ASI's IQ17-D2: Is Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 Still Fast Enough?

[False_Dmitry_II]

I saw that it said that nothing newer than that was available for laptops. So off to Alienware's site to check that I went. Annnnd.. I see dual 4870's. What was this article for again?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]False_Dmitry_II[/nom]I saw that it said that nothing newer than that was available for laptops. So off to Alienware's site to check that I went. Annnnd.. I see dual 4870's. What was this article for again?[/citation]

Funny that Alienware says they can't ship a review sample eh? But that is what they said.

 

[scook9]

Well the first units with 4870s should arrive in about 3 weeks, they had a LONG delay (allegedly due to stock shortages)

As for the Crossfire 3870 vs a single GTX 280m, they will win 90% of the comparisons (game specific, as some just favor nvidia), again, go over to notebook review forums and see some posts there

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]scook9[/nom]Well the first units with 4870s should arrive in about 3 weeks, they had a LONG delay (allegedly due to stock shortages)As for the Crossfire 3870 vs a single GTX 280m, they will win 90% of the comparisons (game specific, as some just favor nvidia), again, go over to notebook review forums and see some posts there[/citation]

So they're doing a relaunch of 4870 X2's? That's great! But it's a little late, especially if it's using a Core 2 Duo motherboard.

 

[scryer_360]

So what the true title of this article should be is:
"Gaming on a laptop is foolhardy."

 

[rambo117]

thats a pretty sweet lappy =] but i think it would have to stick to the "simpler" games like COD4, L4D, Bioshock, ect..

cant wait for mobility 5xxx!!!

 

[geok1ng]

Mobile GPU market has been deadly quiet for several months, and most sane persons are postponing buying decisions.

 

[cutterjohn]

Part of the problem with continuously tossing in the GT725 is that the reviewer has access only to the slower quad-core version, and so what is happening here IMO is that you're also seeing a CPU comparison as well as other components, well primarily discrete GPUs here.

e.g. his game & synthetic benchs are somewhat lower that what my P8600 scores... and it was also possible to get this model with the P9500 IIRC which was 2.75GHz dual core plus it will also take a Q9300 IIRC which gets the quad up to 2.4GHz IIRC. Of course he could also have turned on turbo mode(does it work for the quads?) and gotten probably close to 2.4GHz or so although it would kill battery runtime.

I'm surprised that the 725 quad didn't fare better on the winrar bench, but I didn't check to see if he was using the fully threaded version or not which should've pretty well loaded all 4 cores.

As to the notebooks, the other two the ASI & Eurocom are pretty heavy for notebooks, while the 725 is still fairly light even with a 9cell battery. Still I'd wait and see now what happens with new mobile GPUs and the Nehalem based mobile CPUs overall if you can wait and wait out the inevitable price gouging on initial release.

Sager/Clevo & Compal (MSI makes barebones notebooks too, but their build quality varies alot, e.g. the 725/1722 cases are good, while the 625/627/1651 aren't so hot) are great if you want to be able to mix&match components as there are several online dealers that will build a base chassis(case + mb + LCD panel + PSU + battery) with your choice of compatible CPU, compatible DRAM, hdd, optical drive, and compatible wireless card as your budgeting allows. Most will have several options in each category, and maybe PSU and battery options as well depending upon what the OEM offers and the dealer is willing to "experiment" with in their custom builds.

Most will put the package together fo you as well as sometimes shipping you the pieces and letting you put it together(not much to do in a nb) if you so desire.