Looking for a desktop replacement laptop

[Boney]

As the title suggests, I am currently in the business of shopping for a laptop to replace my desktop and I have a couple of concerns / questions.

Right now I have a desktop w/ a:
sck754 amd 3400+
gig of ram
amd x800
It's a solid all around gaming computer .......

With the purchase of my new laptop i am wanting to (hopefully) get further performance gaming wise compared to my old desktop while retaining somewhat the portability of what a laptop is suppose to be.

Some of my main questions are:

1: for gaming/multimedia/battery-life purposes what would be better ....
a regular amd or a turion?
or is the pentium M still the king?
or is the new dual core intel actually two pentium-m cores? which would be amazing....

OR is there any new core comming up that maybe I should hold off for?

2: to step it up in the graphics ....... i was thinking of finding a laptop with the 7900go. But do ALL laptops shipped with this processor only come as 17inch screen bohemoths? I was hopeing for whatever might be the next screen size down (15.4?) but i cant really find a laptop with this gpu and a smaller screen. And is there a big difference between the 7900 and the 7800go?

3: Any of you guys are welcome to recommend something that would be an improvement from my current rig or to try and point me in the right direction: thanks.




All in all from what i've been looking at .... the best all around deal/performance that looks like what i need would be the Dell XPS170 .... thoughts?

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Dunno of anything in the sub 17" that has a higher end card (ie: 6800 equivilent or above). Too much heat for the size I would imagine.

7900GTX > 7800GTX > 7900GS > 7800Go ~ 6800 Ultra > 6800Go as far as cards go. Big difference between the 7900GTX and the 7800Go. Depends which model specifically.

I went from a rig almost identical to yours (P4 3.4, 1GB, X800) to an Inspiron 9300 with a P-M 2.13, 7200rpm drive, 2GB, and an overclocked 6800 and have been extremely happy. Don't see going back to a desktop anytime soon. Nothing like playing Oblivion from the couch while watching TV.

The most economical thing would be a Inspiron 1705/9400 and stuff a 7800GTX in it, or get a 9300. They had 9300s over the weekend for $714 for the base model.

$100 for a 7200rpm HD
$125 for 2GB ram
$350 for a 7800GTX
Straight swap the CPU for a 400mhz fsb one and pin-mod to 2.13~2.26

Right around $1300 compared to probably double that for an XPS M170.

There will probably be a new XPS in a couple of weeks (Core Duo, 7900GTX)...already "released" in Europe as it's on the Dell pages outside the US.