger HDD or SSD, and more than 4GB RAM. You have to determine if the BD-R and the WUXGA are truly a necessity on such a small screen when the new OS's are resource hogs compared to XP (which is suffering the 32-bit limit disease).

Another problem with the T9900 is that it's basically a down-watted X9100, and if I recall correctly, it can't be overclocked. Unless you have an INSANELY CPU intense system that if it can't be quad-cored, needs the absolute maximum dual-core can handle... I would stick with the P9700 and pocket the $200 difference from that alone. That can be applied to more practical adventures such as the aforementioned HDD upgrade, or towards a RAM upgrade from a dealer or 3rd party supplier (ie: newegg, tigerdirect, etc.) At the end of the day, the difference from 2.8GHz to 3.06GHz is NOT earth-shattering, and the 10w saved from going from a T9900 to P9700 means less heat emitted, less fan cycling, and prolonged battery life, (10 or 15 minutes extra is NOT a bad thing)

The Blu-Ray / WUXGA: the screen's pixels will be so small you may have difficulty tolerating the smaller pixels on a 15" screen. While a BD-R will make the deal sweeter by enabling full 1080p movie displaying with the WUXGA, the WUXGA especially poses 2 problems. First, added stress on the 260m when gaming at the native resolution... there are approximately 40% more pixels in WUXGA vs. WSXGA, more pixels that need drawing per frame when gaming. Also, there's more than just gaming... if you have to ever use the computer for word processing or something text-based... wait till you see how small the font will be.

If you want it to game, keep the T9900 at your discretion... I would though get rid of the WUXGA unless you're willing to get to a 17" screen with a 280m GTX... and then you can open up into quadcores that will absolutely demolish dualcores once quadcore becomes more native... To get a better idea where you stand / should go, it woudln't hurt to put some sort of pricepoint up so others can also help you find your ideal laptop.

My recommendations for an np8662:
WUXGA should be a WSXGA (yes, save $145 and less GPU stress)
BLU-RAY: at your discretion, but Bluray won't look right on a wsxga, so i'd ditch it and save $175
T9900: unless you absolutely need the fastest, and have an aversion to saving battery life by lopping 10w off... (less heat, less fan use, etc)... I'd get the P9700 and save $195

Right there is $505 saved. Money could be used towards better warranty, bigger HD, a 4gb RAM stick to make 6GB (or even put towards an 8gb ram upgrade kit)....

I would also look at the np5797 and as an outside possibility the np9280 for monster gaming machines. THey may be more up your alley for WUXGA and ability to handle super-high performance cpus.

 

holy crap dude u wrote a lot +rep

yeah if i were u i would get the cheapest possible and after get a QX9300

good luck dude

 

The X9100 can't be overclocked in the M860tu, it's BIOS locked, so the T9900 is the best supported option, since it's just as fast and runs cooler. It is pretty expensive, about $400 on ebay. I got my QX9300 for that, and that's a much better processor. However, that'd be a bit of a ***** to keep cool in the M860TU. You'd have to undervolt it to be safe.

Q9000 vs T9900? At that clockspeed, I'd go with the T9900.

 

yeah listen to the man !!!

 

As I said, a quadcore, when the computing world becomes more quadcore ready... will destroy any dual-core out there... simply on the grounds of more cores to make up the difference of lower MHz and GHz. I like to think of it like a highway with lanes. (You may substitute autobahn / autopista / autostrada or whatever). Now if you have a dual-core, that's synonymous to a 2-lane highway. You can have 2 cars side by side going at the clockspeed at a time without any clogs. Once something needs more then 2 lanes, you could say "traffic" ensues. At the same time, 2 single-threaded processes could go at the same time, or one big double-threaded one. A quadcore, same thing, but with 4 lanes... you could have 4 single-threads, 1 double and 2 singles, 2 doubles, a triple and a single, or a quad-threaded process go through without a hiccup. Even though the speed limit may be lower (2.53 vs. 3.06 for the fastest cores in each division), because there are more cores, more information can go through at once through the CPU. Case in point: look at quadcore benchmarks vs. dualcore benchmarks for benchmarking tools that have multicore processing enabled, and see which one usually does better (assuming that the tool has provisions for the cpu with the most cores, thus accomodating it, and those cpus with fewer than that in cores.

