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Hardware

Mobile Gaming At Desktop Speeds 204

Posted by timothy from the or-is-it dept.
DigitalBiscuit writes: "Today's leading edge laptop PCs are packing serious power under their thin little hoods, enough that even the hard core gamer may sit up and take note. Here's a full showcase (dismantled to show you the innards) with benchmarks on a Dell unit that employs NVIDIA's new GeForce4 440 Go GPU and a Pentium 4M (mobile) processor at 1.6GHz. Take one of these babies to the local LAN meet and be the envy of your Mountain Dew chugging cohorts." Of course, this will cost a lot more than similarly powerful desktop, but some people don't seem to mind that tradeoff.
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Mobile Gaming At Desktop Speeds More

Mobile Gaming At Desktop Speeds

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  • Now if only data projectors would fall in price. With optical mice these days, you can quite comfortably sit in a nice armchair and look at a wall!

    Even better will be those new Tablet PC's where you can disconnect the screen completely if you wish, so it doesn't get in the way of your 60" white sheet display...

  • fp (Score:1)

    by billcopc ( 196330 )
    I used to be interested in this kind of uber-laptop, but once I tried one I realized it's just a big fat waste of moolah. If you want a nice LanParty box, just get a low-profile case and mobo, pop in a fast athlon and Geforce2/3/4. Many boards nowadays have AGP retaining clips that hold your video card in place during transport.

    The only big part left is the monitor. If you were going to blow 4000$ on a gaming laptop, you probably have a bit of leeway in your budget for a nice 17" LCD screen. You could possibly even attach it to the case somehow and have a desktop-based humongous laptop-type-thing. Why not ?

    • Re:fp (Score:1)

      by bafu ( 580052 )

      If you were going to blow 4000$ on a gaming laptop [...]

      I expect you could spend that much if you tried, but the review claimed theirs would go for $3000. I've seen sub-2k laptops with the G4 mobile. Prices are pretty amazing these days. On top of that even the cheapest laptops have more than enough CPU crank these days for most anyone. Of course, you probably want to max the drive and the memory, but those are modular additions for any decent laptop.

      They're running out of reasons to get you to buy the top-of-the-line...

    • Many LAN parties are at predictable or regular locations. For the price of a laptop you could buy a better desktop and several monitors and leave extra monitors with the friends that host the LAN parties.

  • Doom 3 in the woods? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Sniser ( 325496 )
    I remember when I joked that if I'd had a laptop I'd play DOOM in the woods alone in the summer at night, sitting on a treestump... now think Doom III and one of these babes or the ones that are to follow!!

    Expensive, yeah, but if you're rich check it it out :P

    • Re:Doom 3 in the woods? (Score:4, Funny)

      by shogun ( 657 ) on Monday June 03, 2002 @07:33PM (#3635376)
      I'd play DOOM in the woods alone in the summer at night

      Nice idea, doesn't work to well in practice, just think of the clouds of insects that will gather between your face and the glowing screen...
      • just think of the clouds of insects that will gather between your face and the glowing screen... Good point.

        You could kinda wrap a moskito net around you, but that would defeat the purpose. Or put Insect lights all around you, although that's kinda cruel.

        You could also go sit in a laaarge, deeep cave, same concept. Or check out a deserted house or construction site at night etc.

        Oh well, and it helps if you're a kid, too... :-/
      • I'd play DOOM in the woods alone in the summer at night

        Nice idea, doesn't work to well in practice, just think of the clouds of insects that will gather between your face and the glowing screen...

        :/ I've had that happen at home.

        now I check how clean my roommates are before I let them move in..

  • Seriously, the only platform that can reasonably get same-as-desktop speed out of their laptops is Apple's.

    Chips by Intel and AMD (for the kind of speed needed for these types of activities, or just general high-intensity apps) simply cannot do the work needed for the price/feature/weight point needed.

    Especially with Mac OS X now firmly in place, this really hits home why more and more people are dumping their Toshiba's and Sony's and hopping onto PowerBooks at their next upgrade cycle.

    Unless you see nothing wrong with needing an industrial-strength blower to keep your lap cool.
    • Somthing a year old, or a cool animated lucas arts game BY URSELF. I am not up for waiting for a year for a maybe port of a cool game to Apple.
      I've a small form factor case witha happy hacker keyboard that is ALMOST laptop size, goes in my backpack along with my change of clothes and uber caff drink. All I need to worry about is a monitor, and thats the same problem on any laptop as well, the cost for mine, 900$ :)
    • Yeah, the new PBs rule...

