sr or z or wait?

so basically i've narrowed down my selection of laptops to sony. my question is now, should i get a sr or a z; or should i wait and see when sony releases their next line of 13" laptops?

the tasks i need to do on the laptop include programs such as unrealED, 3d studio max and similar programs, as well as some programming and some word processing. however, a requirement for any laptop is that it must be able to handle unreal 3.0 based games (unreal tournament 3/gears of war/mirror's edge, etc) at 1024x768 without problems at decent fps.

as i will not always have access to power sources, i will need some decent battery life as well.

 

Generally, waiting for something to be released is a bad idea. It might take a while, and when it does come it won't be cheap for the first few months.

The Z is one of the best 13-inch laptops around. If you have the budget, grab it.

 

my budget allows me to not care about prices. however, it is crucial that i get the performance i need. the z is definitely a good computer, but i have yet to see whether it can run the specifics required or if i should wait.

 

The graphics card on the Z is not very powerful, as is the case with all 13-inch laptops (I think).

ASUS recently released a 14-inch laptop with a powerful graphics card, the W90 I think. You might want to look at it.

 

The W90 is an 18.4".

 

Sorry. There is some ASUS model that has a good graphics card on a 14-inch chassis, I don't remember which.

 

it's the f6v something. i'm not interested due to its battery time (around 2 hours) and it only has ddr2 ram.

 

maybe a dell studio xps 13?

 

i had it in mind for some time until i figured it had overheating issues (lid blocking fan vent) and the 9500m is just a 9400/9200 hybrid, so yielded performance gain in comparison to any of the vaios would be marginal. it's a shame though, because i sort of like the design of it as well.

anyway, i haven't had any people actually tell me whether or not unreal can run on either the z or the sr at 1024x768. any z or sr owner that would be so kind as to download the demo and test them out?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=295866

 

Maybe this will help?
(the fail on recommended is wrong, it seems like it doesnt detect cpu correctly):

 

at any given point in time, with respect to computer technology, something will always get superceeded by something else in the near future. whenever the need, desire and resources become available is a good time to make the purchase. waiting for the perfect time is the best way of not getting anything at all.

 

yes i'm very aware of this. i was postponing buying any laptops simply because i couldn't find the right one that would run what i needed in the resolution i needed. then i saw laptops coming out with the newer ati line up, which i was certain would be able to run what i needed.

thanks for going through the trouble, bjornb. unfortunately it's very hard to tell what ingame performance would be from those scores. it makes me wonder even more how precise the tool is when it fails a dual core processor listed higher than what is required.

 

Did you check out that link i posted?? .....
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=295866

"Unreal Tournament 2004, Maximum settings, 1360x768, 30-50 FPS
Unreal Tournament 3 Demo: 1024x768, general settings set at 2/5, 30s fps "

 

i did, but that only shows SR scores and i had already checked that thread. i'm looking for z scores (check previous page). thanks anyway though.

 

Yeah but the HD3470 in the SR and the 9300M in the Z get almost idenitical 3DMark06 score (the Z gets a slightly lower score)
So that gives you an idea on how both would perform.

 

by slightly you mean how much?

 

like almost the same

 

I'm not sure about the games you want, but the Z is a pretty powerful computer for its size. I use it to play games mainly and it runs at good speeds considering its graphics card. Just upgrade the 9300M GS driver to the Nautis one (which is available in the forums...just search for it). It will do wonders for the speed in your games.

 

most of my "gaming" (i.e., work) will be centered around unreal tournament 3

 

i would certainly wait if windows 7 is coming near.
but from what you just said, z would be certainly meets your requiremnt..
graphic switch is z advantage over the sr. plus the batt that come with z has higher capacity than sr, you might need to buy additional batt for sr with dedicated gpu.

 

I am also shopping. Any thoughts to how long before Windows 7?