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Geek Culture / Good deals on gaming notebooks (UK)?

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Zappo
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Posted: 9th May 2007 17:01
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Does anyone know of any good deals on notebooks at the moment (UK please) which have reasonable graphics cards in? It seems that as soon as you want something other than an Integrated Intel 900 chipset they expect you want a 9Ghz 42inch laptop with 6TB storage for £12000.

Okay, a slight exageration there, but something like a 1.6Ghz Celeron M would suffice as long as the graphics card is okay for reasonable 3D game playing/programming. I figure something like the nVidia GeForce Go 7300? I am a bit out of date when it comes to mobile graphic chipsets and I don't want to break the bank (sub £500 if possible).
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 9th May 2007 17:13
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Well, IBuypower is not UK based, however they have some pretty good deals on what you are looking for.

http://www.ibuypower.com

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Dazzag
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Posted: 9th May 2007 17:18
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This website has a good forum, or at least it did when I was looking for a decent laptop a couple of years ago:-
http://www.whatlaptop.co.uk/Forums/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=220

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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hessiess
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Posted: 9th May 2007 18:06
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the go 7600 maxis at 150k polys on screen with obvious lagging. suspect the 7300 will be mutch worse

learn blender, you will never regret it.
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GatorHex
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Posted: 10th May 2007 10:18 Edited at: 10th May 2007 10:58
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I wrote a program here http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=101716&b=5 for testing DBP polygons and frame rate. AMD dual core chips + low power 3D cards give okay results, I'd stear clear of the intel GPU because you sometimes run into games that insist it is not Shader 2.0 complient even though it is! DBP shadows don't work right on it!

Dell £430
1Gb RAM
AMD Dual Core 64 TL50
15.4" Wide Screen
80Gb HDD
ATI Radeon Xpress 1150

Aldi £450
Medion Laptop
15.4" Wide Screen
1Gb RAM
Dual Core AMD 64 TL-50
120Gb HDD
Nvidia GeForce Go 6150

My Celeron M 1.5 + Intel 915 chipset (Bad)


AMD Dual 2.1 + nVidia 6150 (A little better) http://forum.thegamecreators.com/xt/xt_apollo_pic.php?i=1141708

Intel Dual 1.8 + Nvidia 7600GS (Much better!) http://forum.thegamecreators.com/xt/xt_apollo_pic.php?i=1144677

Dell Laptop with 7900 GPU costs £1149!!! Would be reet fast though, to get this power at half the price concider a desktop solution!

http://www.KumKie.com http://bulldog.servegame.com
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Zappo
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Posted: 10th May 2007 14:33
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Agent Dink: Sadly, IBuyPower don't ship to the UK and don't have any UK resellers. A real shame because the prices are good.

Dazzag: Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the only 'cheap' PC they list as suitable for modern gaming is from a site which doesn't seem to be there anymore. Shame.

GatorHex: Thanks for the info, but it doesn't really help me find anything. The Integrated Intel GPUs certainly are poor performers (900 and 950) and I didn't want one of those. The nVidia 6150 isn't far off them in performance tests, and similar to the ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 and ATI Radeon Xpress 200M. I wanted something a bit better really.

Its not looking good for the price I want pay. The best I have seen so far is a Dell (so I automatically have reservations about it) which has an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 which tests very well, for about £530 inc VAT and delivery.
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Dazzag
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Posted: 10th May 2007 15:00 Edited at: 10th May 2007 15:01
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Quote: "Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the only 'cheap' PC they list as suitable for modern gaming is from a site which doesn't seem to be there anymore. Shame."
Did you make a request on the forums? They are pretty good at finding stuff.

I was going to say £500 was a bit low. And don't say no to Dell. Screens are awesome (I have a 1920x1200 15.4" Dell laptop that has given me no problems) and the price is brilliant. Plus if you watch the outlet like a hawk then you can pick up some bargains. And I mean like a hawk. When I bought mine (£900 2 years ago when it cost about £1700 brand new) it was top of the line from the Outlet and I kept refreshing the page every 5 minutes. Took 3 days but got a hell of a bargain in the end (think sometimes they let the YTS bloke play with the database). Friend of mine looked at the same page and got an even better bargain 2 days later. If you are patient then it's good. Also the Outlet doesn't mean 2nd hand. Basically it is orders that were cancelled. They then make sure all is ok and then ship them out on the Outlet. Only downside is you cannot configure the machine. Upside is you get it much quicker (3 days for me from ordering online). Just as soon as you see a good one then reserve it. It will be gone in minutes otherwise. You don't have to buy it at that point. And my laptop has worked flawlessly for 2 years. My top of the range Mesh desktop on the other hand seems to be bugging out on me a bit after much less time (and my top of the range Evesham from a year earlier liked to randomly reboot until I mucked around massively with the hardware).

