Dell's gamer laptops
While looking at the dell site for something else I came across one of their laptops with dual 8800m gtx video cards and all the fancy s*** you'd expect from a "gamers laptop". Seeing this gave me an instant and enormous woody so now I'm thinking of getting one. Does anyone out there have a gaming laptop (the one I saw was the XPS™ M1730) or any other high end laptop? How do you find the battery life? My current laptop is pretty decent and on the power saver profile it'll last a good couple of hours, obviously I wouldn't be playing games on battery power.
I know what you're all thinking, game? on a laptop? crazy foo' stop your jibber jabber and buy a desktop. I have one but I cbf moving a huge honkin case and a 24" monitor to some dudes shed or someone's living room for a game of cod4 so would like a laptop that allows me to do this. Obviously laptops are going to be slower than PC's but with 2x 8800's in it it should do ok and me being me usually always turn graphics settings to their minimal settings after a few hours of wandering about enjoying "the pretty" and just get on with killing stuff in pixellated glory. On to pixel quality, anyone had any issues with dell's and dead pixels? My latest one (Toshiba) got a dead pixel within the first couple of days, nice bright red son'b**** staring at me from the corner of the screen. :( How hot do these things get? do they like to lock up from heat issues in summer? I've had no issues with playing cs on this laptop even though the air coming out is hot enough to cook your dinner with. |
06:29am 26/10/08 Permalink
I'm on an XPS M1730 now, it has the SLI 8700s (it's about 6 months old) and RAID 0. It's very quick, battery life is pretty crap unless you castrate it in power settings (what do you expect). It's also heavy and has a huge power brick.
A laptop it is not, the term for these things is "desktop replacement". That said this does not replace my desktop :) |
07:12am 26/10/08 Permalink
yeah I never intended it to be portable like a student would need, just more portable than a huge tower case. How big is the power brick compared to an xbox 360's? :)
So why wouldn't you replace your desktop with it? As a test, how does it play crysis/farcry 2? If you've tried that is. |
07:24am 26/10/08 Permalink
I also have a XPS 1730. I f*****g LOVE it. The 17' screen is bright as f*** with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. The Dual 8800gtx are pretty wicked. I got the 2 x 512 version, but I don't really play games on it, so can't comment. I played Assasins Creed on it at max everything and it was sweet, and spore at max everything and it was also sweet. But they were mainly to test it out etc. The keyboard is actually really good, not as bad as some laptop keyboards, the keys are big and springy, and the keypad is just awesome.
However, yes it is HUGE and heavy. The power brick is pretty big, at least double the size of a regular laptop power brick. (I think it is around the same as an xbox 360 one). Battery life is pretty shocking, however I took it on a plane and watched tv shows on the way home, with all lights, bells and whistles etc turned right down, and it lasted around 2 hours. The extra headphone jack was useful for my gf to plug hear headphones in also! You got vista? I have a 5.1 base score, however the bottle neck is the RAM at 5.1, processor 5.4 (2.5ghz duel core), graphics 5.9, hard drive 5.3 (2x 200gig 7200 drives). Good luck in deciding! I salary sacrificed mine, so saved like 30% of the 3.6k in tax. Plus the 10% in gst. Also check out http://www.dell.com.au/NRMA are you a member of any RACQ / NRMA insurance? If not hit me up and ill send you the e-value code itll save you like 5-8%. Edit: Oh i also got the specific carry bag (Dell(TM) XPS M1730 Nylon Backpack ) for like 160~ bucks, but i had to call them up as the high end one didn't have the option when ordering. It's pretty damn nice, fits the laptop nice and snugly, and is all padded and s*** (both for laptop and your back), the laptop is big and heavy, and combine that with cables etc, it can add up, the bag gets pretty heavy! last edited by Fireblood at 08:27:30 26/Oct/08 last edited by Fireblood at 08:30:00 26/Oct/08 |
08:24am 26/10/08 Permalink
I know that Dell is releasing a new range of laptops before the end of the year, it might be worthwhile waiting for the next 'refresh'. The 1730 and 1530 have been around for a good 12-18 months now.
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09:36am 26/10/08 Permalink
I also have a 1730 and it works well for lanning but not much else, it became too heavy even without the 5kg power pack. You can get the battery to last up to about 3 - 3.5 hours if you do some major tweaking and replace the drives with SSD's. Haven't tried but I guess it would run all the games out at the moment fine.
If you want to buy one I will sell you mine for 4.5k. Why so expensive? I don't remember but purchased for about 7.5k with all the options I wanted and it has 3 ac adaptors (trust me you want one everywhere you go). It is just sitting on my desk gathering dust. actually here is the specs: T9500 vista ultimate 4gig ram 2x 64g samsung ssd's bluray writer dual 8800M gtx physx card (not just driver) x-fi laptop garbage sound card no digital out office 07 3 year dell complete cover (2 1/2 years left) mandarina duck laptop bag ($800 new) |
10:56am 26/10/08 Permalink
son loves his XPS M1530, specially the $2300 price tag
the other thing you could look at is alienware, term and I just ordered a couple of these and they seem pretty pimp on paper. crappy slow turnaround time on getting our orders delivered though, they are worlds apart from dell in that regard. am not looking forward to service turnaround time if it ever comes up |
11:05am 26/10/08 Permalink
Alienware has the worst support in the world. They also run so frickn hot you end up with blisters in your lap or c***! As much as I hate to say it the best value at the moment is the base level 15.4" sony.
about 2k with a t9500, 4gig ram, 8800 and bluray writer |
11:10am 26/10/08 Permalink
i have the older XPS 1710 its good but the new 1730 are sweet!
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11:51am 26/10/08 Permalink
Is it really worth it to get a laptop just for lanning? How often do you lan anyway?
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11:56am 26/10/08 Permalink
'desktop replacement' laptops - all the downsides of a laptop AND a desktop but the benefits of neither
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02:42pm 26/10/08 Permalink
what the f*** are you talking about, the ac adaptors are 4.4kg. 1.5 my ass
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04:35pm 26/10/08 Permalink
I read a fair bit about the alienware ones before ordering, didnt say anything about a heap of heat - I'm sure it wont be as bad as the nvidia gpu design flaw on all the current XPS's - my wifes died and had to have the motherboard swapped out because of the gpu.
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04:39am 29/10/08 Permalink
dunno about heat on my xps, if you put it on your lap it would crush your bones
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11:18am 29/10/08 Permalink
how often are you lanning? get a shuttle or something imo, something you can upgrade if you feel the need and put a proper videocard in rather than the overpriced poxy portable s***.
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12:03pm 29/10/08 Permalink