      Except for the fact that it takes 18 months for all the cool games to get on mac after theya re realesed for PC :/...
    • My Dell 1Ghz PIII w/ the ATI 64 MB DDR card NEVER uses the fans unless I'm running Kazaalite and Return to Castle Wolfenstein at 1600x1200 and the power is low. That's it. Amazing how some Apple guys are just as prejudiced as the anti-Apple guys. By the way, I got this notebook w/ 52 RAM and a 40 gig hard drive for $1651. What kind of Apple laptop could I get for that much?
    • Except for the fact that a lot of games aren't supported by Macs.

      True, if you want to do development, grab a Powerbook. But wait, why would you be looking at a high-priced laptop if you wanted dev work anyhow?

      I think the main reason to get one of these high end laptops is for gaming. And if that's your motivation, then getting a Powerbook is kind of useless.
    • I think you're probably trolling, but you're missing the point. It's nice that you can get the same chip for Apple desktops and laptops, but it doesn't matter if the chip isn't up to par with what you need. Sure, Apple's chips run Altivec-optimized Photoshop routines quickly, but for things that actually matter to me like kernel compiles, mp3 encoding, or gaming, a P4 1.5 Ghz laptop is going to run 3 times as fast as your 500 Mhz G4.

      • Re:If you want portable speed, get a PowerBook... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "but for things that actually matter to me like kernel compiles, mp3 encoding, or gaming, a P4 1.5 Ghz laptop is going to run 3 times as fast as your 500 Mhz G4."

        Faster, maybe, but not 3 times faster; not even close to 3 times faster. Apples and oranges when comparing Pentiums and G4s.

        Besides, when talking about buying a laptop, you'd be hard-pressed to get a 500 Mhz from Apple now. It's 667 Mhz on the low end of the Powerbooks, and 800 on the high end. And no, that doesn't mean your 1.5 P4 is now merely twice as fast as the 800, as my previous paragraph states.

        There are other arguments that can be made in this area, but comparing clock speeds is not as relevant as it was years ago when upgrading from one Intel chip to another Intel chip.
      • Actually mp3 encoding is really fuckin fast on G4s. On my 500 MHz TiBook, I can hit 8x in iTunes I'm sure the newer ones can go above 10x.
        • Bzzzzt! I've got a Dual 1ghz G4 and iTunes only encodes at 8x. I might have a switch wrong someplace, but that's it. Photoshop is a blazing bastard though. Anyway, I just did an online, paid survey that was mostly asking me if I was interested in a workstation class laptop. I pretty much said no. When I'm talking workstation class machine, I mean Raid controller, dual cpu, 4gb of ram, gigantic 3d controller with 1 or 2 gb of texture memory and multiple GPU's. A laptop sure isn't going there. As a low-end gaming machine, sure, but certainly not a workstation.
      • G4s are wicked fast for MP3 encoding, due to AltiVec. My ancient G4 400 CD jukebox can rip at 10x without breaking a sweat, and it might even be disc-speed bound at that point.

        And games can use a LOT of vector processing as well, if properly optimized. id software once said that the G4 was the fastest computer they had seen for 3D performance w/o hardware T&L or geometry (like the Rage 128 era).

        Kernel compiles aren't helped much, although SIMD can do some fast string manipulation stuff as well.

    • "An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger." - D

      Uh oh, I think of A Clockwork Orange....I wonder where that puts me?

  • One thing that mobile laptops will not be able to do is to match the power consumption required for good 3D cards.
    Asynchronous might be the key with low power, super pipelining, high throughput or low delay.

  • hehe (Score:4, Funny)

    by TweeKinDaBahx ( 583007 ) <tweek@nm[ ]du ['t.e' in gap]> on Monday June 03, 2002 @07:05PM (#3635226) Homepage Journal
    I hate to keep on these 25 year-old guys living in thier parents basements, but maybe this will get these guys outside. They can sit on the lawn and play quake 3. Or go to the bar and play quake 3. Or sit on the can and play quake 3...

    OR TAKE A SHOWER DAMNIT!!!
  • The sad revelation came to me when my brother visited for a weekend. I had been playing Black and White for a good while on my P3-700 with 256MB RAM and a GeForce 2 64MB. I thought that was powerful enough.

    Then he showed up with this weird-looking blue case, a Toshiba laptop. It had a combined DVD-ROM/CD-ROM/CD-RW 12x10x24. The screen was 16". It was an Athlon 1.2GHz, and had a GeForce 2 mobile 64MB (the bus was faster than my desktop cousin). The real kicker was when I sat it on my lap and began to play music. We're talking a male vibrator folks. The damn thing had a subwoofer built into the bottom. Unbelievable. Now a far cry from the specs of a 1.6GHz P4 w/GeForce 4, but hey...

    Oh yeah.. and battery power? My guess was about 10 minutes on a single battery. It actually lasted 2 hours.
    • It's 15.

