Need help buying a new laptop.

[Father_Yetti]

I’m looking to purchase a new laptop computer and I am looking for advice from someone who knows what they are talking about. I’m sure a few of you here do. I’ve been waiting a long time for this and it now finally makes sense financial for me to do so. Fortunately for me, now should be a good time to buy with the economy, or so I would think. The problem is I really want to stretch my dollar and still get a reliable top end product and I have just been out of the loop for too long to know what’s good.

I am looking at taking some online courses as well as going into graphics art as a career. In all honesty however most of my time will be spent with the new SCII map editor. I can’t wait; map making has become a real passion of mine. Thank you everyone at TheHelper.net. What a great resource and inspiration this community has been. Because I am looking to pursue a career in graphics design - specifically in the video game industry I will need a high end machine.

Something that can easily multi task too, and I want the ability to hook up an additional monitor, maybe that's standard I don't really know what it takes. I know for a laptop, but I will be at home most of the time; just need something mobile for on the go too. I would like a 17' screen; and actually really wont settle for anything different unless I can get 19' or bigger . The big screen is actually really important to me as I will be doing graphics and hate squinting when I do the details. It has to look nice.

I really don’t want to spend over $2,500; including warranty, but will go the extra mile if it really opens up my market; that is if I can get that much more computer for the dollar. I didn’t go into any specs or specifics here; I’ll leave that to you tech lords out their. I know enough that you can talk to me about it. Just not enough to know what good deals or brands are or where to shop. I have been out of the loop for so long now. One last thing being that it’s a laptop: warranty and reliability are extremely important to me. I won’t get anything under a three year warranty - parts and labor included, however I would really feel safer with a five year plan given the cost involved. Thank you in advance for your time it is greatly appreciated.

 

[CaptDeath]

ok so i only read half your paragraph and wanted to say are you ok with building/puttinng it together cause that cuts off a few hundread on a standard 5-600$ lappy
just bottme line
Google!
actually newegg
and one thing of advice
DONT GET TOSHIBA
worst CS[customer service ever]

 

[Slapshot136]

in that price range i would look at the ones rk has to offer if you want to build it yourself, or the sager ones if you dont, those are good brands with solid warranty's

 

[Samael88]

wow. $2,500 that is a lot of money to spend on a computer. If I am not misstaken, that is somewhat equal to about 18000SEK, and that is a lot to put down on a computer

My pal bought one in sweden for about 7000SEK and that is somewhat equal to $1,100, he just looked around on many different suppliers and compared prizes, it took him about two weeks to buy a comp, but it was worth it.

What he got for that price was something like this for about two years ago:
Intel dual-core processor 3.2 Ghz
4GB ram
500GB HDD
512MB graphics card, wich shared memory also, so that the graphics card uses the extra GB ram that windows don't need. wich means that he got between 1500-2000 GB graphics memory

That is not a bad comp even by todays standards, he can play CoD5 world at war on it no lag:thup:

Just saying that I think you should look around for a while and be a little picky with the prices, beacuse sooner or later there will be a really good catch out there

 

[Father_Yetti]

Yeah I know its a lot of money but I want something really nice. From what I hear laptops are pretty integrated and harder to update. I want something that will stay current for a few years and I want something high end as I will be using it all the time. I don't mind waiting a bit or looking around but to be honest I don't really know what to look for. As well I am not sure I want to build my own; I don't think I can get a warranty that way and would probably just rather have the whole unit under warranty so I don't have to worry about that. Thanks I will check out those links but I was kind of hoping for some help on specifics and prices. I am just not confident in myself for spotting what's what in today's market.

 

[Father_Yetti]

I checked out those Sager products but again I don't have much to compare it to. Does anyone else here varify their reputation and reliability? They did have nice warranties but like I excpected they don't come cheap. I guess I will have to count this as part of the cost.

Dual Graphics Card SLI Technology capable: what does this mean? It was quite a bit extra to get this. To get the SLI mode was another $695.00! but it was an advertisment bullet as a selling point. Is it really that good? As well I noticed those all being advertised for gamming. What about multi tasking with multiple programs and rendering?