As for the qx9300, there are several NBR'ers who have inserted QX9300s into the 8662, and some who have done the q9100. The q9100 is feasible, although there are reports that the heatsink may NOT cover up the cpu "peaks", thus causing more heat than using a clevo / sager approved cpu. There are antidotes for this such as undervolting... (which the qx9300 needs due to its power usage, heat emissions, and 45w tdp... none of which work in its favor), but you may ultimately void the sager warranty and be left with whatever warranty is provided by the CPU seller (or if you get a barebones unit, the supplier of the barebones kit). The np8662 is still meant to be somewhat portable, and to have so much power / speed that the heat emission requires much supplemental tools (undervolting / possible heatsink mods / a laptop cooler 24/7) to keep the heat from frying the laptop would, at least for me be a turnoff. The q9100 has a higher tdp, but the general consensus is that while hotter, it's still liveable. Go ask H-Emmanuel, among others, his opinion of the qx9300 (and gtx 280m!) in a 15" profile... see what he says, he's really the authority on super-performance modding this monster.

Until you know where you stand performance-wise, and are certain you can maintain the laptop properly outside of the Sager / Clevo approved specs, I'd stick with what works / is guaranteed... at least this way if something goes wrong, you have a warranty to stand on for a whole computer vs. composite warranties that make a psuedo-warranty for a "frankensager". And truth be told, even the P9700, for what it is, really isn't a slouch. It's a T9600 performance wise, with less watt usage. There's a sort of diminishing return going past that point, and as anothergeek said, you can't even OC the x9100... so you may as well just stick with the t9900 if that's a "must-have", but there's nothing wrong with having an extra few minutes of battery life for those moments you have to frag without an ac cord

Let's see what Xion says before this goes further. I think he has the general idea, but needs some guidance to best price / performance ratio and not get things that could be "frivolous" or "detrimental to performance" in gaming.

Jason

 

I have the money to spend so up to 3,000 isn't a problem. I really, really would like to stay in the 15 inch screen size. As for modding and adding things, undervolting, extra heat sinks and the like I have no idea how to do it. I would rather get what comes in the box and have it work really well for what it is.

I guess my question is the T9900 worth getting over the 9700? Will I see better frame rates on Crysis, and SCII/DIII/MEII/DA..., just from buying this chip alone?

Also would going with the Q9000 vs the T9900 "future proof" my rig? Games will still be built around 2 core and 4 core users right?

Edit: I will use this Laptop plugged in 99% of the time.

Edit 2(Sorry): Also I never considered the screen effecting the frame rate.
Would the 1920x1200 really lower it enough that I should
reconsider?

 

3K?

hmm

how's this sound

- 15.4" WSXGA+ "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1680x1050)
- Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
- Standard Dead Pixel Policy
- ~Intel® T9900 45nm "Montevina" Core™2 Duo 3.06GHz w/6MB L2 On-die cache - 1066MHz FSB 35 watt
- nVidia GeForce GTX 260M 1,024MB PCI-Express DDR3 DX10 (User Upgradeable)
- No Video Adapter
- ~ 8,192MB DDR3 1066MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) (Requires Vista 64-Bit to utilize 4GB+) (Up to 6.8GB due to Chipset Limitation)
- None Standard--
- Standard Finish
- ~Combo 8x8x6x4x Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW 5x DVD-RAM 24x CD-R/RW Drive w/Softwares
- ~ 500GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache)
- No Back Up Hard Drive
- No Floppy Drive
- Internal 7-in-1 Card Reader (MS/MS Pro/MS Duo/MS Pro Duo/SD/Mini-SD/MMC/RS)
- Internal Bluetooth + EDR
- Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 5300 802.11 a/g/n Wi-Fi Link
- No Network Accessory
- Built in 2.0 Megapixel Camera
- No TV Tuner
- Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio - Included
- Basic Black Business Case - Included
- Smart Li-ion Battery (8-Cell)
- No Car Adapter
- None Standard*
- No Dock/Hub/Adapter
- Integrated Fingerprint Reader
- No External Keyboard or Mouse
- No Notebook Cooler
- None Standard - Drivers & Utility Software Only
- No Office Software
- No Software Bundle
- 3 Year Parts & Labor Warranty 24/7 Tech Support

