What kind of high-end laptop will be available by June?

[rbf1138]

I'm planning on buying a Dell Inspiron in June, most likely the highest end system possible, as I'm going to college in September, and the notebook will be serving as my primary computer. I plan to do a lot of gaming, and for that reason I'll need the best processor and video card (ram also). In terms of the state of Dell notebooks right now, do you think that by June there will be new video card options? I know the Radeon 9000 and the geforce are pretty damn good graphics cards, but i want to make sure my notebook will play games coming out for at least the next year or so. I assume by June, the Inspirons will be at 3 ghz, and hopefully some new, possibly 128 meg video cards will be out. Any speculation, info, or thoughts are welcome. What kind of high-end laptop will be available in June? Thanks!

rbf1138

 

[dullard]

Welcome to Anandtech. Sorry no one answered you yet. Sometimes that just happens.

The current top mobile chip is the 2.4 GHz P4-M. This particular chip won't see much change this year. Sometime in the 3rd quarter (July-Sept) it will get a 533 MHz fsb instead of the current 400 MHz fsb. That should give it roughly a 10% speed boost at the same frequency. Sometime in the 4th quarter (Oct to Dec) it will be at a top speed of 2.6 GHz. This is far below your 3 GHz hopes.

There are some companies that put a desktop chip into a laptop computer. Thus those companies will probably have a 3 GHz laptop by then. But there are two major problems with that - the battery will be drained very quickly and your lap will be scorching hot by using such a fast desktop chip. Thus as far as I know, Dell doesn't use desktop chips in their laptops.

Finally there is a 3rd option, the one you should be most interested in. Intel will start selling an entirely new type of laptop chip in May - it has been called Centrino, Banias, and Pentium M. It will have three major advantages over their current P4-M. (1) it will use far less battery power, letting your batteries last longer, (2) it will run much cooler, no longer overheating and possibly burning your lap after long periods of use, (3) it will perform much better at the same frequency when compared to the P4-M. This new chip unfortunately will have lower frequencies - starting at 1.6 GHz in May. A 1.6 GHz Banias should run roughly at about the same speed as the 2.4 GHz P4-M, but it might vary by program and we really haven't seen many benchmarks on it (it may be closer to 2.2 GHz P4-M or the 2.6 GHz P4-M, we just don't know yet). But the advantages of longer battery life and cool running laptop should impress many people. Later this summer we will see 1.7 GHz and 1.8 GHz Banias chips as well.

Sorry I cannot answer any questions about mobile graphics cards as I don't pay much attention to them.

 

[stonecold3169]

Well, you didn't mention any intrest in this, but I'd assume that by that point in time toshiba will have a large enough supply of lappy dvd-rw drives that Dell will start using them in at least it's Latitude lineup. Also, make sur eyou drop the extra $$$ and get the fastest hdd you can, and if possible call and find out what models they put in their machines. Some of them have huge buffers with compliment performance well (up to 16mb buffers in notebook drives) so one of those would be your best bet.

The other big thing that them moving to a 533mhz fsb is that it will be possible (and probably) that they'll start using pc2100 ddr in the machines versus the 200mhz variety that ddr notebooks use now. In games that alone should be a decent step up.

Also, on Centrino, that chip SHOULD allow them to make ultraportables much faster, even smaller, and most importantly more affordablke. If you plan on transporting yours around much, that might be appealing to you.

 

[nukeyboy]

I've read that nVIDIA is working on a mobile ti4200 that'll run at 200/200mhz(?). I dunno how it will compare to the Radeon 9000, which is the best mobile graphics right now. I'm in the same situation as you are and am going in wait until at least summer to get a notebook. Hopefully they can handle all the good games.