Sony VAIO AR41e (gaming/uni laptop)

Im looking to get a decent 16.9"-17" laptop which has a decent nvidia chipset, i came across this AR41E but havnt seen any reviews of it anywhere, so i wanted some technical savy people to give their opinions on price and quality and possible better alternatives.

(i can buy it of dabs.com for about £730 which made it an even more attractive buy, i dont want to spend over £870)

I'm planning on using for occasional gaming and wondering if the NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT would hold up??


Thanks

 

The 8400GT should be okay for playing most newer games on medium details. However I would strongly suggest buying an extra gig of ram as Vista Home Premium is a memory hog.

 

It looks good from what I see. When you say occasional gaming, what do you mean? Are you going to be playing a lot of graphics intensive games like first person shooters? It looks like a really great deal, if you cannot find anything better, then grab it.

Two other notebooks I would recommend looking at are the Asus G2S and Asus W2. These are both 17'' inch notebooks meant for multimedia/gaming.

 

Yeh, that type of gaming, but i dont plan on putting something like crisis on it..

Q: I havnt bought a laptop before but iv got a copy of vista ultimate, would i beable to wipe home premium and put my ultimate on it??
Also is the screen quality any good? Iv seen a dell m90 precision 17" and its viewing angles are pants.

 

You have to be careful with Vaio´s specs. They usually mount underclocked video cards on their most reasonably priced models, as this one. As far as I know, that particular model has 128mb of video memory, which makes it far less powerful than the 512 MB version.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8400M.html

So, the statement that says it´s possible to play recent games at medium settings, is more than arguable.

Moreover, that´s a small card, which means that you can either get a much smaller machine if you want the card, or a MUCH MORE powerful card if you want to keep the 17" bulk.

Personally, I wouldn´t go for it.

 

How come it states that ther is 319mb of video ram avaible, if there is only 128mb? out of curiosity?

Are there any other alternatives that you can reccomend for this price and specs.??

 

Cheap trick indicating the dedicated video memory (128mb) + the amount of memory sucked from the system (much worse, in terms of performance).

Personally, I think it´s a very bad time to buy a laptop, if you´re planning to play games on it with a decent quality and/or smoothness. I´d recommend the 8400GT minimum (top of the line card) or 8600 series.

There are multiple posts with real-life benchmarks, finding them should be easy.

 

with about the same amount of money what would be the most spec'd out pc i could get? If its not a good time?

 

anyone think this is a decent uni laptop...or are there better alternatives for the same price?????

 

I own an Vaio FZ which is essentially Sony's other luxury line. The screen is 15.4". The 8400M GT is absolutely perfect even on the latest games, highest settings although I occasionally decrease the resolution for example when I played the Bioshock demo. It is overclockable by arond 50 MHz. The HD playback is perfect and its 1080p functionality is breathtaking. Sorry, it is not very compatible with DirectX 10, but I'm sure as more drivers come out it will be able to run them on low settings. Most games come with the option to play with DirectX 9 anyway. This is fine with me, my XBOX 360 run DX 9 and games such as Gears of War and Bioshock look amazing. I have 2 GB of RAM to give it (the Vaio) a little boost. However, whether the 8400M GT can hold up on a 17" screen I'm not sure. But this is irrelevant because the AR series, which this thread discusses now comes with the 8600M GT, which should have no trouble whatsoever on a 17" screen. Check the Sony website for its newest stats, this laptop truly is in my view an amazing purchase, especially with Blu-Ray in the mix.