(if you want an OS out of the box, swap the T9900 for a P9700, and you'll still be under $3k)

I like this... lots of space, lots of memory, nice monster CPU, and room to grow, while being sager compliant.

 

I wouldn't go for the T9900. So many see the higher clock rate and seem to forget the real facts.

Just take a look at the performance of the Q9000 that so many said would be no good for gaming due to its slow 2.0 Ghz clock rate.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=387976

Many stated that not only would I not get any good performance in gaming but I would also get slow frame rates overall. The 150 fps that I get in The Sims 3 and the 60 fps that I get in Quake 4 on ultra high graphical settings says otherwise.

Only at much lower resolutions will you see the CPU working a lot harder and get visible gains from having a higher clocked CPU.

Also consider that some benchmarks show a 2.93GHz getting exactly the same frame rates as a 1.86GHz simply because most games are GPU dependent and at higher resolutions such as 1680 X 1050 the GPU works harder than the CPU anyway.

Here are some more benchmarks

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=95226

Notice a 2.66GHz getting exactly the same frame rates as a much more expensive 3.81 Ghz.

Of course, there are a number of more CPU intensive games, particularly RTS games but I am sure some of those will scale to multiple cores anyway.

Notice that in the benchmark, as soon as he compares high end GPU's to lower end ones, the frames drop considerably from as high as 88 fps to as low as 27 fps. Notice how you don't see this huge difference when comparing the CPU's. You can have as fast a CPU as you want in gaming but it won't make a huge difference if you are looking at the wrong bottleneck.

Enough said.

 

Going further with this, I'd just like to let you know how hot the QX9300 can be. I've got the NP5797, which has dedicated CPU and GPU fans. The NP8662 has only one fan for both the CPU and GPU. This is why Sager supports the QX9300 for the NP5797 but not the NP8662. And how hot does it run in my rig? I've been running GTA4 for a while today on a ceramic surface with a cool 72F ambient temp, and the QX9300 @2.93 hit the lower 70C's. The overvolted and overclocked 280M... <.< hit 86C. Even with undervolting and stock clocks, I'd still expect the QX9300 to be hitting 80C and a 260M 90C in the NP8662. Your HDD may also have some problems as well, which is why I'd recommend the T9900 instead.

 

kion: here's the math for resolution

1920 x 1200 = 2,304,000 pixels (wuxga)

1680 x 1050 = 1,764,000 pixels (wsxga)

there are only 77% as many pixels in the wsxga as there are in the wuxga screen. Less pixels = bigger image = less viewed gaming space, but easier to see what's there... and ultimately because the GPU has to deal with fewer pixels, it can draw more frames. I would say it's probably only 5 to 10% more frames / second, but in gaming, every little frame helps. Also, how little do you want things to be when you're NOT gaming? with a 15" screen, things are smaller than on a traditional, 17", gaming machine... putting a 17"-"native" resolution on an even smaller screen makes everything tiny... possibly to the point of straining your eyes. As for the qx9300 and everything that anothergeek brought up, I say T9900 or P9700... and the P9700 is $200 cheaper (which in this economy, $200 saved is a very good thing).

Jason

 

1680 x 1050 in a 17" IMO is perfect. I would only take WUXGA if had 2 GPU's, since 1 would have troubles with Crysis-esque games at that res.

