Requesting the expertise of those familiar with laptops :)

[echo]

Hello! I'm in the market for a new laptop, and am having problems knowing what's a good deal and what components are junk/good. I saw the following on sale

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0303741

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0304136

So my questions:

- How do the parts on the 2 laptops stack up against each other? There's a $100 difference, but to my inexperienced eye, it seems like the cheaper one has better parts? am i missing something?

- what's the real world performance difference between the mobility 3450 and 3650? for my purposes, i'm mostly going to use it to multibox (3? that's probably the limit right based on those parts?) wow and play some other games. (sims 3, fallout 3, possibly some fps shooters and rts games) will these cards be up to the task with reasonable framerates and eye candy options enabled?

- are these good deals? i would like to keep the price range below $900 USD, but if spending an extra $100-$200 will net me a significant increase in performance and longevity, i'm open to that also. if these arent good deals, are there better ones out there that anyone knows about and can link to?

Thanks in advance for your time in reading. have a great day! :)

[Enndo]

2nd machine is better, but neither will handle 3 wows. Laptops have small heatsinks, 3 wows on either of those duel cores will overheat the machine.

Edit- for 800 you can build a really nice desktop and 5 box ;)

[Farleito]

There's a $100 difference, but to my inexperienced eye, it seems like the cheaper one has better parts? am i missing something?

Toshiba Brand + Intel+ Labelflash DVD + 16" Display + Radeon 3650
HP Brand + AMD + Lightscribe DVD (cheaper dvds)+ 15.4" Display + Radeon 3450

3450
Transistors: 181 Million
Stream Processors: 40
Texture Units: 4
Core Clock Speed: 600MHz
Memory Clock Speed: 1.00GHz
Math Processing Rate: 48 GFLOPs

3650
Transistors: 378 Million (hotter)
Stream Processors: 120 (faster)
Texture Units: 8
Core Clock Speed: 750MHz (faster)
Memory Clock Speed: 1.60GHz (faster)
Math Processing Rate: 174 GFLOPs (faster)

By those "numbers" the Toshiba is a better bang for the buck.. Regardless, I would advise against gaming on laptops. Laptops were never designed to withstand the high-end gaming usage. By engineering design, they were made to be more portable than durable. The heat kills them. They need a better cooling method. The same can be said for PCs, but when your videocard goes out, you're not buying a new proprietary motherboard. It's debatable, so I'll just say that it's my 2 cents... just consider it.

To answer your question, the Toshiba is a better deal unless someone can prove that the AMD is superior.

[CaptainEO]

My laptop is pretty close to that spec (Lenovo U330: P8600/Radeon 3450) and I have no problem 4-boxing on it. (however it does feel sluggish sometimes outside of instances, especially in Northrend).

[Moorea]

2nd machine is better, but neither will handle 3 wows. Laptops have small heatsinks, 3 wows on either of those duel cores will overheat the machine.

this totally wrong; I 5 box on a similar laptop and it works fine

what you do want though is 1920x1200 instead of 1366 x 768 - the more pixels the more you can actually see of alt windows

[LokNarash]

When using notebook for multiboxing or gaming in general, an additional cooler pad could be necessary. I cannot play single wow on my notebook without that, but using Zalman ZM-NC 2000 ('http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?Idx=280') I can box 5 with 40 fps on main. I just had to remove bottom cover of the machine and place it on this cooler pad and never seen fps or cpu rate reduction again. This one is very silent pad and winner of many tests.

Also consider the screen resolution, playing on weak machine, the higher resolution can eat too much of Video resources.

[Moorea]

OT: hey LokNarash your signature picture is really nice - how did you generate it ?

[Enndo]

I don't remember where i read it, i htink it was toms hardware or maybe hardware canucks but the mobile(laptop) chips were tested and amd's mobile processors were actually out performing intels.

[LokNarash]

OT: hey LokNarash your signature picture is really nice - how did you generate it ?ToonSig ('www.toonsig.com') and then I make one picture from the five, since just one file is alllowed in signature.

[Noids99]

I don't remember where i read it, i htink it was toms hardware or maybe hardware canucks but the mobile(laptop) chips were tested and amd's mobile processors were actually out performing intels.

A long time ago maybe. Since Centrino and more recently the Core CPUs have been release, Intel have offered the better mobile gaming platforms.

I have MBed 5 instances on a 17" Dell XPS M1710 for the last 18 months or so. Handled TBC fine, have since upgrade to a desktop for better WotLK performance, but there are now lappies available that could do that fine also.

The major necessity is the 4GB ram. This is an absolute minimum and until recently was once of the biggest caps on lappy MBing. Out of the 2 laptops, definitely pick the one with the 3650 and intel CPU. If possible, I would look for a laptop with better graphics however, especially if you want a 1920 x 1200 screen. There are a few Asus laptops with 9650/9700 chips which I would consider a minimum, with the 8800/9800s being better and the newer mobile GTX200 series being even better. You will find it harder to find machines with these specs and you will pay a lot more for them. If you decide to go down this track, my only other recommendation would be to get a mobile quad core for MBing also.

Cheers

[Xtremepayne]

I dual box Lotro on a M17 Alienware laptop. Its the basic setup with one exception, the video cards. I went with Ati Crossfire. Then after I got it I upgraded the memory to 4 gigs and also added a 2nd hard drive. One of the great things about Alienware laptops is that more of the parts in them can be upgraded or changed out. I also find heat is not near as much an issue as each video card has its own fan. Only 1 drawback to owning one, the weight. about a 3rd more weight then other laptops and the power supply is about double the size of the other power suppies.
Now as far as playing, This laptop rocks. When ordering one you get to pick what you want it to have. Sure you will hear people says Alienware is overpriced, but if you ever play on one, you won't want to play on anything else because they won't be able to do what Alienware's laptops do. If I ever buy another, its going to be an Alienware. Whats also great you can use their customize button to see what is available to put in one.
On my laptop the CPU is even upgradeable. However the bios to overclock remains locked unless you get one of the extreme mobile cpu's. I thought I would wait a while after I bought mine to do that cpu upgrade in hope of cpu prices would drop and it gives me time to get mine paid off. Cost of the one I have 1799.00

ime of this report: 6/5/2009, 15:37:57
Machine name: TELETRANTWO
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium Service Pack 1
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: alienware
System Model: Alienware M17
BIOS: Ver 1.00PARTTBL;
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8400 @ 2.26GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory: 3066MB RAM
Page File: 853MB used, 5479MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode

Card name: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9509)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Display Memory: 1785 MB
Dedicated Memory: 507 MB
Shared Memory: 1277 MB
Current Mode: 1440 x 900 (32 bit) (61Hz)
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor

That's part of the listing of my DxDiag to show you what my system has in it. It works great for multiboxing Lotro. And the video card setup is 2x on the Ati 3870.

[echo]

Ty to everyone for the insightful feedback! :) I bugged one of my friends with this question also, and he ended up pointing me towards this setup

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9173262&type=product&id=1218044029168

for $850 USD.

On paper, everything looks much better (esp the video card. a 9800m GS). The only drawback for me is the kinda 14 year old-ish lightning bolts on the case of the laptop. Thanks to everyone for posting on their experience with laptop gaming! :)