      You can hardly call it a subwoofer. It sounds good for a laptop.. but I'd rather they just made the damn thing smaller and left it out.

      ANd it's not a far cry at all from a 1.6Ghz P4 w/Gf4.

      The Geforce4 440go is only marginally better than the gf2mx. It has some new features.. but overall, playin gquake and such, it's similar.

      ANd 1.6Ghz -vs- 1.2Ghz is a marginal improvement.

  • Laptops aren't there yet (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chriso11 ( 254041 ) on Monday June 03, 2002 @07:10PM (#3635261) Journal
    I don't know - every time I see a laptop that has any type of gaming performance, it's 3 steps behind the best desktop and costs a chunk more.

    For $2500, I can get a Athlon 2100+ system with a G4. Where are you going to find a laptop that can match that? The 3Dmark of a G4 TI 4400 can hit 10000, the G4 440 can only hit 5000.

    Laptops simply can't dissapate the heat.

    Plus, for real gamers, you are stuck with the base configuration. Maybe you can add more memory, but that's it. No new MB, limited OC, and no new video card.

    This is a solution for a gamer with an open budget. While it can sure play the top games of today, it will be a slug on the next generation of games.
    • For $2500, I can get a Athlon 2100+ system with a G4.


      Damn, I bet your RC5 rates would soar if you had on of them.

    • For $2500, I can get a Athlon 2100+ system with a G4.

      Am I the only one who thought "Where'd he find a PC and a Mac that cheap?"

    • For $2500, I can get a Athlon 2100+ system with a G4. Where are you going to find a laptop that can match that? The 3Dmark of a G4 TI 4400 can hit 10000, the G4 440 can only hit 5000.
      Maybe not match it in every detail, but I can sure come close. I am waiting on delivery of a Compaq 2800T which I paid $2100 including taxes and delivery for. 1.6 GHz Pentium 4M, Radeon 7500 Mobile, SXVGA+ 15" screen, 24X CDR/DVD, 0.5GB RAM. There is a A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.htm? i=1616 except for some situations that are VERY gpu intensive it matches up very well with a desktop. The argument about GPU speed and heat disspation is going away - the Radeon 7500 has speed-step type features that keep the heat and pwer consumption in line. And I can play ON THE WAY to the LAN party, or in the airpane, or the backyard.
    • You can actually upgrade the Dell 8200. The CPU, the RAM, HD, optical drive and video. The dell document section has all the instructions as well. Not only that, the video card from the 8200 can be used in atleast the 8100.
    • Wow. What exactly is a real gamer? someone with no job who plays games all day?

      The point is that you can get reasonably good game performance in a laptop now. Sure, for the same money you can get a faster desktop.. but that doesn't mean the laptop is not adequate.

      The point is that only a year ago laptops were basically *useless for gaming*. Crappy 3d support.

      Now you can get a very decent Nvidia chipset in a laptop, and enough memory and horsepower to actually play *all* the latest games at acceptable fun speeds.

      And what's with the heat comment? Any laptop you buy dissipates the heat it generates. They are DESIGNED to work with the components they contain.

      Did you mean that "They don't put a faster video card in" because it can't dissipate the heat? That's not true. They could easily engineer it to use a faster card. This would jack up the price even more, and there is no demand.. so they don't. Marketing baby.

      Uhh. real gamers being stuck with the base configuration? No overclocking? Get real.

      Overclocking a celeron 300A to 450Mhz was useful.

      Overlocking a 1.6Ghz P4 to 1.8Ghz is so marginal it's not even funny.

      Oh. And if you look at cost.. lots of 'overclocking' projects end up costing more than just BUYING THE FASTER CHIP IN THE FIRST PLACE.

      Why do you need a new video card? How often do you, as a 'real gamer' buy a new video card?
      I bet it's about as often as I buy a new laptop. Hmm. See the connection?

  • That's nice, but... (Score:2, Informative)

    by plaztkeyes ( 160163 )
    I have a laptop that sports a GeForce chip and it does run games nicely. However, trying to play any serious LAN game on a 15" LCD can be very frustrating. In fact, after a couple of hours my eyes completely bug out.

    So, I am still gonna gear grip pro my case and monitor to LAN parties, and take my laptop for someone who shows up empty-handed...
  • Use the P4 and Geforce 4 to crank up high frame rates and burn the ever living crap out of the guy next to you. Finally, a real reaosn to have a P4.

    Also makes suitcase nukes a whole lot easier to build.

  • Battery life? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Digital Prophet ( 573623 ) on Monday June 03, 2002 @07:13PM (#3635278)
    Being one of the estimated ten people to actually read an article posted on Slashdot, I see that the only thing actually said about battery life is this:
    Battery life is also excellent due in part to the Pentium 4M Speedstep technology. We were actually able to watch 2 full DVD titles on this machine, before the battery alert came on.