1680 x 1050 in a 15" should have a similar dot per inch as 1920 x 1200 in a 17", but in this case you only need the single GPU to do the job.

 

Once again the 200 price difference doesn't really matter if the T9900 will last longer and have 5-10% more fps. Maybe to make up for having the 1920x1200 screen. Does it work like that?

Other then gaming ill use it for the normal web browsing/email and occasional micro office needs.

Can I hook this blu-ray up to a HD tv and use it as a player HDMI to HDMI by chance. That would sell me on this having two HD tv's back home.

Edit: How would blu-ray look/play on the 1680x1050?

 

If you've got the money to burn, get the faster CPU. But it won't make the difference of WSXGA and WUXGA, since your GPU is bottlenecking either way. I'd still go with the WSXGA, plus it's glossy, which looks better than Matte to most people.

 

What price are you managing to get the T9900 for? I managed to get an x9100 for little over the equivalent of $120, which is much better than spending $400-$500 on a quad, especially in price to performance. The T9900 would be a better option, but only if you get a good price on it.

Besides, this future-proofing argument - by the time we come around to using programs that do give quads any 'highly-improved' real-time performances (yet to see any huge, real-time margins, if any btw) over dual's they'll be newer generation(s) of cpu's out. And trust, very few will be talking about this gen anymore in comparison.

By then this gen of quads will be alot more affordable and worth it. The future proofing argument is just a way to make you spend more money when you don't need to yet.

 

Do you mean 1920x1200 at 17", or 1680x1050 at 17" (the way it's worded confused me)

 

17@1920x1200 = 15@1680x1050

 

I also suggest the P9700. A very good option and will give you plenty of power.

On my 17inch the 1920x1200 resolution is very pleasant. In games I usually run at 1680x1050 but if the card can take I can push to the native resolution.

The thing is that at 1920x1200 the pixels are small enough that the quality of image is barely affected by the smaller resolution. So have no worries about the bigger resolutions, you won't regret.
However, on smaller 15inch screen, I strongly suggest you take the 1680x1050 resolution, the 1920x1200 will make everything just too small.
Here in Europe, all resellers only offer the 1920x1200 resolution (hell knows why). So I didn't really have a choice in choosing my screen resolution.

 

If you have the money to burn, and you want to be smart.
Buy a $1500 config now. Use it for a year, and buy another one.
There is a major hardware shift in the works. Usb 3, Sata 3, rise of the quad. I don't care how much money you spend, right now, nothing is future proof.

 

Hello everyone....

I suggest you look into a solid-state drive...seems to help keep temps within normal specs, even when maxing out my computer with stress tests and games (although I can't currently find a program [all of the free ones I can find] that will monitor **my** particular SSD...maybe it is based on the configuration?)

Here is that handy dandy thread talking about "ok" temps:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=263039

...also, I opted for a P9500 now with the anticipation of dropping a Q in there in a year or two when games use the Q quite a bit more...it has been fun playing older games like Oblivion all maxed out, and also new ones (burnout paradise...well, I suppose it is a remix) all maxed out, too! Heck, I even bought a 15 pin gameport to USB converter and managed to get my old analog rudder pedals working for Battle of Britain II

Regards, and happy notebook hunting,

Jeff

 

I notice you have the matte screen. Is the resolution to small for you as some have stated here?

 

Hello Kion....I am totally fine with the matte screen and I do not feel the resolution is too small at all...I'm 38 and I've used computers nearly all my life. My eyes aren't the best, but even in the native resolution, I can see everything crisply and cleanly. I recommend it...games look all the better in high res!

Regards,

Jeff

 

Honestly, I havent read the last 2 pages of posting, but I have the P8662, and I didn't upgrade the processor, so I have the 8600 I believe, and I have had 0 problems. I did a lot of research and I had a lot of people tell me that I may not notice a real world difference between the P8600 and the 9600...

 

Most important question, what are you planning to do with the system?

 

http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=37266,35566,35568,

....and what is he going to do with the system?

...



...

 

Lol!

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