Oh, and everyone likes to slag off Dell (prob because they are one of the biggest), but look at that forum and read a *lot*. Look at MS, everyone slagged them off 2 years ago like no tomorrow, but now everyone has XBoxes down their pants and hate Sony Meh. That forum has less fanboys than most and more people with experience. I personally was going for an Alienware (sod the cost; £2k+ was my target originally) until they basically said apart from the cool BIOS controlled eyes, company X and Y (think it was AJP and Rock Direct) did the same laptop chassis with the same components, but faster memory, for £200 less. Stuff the Alienware. Almost went with Rock until I saw the Dell. Nothing at the time had 1920x1200 on a laptop for a decent price. Couldn't resist. Amazing bloody screen.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Zappo
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Posted: 10th May 2007 15:18
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I hear what you're saying about Dell and I actually know people who have decent notebooks from them. What put me off was the awful warranty support. Someone at work managed to buy 3 Dell desktops (without consulting us) and has had nothing but trouble with them. 2 of them have had new motherboards and the whole process of getting somebody out (as they wouldn't just send the parts for us to replace them) was a nightmare.
Just found the 'Outlet' and am having a look now. Their notebooks do seem to be much better than their desktops.

I had a quick look at the Alienware product line for a laugh too.
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Dazzag
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Posted: 10th May 2007 16:06 Edited at: 10th May 2007 16:09
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Yeah. Don't even try RockDirect either. They were normally right up there at the time. For about £2200 for a really good one. Almost got one but it had a battery life of 45 mins, weighed a tonne, and none of them had a res of 1920x1200. They have one for about £600, but it is integrated graphics. Spit.

As for Dells we have hundreds where I work (well, contract to now). It is basically like black PC heaven now. Overall I think most companies have problems but because Dell is so huge you hear more problems. Then again maybe they are worse, but I normally don't care. Comp sci don't read manuals or worry about hardware As for me I have owned many PC's (put two to a sledgehammer in the back garden before I left the UK) and problems come from even the most awarded places. Off the top of my head I have had top of the range machines from HP, Dell, Evesham, Mesh, Savastore (is it Saverstore now?), and a few other places, and (again off the top of my head) the HP burns batteries like no tomorrow (according to my dad who I gave the laptop to), the Dell still works fine as said, the Evesham required a bit of a rebuild for some reason (originally came with a pen rattling inside it and the HD cable unplugged, not that I think this caused the problem), the Mesh is still good but seems to be slowing down for no reason at the minute (think maybe software as Ubuntu works fine, just have to look into more), and Savastore just basically broke. Needed a new CPU. Then a new motherboard. Then a new video card (fan broke and melted it a bit). Works ok now though... And all of the PC's got either gold or silver type awards in many different magazines. Or the company got the award a month earlier for a slightly lower version of the machine I bought. Didn't just buy the cheapest I could find.

Oh, and for laptops then get as good as you can afford. You can't really upgrade much, esp. in graphics, so if it costs £650 to avoid Intel integrated then wait a little bit. Will be worth it. Oh, and just remembered I read an article a little while back about these devices that will basically plug (or share with your desktop) a decent graphics card into your laptop. So basically no worries about performance for most office type stuff or whatever you do for a job, then when gaming is important you plug it in and off you go. Dunno if it works for every laptop, but worth looking into, as you can get some pretty sweet (non-gaming) laptops for £500. All they are missing is the graphics. And with this method (if it does/will exist) can then be bought when you can afford it.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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GatorHex
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Posted: 10th May 2007 16:17 Edited at: 10th May 2007 16:28
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Quote: "The best I have seen so far is a Dell (so I automatically have reservations about it) which has an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 which tests very well, for about £530 inc VAT and delivery. "


About the above, the x1400 is a geat card, people have had amazing results with the x1300 GPU but the cheapest Dell laptop with x1400 i could see was £680, are you sure it the price you saw included VAT? Maybe it's an upgrade option at extra cost as i can see the 6400 can come with Intel 950, nvidia 7300, or ATI 1300 or x1400.