 

[Slapshot136]

for multitasking the important spec to look for is the ram and the ram speed, 4gb of ram should be plenty and is relatively easy to find, but you will want an x64 operating system for it.. faster memory clocks help with responsiveness and speed in general

if your going for a big laptop, make sure the screen resolution is high as well, since that's the number of pixels on the screen, and is really more important then the size in order for a nice clear view

the sli is pretty rediculous for a laptop, but basically what it is (and the competitior's crossfire is the same) is having multiple graphic cards that work together and give higher framerates in games.. in your price range you should be going for a good graphics card /w 1GB of vRAM, but SLI is probably not worth it/too expensive... and the quadro series is also listed with the graphics options, those are for things like intensive 3-d modeling which you probably wont run into if you dont already know about it.. kinda specialized for some businesses

the CPU is also one of the main components, but there really is not a very big selection, i recommend one of the newer core 2 duo's, those are the like P8400-P9600 ones, avoid the Txxxx ones since those are last-year's model

the hard drive is... the hard drive, which determines how much you can save.. in general the 7200s are faster, but the 5400 ones can hold more.. some of the more expensive laptops can hold more, these are very easy to install yourself however so you should probably google for a laptop hard drive instead of buying it built-in if you find one with unused hard drive slots (they usually give u the option to buy one there), make sure you buy a 2.5 inch one and not a 3.5 inch one, 3.5 is for desktops, these generally have a 3-year warranty on them as well

the last important thing to look for are ports and miscellaneous things, make a list of things you may want to connect and look for those ports (ex: a few usb's, a hdmi-out, a vga-out) is what you probably want, then if you want a web cam or a fingerprint reader.. blu-ray is pretty expensive atm and you can spend better money elsewhere... a 2nd battery might be nice since big and high-performance laptops tend to use a lot of power

those are the main things to look for, for comparisons look at the cheap gateway FX series, and the overpriced but cool looking alienware laptops.. there's also the dell XPS which can be compared.. also the RK ones arent all build-it-yourself, they just have that option, you can go there and pick a laptop and pick parts so they install them, or leave some parts empty and install them yourself.. the hard drive and memory are easy to install (unscrew the cap, then insert, then screw cap back on), the others might be harder..

 

[Father_Yetti]

Thanks for the rundown and plus rep for your time Slapshot136.

'the quadro series is also listed with the graphics options, those are for things like intensive 3-d modeling which you probably wont run into if you dont already know about it.. kinda specialized for some businesses.'

Yeah well that specialized business is exactly what I need the machine for. I would like to be able to do my own rendering with extremely complex 3-d models and environments. I am big on complexity and detail and am looking for a unit that can keep up with my demands. I don't want to be constrained artistically to what my machine can handle.

My brother works for Bungie and so I have had experience using very nice computers. I havan't had to 'know' specifically about the components behind them because this has never affected my ability to perform using them. Obviously now that I am shoping for myself I need to know a bit about it.

And after browsing around for the last couple of days it is looking like I will need to spend more around $3,800.00 to get all the features I want. I looked up SLI, and for rendering I can't think of something that would better improve this capacity as it splits the work load with a GPU: essentially doubling one's rendering power. The Quad core seems like something needed for intensive rendering as well and I would rather have it then not if I risk an artistic handicap.

Just sucks I need a laptop because everything is so much more expensive. I know I'm getting like half the computer for the price. One thing I don't know how to configure is the RAID drive setups. 0, 1 and 5. I'm not really sure what kind of setup I would need for this and what advantages come from each of the configurations?

Again thanks for the help guys. I will keep looking. Anyone else have suggestions or would like to back up what someone has stated might help me build confidence.

 

[Slapshot136]

i seriously doubt that you want a quad core on a laptop, as those are expensive, power-hungry, and usually overkill. look at what computer you are using now, then go to task manager and track your CPU useage, and get an estimate of how much CPU power you need.. then decide if you really want that. a quad-core uses more then double the power of a dual core cpu and usually clocks lower, which is bad for a single intensive task (like most current games and programs), but better for extensive multitasking. I mean multitasking with CPU-intensive programs like video encoders and file compressors, not just the active window.

like i said before you wont be able to have both a quadro and a sli configuration, and adding a 2nd graphics card increases graphics performance by about 80%, not quite double.The quadro will not work for games.

raid is like this: it is a way of combining hard drives to gain benefits, and should be done with same-sized hard drives
raid 0: 2 hard drives are used instead of 1 for the storage of all files, increasing read/write speeds, but if 1 of them fails (and they do eventually.. ), then BOTH hard drives lose data, since the other hard drive will have only half of each file
raid 1: aka mirrored setup: hard drives have the same contents, thereby causing the hard drives to have only as much room as the smallest hard drive, and increasing read speed but NOT write speed. this means that even if 1 hard drive fails, then your data is completely safe. this does not help you at all if say you spill something on your laptop or you drop it and both hard drives die.
raid 5: a combination of 0 and 1, it will still work if 1 of the hard drives dies, but after that is is vulnerable..

