X205-SLi3 or X205-S9359

I am wanting to get a new laptop and can no decide on what one of those two laptops (topic name) to go for.

The difference is only 100$ and battery life is not too much of a concern. An hour of life is what I am use to, so that will do.

I am looking for help from someone that has one or the other laptop. Man questions is does it play new games decent (Bioshock/Team fortress 2), and how is the general tasks (office/web/pic editing) ?

 

The only real difference between the two is the graphics card(s); the SLi3 has the 8600M-GT x2 in SLI and the S9359 has the single 8700M-GT. If a game can take advantage of dual graphics cards then the SLi3 will definitely be the better gaming choice. I imagine just about all of the new games coming out in the future will support dual graphics cards setups so that is what I would go for.

For the record, a single 8700M-GT is 30 - 40% faster than a single 8600M-GT but the performance of dual 8600M-GTs is much better than a single 8700M-GT.

 

I have a SLi1, it posted 21099 on 3DMark03. On wPrime test 1 40.96sec, test2 1099 sec. bioshock plays great on high settings with dx10. LAPTOP mag tested the X205-S9359 and it only scored 13279 on 3DMark03 so a SLI3 SHOULD BEST THE 21099 my SLi1 posted and smoke the S9359. WPrime scores are top notch also, so it will be an excellent choice for office work. Crysis plays very good, but the game itself seems to have bugs. Ijust installed Unreal Tournament 3 (Just bought it today) runs excellent played a few instant action games maxed settings, looks like an excellent game! Great speakers also! I recommend SLi3. Unreal tournament rocks!!! laptop mag november issue tested the S9359 verses the Asus G2S-A1 if you want to check ot out.

 

Cool! I think I will shoot for the SLi3. The only other question would be, is there a list somewhere on the net of what games support sli?

 

just about any game can be run using SLI through the different modes, Nvidia uses profiles to set most of them up for you, so you don't even have to worry about it.... just keep the drivers up to date and you'll be good to go... Certain games do support it better than others, but thus far I haven't run across anything that hasn't worked well on my SLi1.

One current note is Crysis, as it's kind of hit or miss at the moment... at times using SLI doubles my framerate using the newest drivers and Nhancer and it's profile for it, but other levels it seems stuttery, and even though it shows more frames per second, using a single gpu runs slower but smoother, if that makes sense... BUT, this is suposedly being addressed in a soon to be release patch, and no other game I've tried has given me any issue, and has run great. You'll enjoy it, a good bang for the buck in my opinion... not the fastest available, but a great system.

 

Nvidia's site has a list, but you just need to go to the Nvidia control panel and most games are listed, you can over ride game settings of games not supported from the control panel to work with SLi, its very easy, and any games in the last year should work. Worst case just disable Sli in control panel and run old games off 1 8600gt (super easy to switch back and forth) so it will run any game !

 

I have a question: The SLI 1 and 3 have the same set up of video cards or not?
I mean have the same specs on the GPU part, I know they differ on HDD space, CPU speed and Vista Ultimate instead of Home Premium but the video cards are 256MB each one on both or SLI 3 is 512MB each video card? Thanks...

 

They are the same video cards. It is 256 on each.....which I still think was misrepresentation.

 

The SLi3 has 4mb L2 cache and a better screen SLi1 has 2mb. I have 10th Mountain Division colorado plates on my truck!!

 

Just out of curiosity, do you think there will be any power consumption or heat differences between the single and dual graphics cards models?

 

Clearly. Nothing is free

 

There are heat differences, I have the 9349 and the sli1 my son uses the 9349 and the gpu idles at around 46c and never goes above 66c under load, I use the sli1 and the gpu's idle at around 58c and under load the cards go to around 78c and there will be a bit more power consumption in the sli1 but I don't know how much that is.

 

What are your experience of the battery life differences between the 9349/9359 vs SLi1/SLi3 ??