Ah, the 6400 with nVidia7300 for £530 is not bad http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_6400?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~tab=rs_bundlestab

One of the first things you learn about Dell is they advertise a low price and then add millions of options that bring the price up. Sometime you hvae to remove stuff from the spec to get the low advertised price or enter a special advert code :/

Dell are ok-ish but annoying, I have a couple anyway.

http://www.KumKie.com http://bulldog.servegame.com
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Dazzag
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Posted: 10th May 2007 16:33 Edited at: 10th May 2007 16:33
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Quote: "the cheapest Dell laptop with x1400 i could see was £680"
I haven't looked but have you took off the extra warranty? Dell used to quote a price, then when you got to the final screen it went up around £200 (depending on price of system). Find the stuff they had defaulted and normally you can knock a fair amount off. They used to default some 3 year on-site warranty. Took it off mine to save about £180. Still got 1 year send back to Dell warranty. Good enough for me. Hah, just noticed the 2nd part of Gator's post pretty much says what I said

Anyway, £500 for a gaming laptop, then I would say Dell Outlet all the way. Just keep watching it for days. And pounce as soon as you see an obviously much cheaper PC (you have about 15 mins before you lose your reservation to make up your mind). Can take a while. Worth it though. Plus you will have the machine in like a few days (rather than several weeks like most places. Including Dell's normal service).

Oh yeah, and if you use Dell then don't worry about the memory. Basically Dell are famous for charging an arm and a leg for the memory. Can always get it *far* cheaper online.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Zappo
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Posted: 10th May 2007 19:03
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Quote: "Oh, and just remembered I read an article a little while back about these devices that will basically plug (or share with your desktop) a decent graphics card into your laptop."
I have been winging for years about making laptops more 'modular' so you can easily change or upgrade things like the graphics card easily. It seems they may have started doing that with miniature PCI-Express sockets. Some of the mid to high end notebooks seem to have these sockets inside for miniature graphics cards. Not 100% sure about whether they are properly changable yet as I haven't really delved into it too deeply (or looked to see if you can actually buy these miniature PCI-Express cards) but its a good start.
Quote: "About the above, the x1400 is a geat card, people have had amazing results with the x1300 GPU but the cheapest Dell laptop with x1400 i could see was £680, are you sure it the price you saw included VAT?"
Yep. Includes VAT and Delivery. It seems that the Dell site quote different prices depending upon which section you go through (home, small business, links from various places etc). Its basically the Inspiron 6400 with a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 HyperMemory graphics card and 1 year Collect & Return Warranty. You have to fiddle with the other options but you can get the price right down.
Quote: "Oh yeah, and if you use Dell then don't worry about the memory. Basically Dell are famous for charging an arm and a leg for the memory. Can always get it *far* cheaper online."
Thats good to know. They are offering free upgrades from 512Mb to 1Gb at the moment anyway, which should be fine for a while.
Stilk keeping my eyes peeled to the 'Outlet' but there aren't many Inspirons coming up <sigh>.
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Dazzag
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Posted: 10th May 2007 23:45
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Quote: "It seems they may have started doing that with miniature PCI-Express sockets"
Yeah, the next machine after mine had an upgradeable graphics card. Unfortuantly it allowed one card upgrade (to a specific type card) and that was it. They were all harping on about mini-PCI Express, but I don't know if they sorted it all out on anything below a £2500 lappy. Doubt it. What I was talking about though was not that. Basically the article was talking about plugging an external graphics card into a lappy. Might have been through USB, not sure. It also suggested being able to connect to a desktop to use it's graphics card somehow. Nice ideas. My laptop is very slightly choppy with Doom 3 at a native 1920x1200 so it would be nice to upgrade somehow. Looks extremely nice at that res.