summary: you most likely do not need raid at all, but if you think you do, first get equal size hard drives, then raid 0 is for performance, make frequent backups if you use it, raid 1 is for data safety, dont forget to make backups still however or that you limit your hard drive size, and raid 5 is a mix between the 2 that requires 3 hard drives (still of the same size). dont forget that you dont need raid at all either, and you can still benefit from only losing some in case of a disk failure, and still have a performance boost

 

[Father_Yetti]

Well some of the options for both a Sager, Malibal, and Alienware allow you to get quade core with SLI as well Wikipedia states the same. It uses two GPUs. I did some research and double performance in SLI is tested though boast from Nvidia claim a 1.9x increase, most likely for legal reasons.

Now whether its worth the price or not I don't know but for rendering the SLI really seems like the ticket. I'm not using a computer now for anything right now but this - I don't have one ATM. The one I am on now is not mine and it can barely even run WCIII TFT. It takes five to ten minutes just to load my maps. I just know that when I get my new computer, and I have used high end software before, I plan on doing some intensive renderings - like I plan on producing studio quality output - even if it takes months to render scenes; I want something that can at least handle it.

However if this is the case then I am glad you enlightened me on the differences between quad and dual. So rendering would benefit better from dual since it is dealing with only one program? If this is the case then I am defienetly not getting the quad core and that saves me more than a few bucks. I really do think I want the SLI though for rendering purposes.

The rundown on RAID really helped, thanks. I agree, I don't think that I need it either. If I did I would go with 0 and buy a bulk set of DVDs for back ups. Hmmm let me look some more, I'll post back shortly, thanks.

 

[Exfiltrate]

Try this laptop.

This laptop is good quality, and you won't run out of hdd space soon (1tb). This also has blu ray, and a lot of other things. Asus has a great reputation. Tell me what you think of this?

 

[Duwenbasden]

>P8400-P9600 ones, avoid the Txxxx ones since those are last-year's model

No, the T series are standard voltage while the P series operates on a lower voltage.

>So rendering would benefit better from dual since it is dealing with only one program?

Not necessarily: If the program supports 4 processors, then it will perform better on a quad core than on a dual core; but if it doesn't then you will suffer the wattage wastage and more heat.

Don't use DVDs for backups -- use external hard drives.

For me, I'll just get a desktop for heavy duty work and a moderately powerful 12-14" laptop for mobile use (and hook to an external monitor at home.)

 

[Father_Yetti]

>P8400-P9600 ones, avoid the Txxxx ones since those are last-year's model

No, the T series are standard voltage while the P series operates on a lower voltage.

I thought this sounded odd as many of the newest and fastest models out there were sporting Txxxx models. For the record, what is the fastest processor on the market in the notebook arena? Is it the the EXTREME series from intel?

Has anyone ever heard of Malibal?

I like what I see, just wondering what you guys think?

 

[Slapshot136]

the txxx series are 65nm as opposed to the more efficient 45nm ones, which would be the P series and the extreme series.. they are also limited to 800 as a FSB..

the extreme series is ridiculously overpriced tho.. for not that much more gain.. but since you asked:

currently the fastest laptop cpu's are the X9100 (dual core at 3.06) and the QX9300 (quad at 2.53). depending on what program your using, you might get more performance out of a dual core as opposed to a quad core, since most programs dont utilize 4 cores..

P.S.
those laptops are pretty good, the one thing that i think should be better for the price that your paying on them tho is the memory clocks

 

[Duwenbasden]

the txxx series are 65nm as opposed to the more efficient 45nm ones, which would be the P series and the extreme series.. they are also limited to 800 as a FSB..

Nope, the P series are just a more efficient but more expensive versions of the mobile processors. I think you are confusing Merom (65nm) and Penryn (45nm).
Wikipedia
Intel

 

[Father_Yetti]

P.S.
those laptops are pretty good, the one thing that i think should be better for the price that your paying on them tho is the memory clocks

What is a range I should be looking at? Or wasn't there an upgrade option there for that, or were the upgrades not even much better?