For those in college/gradschool/etc who play games

[Pandamonium]

I like to play games every now and then. The other 90% of the time, I do little outside of Office/Firefox. Five years ago, if I wanted to play any games at all, a laptop was pretty much out of the question. But since I like the portability a laptop provides, I had one of each. With today's technology, it's a little more debatable. A DTR is not my idea of a laptop. It's too big to be portable, and the price/performance vs. a desktop is awful.

My laptop is dying, and my desktop ought to be on its way out in the next year or two. My desktop is plenty fast for my usage, and it's a lowly Athlon XP 2500+ paired with a 6600GT. I've got my eye on the Dell M1330 with the 8400M GS. I'm assuming that 6600GT>8400M GS, but I don't have data to back that up. I am certain that any C2D >> 2500+, especially considering that I have my CPU underclocked 90% of the time.

So if you're someone like me, what would you do and why?

 

[Schadenfroh]

I commute (~25 minutes one way), during my 3 hour gaps between classes when I do not have homework / studying to do, I game in the library on my notebook that has a 7900GS. Otherwise, I use my desktop (x1950 pro).

The horse power on my desktop is needed for the 1600x1200 resolution that my dell 2001fp displays. The 7900gs suffices for the widescreen 1440 x 900.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Well, Depending on your price range, go for both?

Spend $900-1000 on a desktop for media/gaming, and $500-600 on a laptop for strict school-work? Even a midrange gaming rig will be leaps and bounds better than your current setup, and companies like Dell and HP are offering well configured laptops for inexpensive prices. The new 15.4'' Dells offer a 8600GT GPU upgrade I believe, So if you MUST game on your laptop that will suffice (At a larger price off course).

If you can't afford both at the same time then I would deff. recommend the laptop at first; the convienance can't be beat in college. Besides, you should be spending those hours in between classes studying not gaming

 

[Ruptga]

Step up to the 8500 GT for the 128 bit bus, otherwise it sounds like a plan to me.

G80 mobile

6600 GT

Compare the specs yourself, if your current desktop suits you well, the laptop would be a good upgrade, and you'd never have to worry about whether you have that assignment saved on your desktop, laptop, or both.

edit: typo

 

[nerp]

I've always been a fan of an extremely powerful desktop that can game nicely and a light, slim, efficient and workhorse laptop for actual work being paired together. I'm not a student anymore, but I do rely on my laptop for work, and lugging around a heavy desktop replacement just because I might game once in a while seems silly to me.

Plus, I'd rather game with a good mouse and full-sized keyboard in the comfort of my home office. It's cumbersome and somewhat embarassing to be out in public with a pair of headhphones on and a mouse connected to your hulking tonka-toy styled laptop playing games. Sleek and portable is the way to go. Plus, when you're out and about, a laptop should be something to write on and offload digital pictures, etc. Game at home or get a Nintendo DS or something.

As others have said, desktop replacement laptops have a crap price/performance ratio, they tend to get horrid battery life and are much heavier and cumbersome than standard laptops. If I were in college and had time between classes, I'd probably be inclined to get work done and catch up on e-mail, etc, rather than play games. Get it done while you're at the school so you can game when you come home instead of the other way around! Also, a laptop that's just being used for basic tasks such as word processing, web/email, dvd playback and listening to music, you can get by with a pretty underpowered machine. For example, my current machine is a Compaq C500 I got for about $450. After throwing 2GB in it, Vista runs remarkably smooth. It's only got a Celeron M 440 in it but the machine flies. I'm using Word, Outlook, IE and a few other basic things, but even if I'm ripping CDs using CDex, the machine is always fully responsive and popping open my apps instantly.


But whatever. Some people probably have DL laptops, love them and it works for them and that's cool.

 

[Pandamonium]

Thanks for the links ADDAvenger. I haven't kept up with benchmarks/reviews since I bought my 6600GT. I recall looking at fill rate as the best indicator of performance. Is this not true anymore?

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: Pandamonium
Thanks for the links ADDAvenger. I haven't kept up with benchmarks/reviews since I bought my 6600GT. I recall looking at fill rate as the best indicator of performance. Is this not true anymore?

I really don't know, I follow graphics, but not that closely, athough I do know that some games are shader heavy while others depend more on textures, so it varies. I generally skip to the conclusion of reviews, and look at how the bus width, clocks, and number of pipes if I'm really curious as to how things stack up, but that's about as far as my knowledge goes.

Check wikipedia for the specs on the 7xxx mobile family as another reference point, and this site might also be useful. 3DMark scores are the best indicator of comparative performance as far as I know (just make sure you're not comparing scores from the different years, ie 3DMark06 and 05 give different numbers for the same setups).

 

[LOUISSSSS]

game on system in my signature, aim/internet on Sony T-350P on 10.6in screen on laptop P-M 1.2ghz 512mb ram 9 hrs battery life (+ an extra battery). office applications on whichever is free at the moment.

 

[phaxmohdem]

When I was selecting a laptop for college, there were two factors above all else.
- Size: Had to be able to fit in my backpack comfortably and not weigh me down.
- Battery Life: Had to be able to run for a while untethered to the wall.

Now bear in mind I already have a nice desktop for gaming (See sig.) so gaming wasn't a priority, but you can still find discrete graphics cards in thin and light notebooks too, which may not enable all eye candy, but plays games none the less.

My final selection (with some help from these forums) was a 14inch IBM Thinkpad T40p. This was over 2 years ago, so its getting dated, but the 64MB FireGL 9000 card in it still has enough horsepower to play some games (albeit on low settings). I still tote it around to LAN parties as a spare rig for someone to use if they are sans PC.

Summing up. If you are going to lug your notebook around campus, to classes and such do yourself, and your back a huge favor and go with a reasonably thin notebook with good battery life, (you never know when an outlet will be just out of reach). Thin doesn't have to suck either. My 14 inch screen packs 1400x1050 pixels, and I have the 9 cell extended battery option that will last from 4-5 hours [starting to lose charge capacity ] depending on workload.

 

[jkresh]

Pandamonium, what games do you play and what games do you plan on playing? Matching an 6600gt in a laptop is not that hard now (even a thin and light), (though dont go with integrated) but a 6600gt wont be able to pay crysis so it depends. Also have you aready started school or will you be a freshman? If you have not started school then think about what you will use the laptop for. A lot of people I new at school brought laptops, locked them to tehre desks at the begining of the semester and unlocked for break. For them the only benefit of a laptop was it was easier to bring back and forth. Personally in college and now graduate school I have kept two machines. A powerful desktop which I upgrade every year (don't change every part every year but I do change something, and I have gone from a x2 to a core 2 , now have a quad coming next week), and a laptop which I update every 3 or 4 years (currently an inspirion 8500 with a dothan 1.6 and radeon 9600 mobility, will be upgrading soon).

Based on your desktop I would assume you don't need the same kind of power I do so a single laptop might be ok, but there aren't many light laptops that can game. Dells 12 and now 13inch xps are good options, also strangely enough a macbook pro is (though once you factor the cost fo the os it is fairly expensive, unless you school as a site license for vista/xp).