Yeah, keep watching. If it was like me then it will take days (normally missing a few total bargains because you weren't quick enough to reserve and then check the details rather than the other way round). But it will be obvious. I mean don't jump on a £100 saving, look for like at least 50% off and the like. Although I was looking at £1500-£2000 laptops at the time. Still, keep a look out.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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GatorHex
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Posted: 10th May 2007 23:53
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Also if you're in a rush you need to go to a shop, I think they only build them after you order them it took like 14 days to get my products :/

http://www.KumKie.com http://bulldog.servegame.com
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Dazzag
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Posted: 11th May 2007 00:21
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Normally yes. The Outlet on the other hand are cancelled orders. Normally they are built but haven't even gone out of the building. So apparently they take it to bits and QA everything (thats what they said on the site at the time) then plonk it onto the Outlet. It's the main reason you can't really configure the spec. I got mine 3 days after ordering online. All my other computers were at least 2 weeks, and the last couple took over a month from ordering to receiving annoyingly.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Phaelax
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Posted: 11th May 2007 00:23
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why would anyone wanna play games on a laptop?

Quote: "My laptop is very slightly choppy with Doom 3 at a native 1920x1200 "

That's quite a resolution for a laptop. My 17" only hits 1440x900 and most LCD can only reach at at 21" or higher.


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Dazzag
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Posted: 11th May 2007 01:01
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Yep, which is why I love my 15.4" laptop. Only one I could find at the time. Crisp as hell basically.

Oh, and my 20.1" Dell LCD is 1600x1200 (didn't want widescreen for that). Almost considered the multi-monitor adapter that came with it. Basically allowed 4 of my monitors to be attached to a single stand. Sigh, 3200x2400 resolution. Nice. Nevermind, revolving it to 1200x1600 resolution is good for forums

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Dazzag
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Posted: 11th May 2007 01:04
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Quote: "why would anyone wanna play games on a laptop?"
People use them as desktop replacements. Plus the top ones are seriously close to the best desktops, just annoying to upgrade still. Personally I wanted decent enough performance for anything I wanted for a while, plus the idea of programming DBP at a decent level in bed or on the balcony appeals the hell out of me. Incidentally I've tested the wireless and it works off my main balcony (sea view and all that) And I work from home.

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 11th May 2007 01:48
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Quote: "why would anyone wanna play games on a laptop?"


Well, I use my laptop mostly on family vacations for gaming and game design. It's almost as good as my desktop so everything runs about the same which is really really nice. I wouldn't have a laptop that couldn't handle graphics. I just wouldn't have near as much a reason to have one.

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 11th May 2007 01:49
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Quote: "why would anyone wanna play games on a laptop?"


People on the go, Uni students...I'd upgrade to a laptop, because I will need portability as well, it's cheaper buying 1 computer rather than 2, so a gaming laptop would be suitable. Plus you can be sociable whilst being unsociable.

Those are some good laptops, might bookmark those links (Except the Dell ones, I'm not a fan of their computers)

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hessiess
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Posted: 11th May 2007 10:04
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if thay can only aford 1 computer and thay need a laptop

learn blender, you will never regret it.
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lagmaster
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Posted: 11th May 2007 11:48
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make sure the laptop has "dedicated" graphics. i have a hp dv8000 (probably discontinued)

mine came bundled with a nvidia go 7400 iirc and it ran half life 2 on high settings except for shader.

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Zappo
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Posted: 11th May 2007 14:11
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Found a nice forum post comparing most of the mobile graphics chipsets:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=39568
Basic but very handy and quite informative.

I use my laptop so I can work on stuff anywhere, including sitting on the sofa with the TV on. Its handy to take places and demo work too, especially when you write software or design Web sites and can't guarantee Internet access where you are meeting.

I have found a £490 Lenovo TY06XUK notebook (the people who make Thinkpads - so the build quality is excellent). It has a 1.6Ghz Core Duo, only 512Mb but I can upgrade that later, 80GB HDD, 1680x1050 15.4inch screen (nice!) and an nVidia GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache graphics card. I know its a low end card by todays gaming standards but I think it will be okay. Its a PCI Express x16 type with Pixel Shader 3 and Vertex Shader 3 support. To be honest, it looks like better specs than the FX5200 in my desktop which is what I write my games for (to make them playable by the majority) so I think it will be fine.
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