    I know this article was mainly to see the performance of a current laptop, but couldn't they have given us an exact time, at least, to show what you need to sacrifice for higher laptop performance? Plus how many batteries was that with? I know the unit can hold two batteries with the DVD-ROM. If both batteries were in the unit at the time that isn't very impressive, especially if they were short "DVD titles" (notice they didn't say movies). Sorry, but I am really annoyed by ambiguous statements.
    • I don't own the particular model shown but I imagine that battery life is about similar being part of the Dell Insperion line.

      I have an 8100 and a fully charged battery will last me about 2.5 - 3 hours and with 2 batteries (the DVD rom is in the side so it does not take a swap slot) I have almost 6 full hours of run time at full tilt.

      If I'm just surfing the web and not using much of the systems resources I can get about 5-10% more out of the battery life. I tend to run mine so much at once that I put a big burn on my battery.

      The Dell's and I imagine many other laptops of this range handle DVD play back epically well due to the graphics cards which are designed to, during DVD playback, actually power down the 3D processor, the mother board will also reduce the power to the CPU as the DVD decoder chip on the card does all the work.

      Of course battery life can very greatly as these machines generally have many power options you can tweak for maximum performance or maximum battery life. The nice thing is even when on battery a 1.2ghz processor will throttle down to 833 or so which really isn't that bad to work with and can handle most apps very well.

      Now if you are playing the latest 3D game then you're going to see a big burn on your battery as your vid card is most likely pulling a lot of power, on top of the sound card to give you the audio. Also you tend to have a lot of HDD access between levels as well as NIC burning energy if you happen to be playing multi-player.

      This is just my personal experience and others may have different onions.
    • The GeForce 4 440 that most of these high-end P4 notebooks sport has full MPEG-2 decoding built-in. So, outside of drawing to the screen, every function is done by a processor purpose built for DVD playback. While it's a good example of a feature laptop users are looking for, it's a terrible way to "demonstrate" the power of speedstep, as the P4 itself has very little to do with the battery life increase. They go on and on about the GF4's PowerMizer technology and the P4's Speedstep, and fail to realize that this battery life increase is likely due to having a dedicated decoding processor.

      While they're at it, I might suggest the following purpose-built vs. software-simulated tests:

      Pentium 4 running Quake 2 in software mode vs. Pentium 4 running Quake 2 with hardware acceleration: Which is faster?

      $20 TI-30 solar calculator vs. $1,500 PC running calculator.exe under WindowsXP: Which is cheaper for basic mathematical functions?

      MPEG-2 Encoder card vs. 1 Ghz Athlon: Which encodes quicker?

      Incidentally, I noticed that they ran most of their framerate tests at 1024x768 (considered by most gamers, obviously, to be the optimal trade-off between quality and performance). Of course, this notebook (and most like it) has a native resolution of 1600x1200, and every 1600x1200 notebook I've ever seen has a terrible blurriness to it at anything other than the native resolution (obviously). I wonder how Quake 3 fares at a non-blurry resolution?
  • At a LAN party you only get to brag until the next bunch of laptops with the GeForce 5XX comes out. However if your luggin' around your desktop, and a new video card comes out you don't have to change your whole system to replace the video card.

    That is if you are that kind of gamer that needs to show off the most FPS on his computer. Or the kind of gamer who possibly owned the GeForce 2, 3, and 4 all in the same year. But of course there's no one here like that.
  • You aint seen nothing till you've seen rtcw on a tiBook. I push around 60FPS in wide screen mode with everything turned on.
  • Of course, this will cost a lot more than similarly powerful desktop, but some people don't seem to mind that tradeoff.

    I wonder why, perhaps it's because you have a device that will fit in your lap (or less) and be almost up to par with the speed of a large desktop tower? Presuming someone had a use for a mobile computer, why would they mind paying for a literal mobile desktop?
  • No gamer is complete without their own quad Xeon helping drive the pixels.

    Talked to a guy at compaq once who had a little lan party with a few of those. Now THAT'S a high end game machine. I am told quake 2 ran fast on those babies.

    -Pete

  • Display problems abound, however... (Score:4, Informative)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Monday June 03, 2002 @07:18PM (#3635301) Journal
    I've got a laptop with a GeForce 2 Go and a Mobile PIII 933MHz CPU, and, sure, it's got the power to play games, but the issue is always the display. It's the same with any flat screen...the pixels have a hard time turning off, so whenever the sceen changes quickly, it blurs. So, you may have the hardware, but if the display stinks, what's the point? You'd have to hook it up to a monitor anyway, and if you're bringing along the monitor, you might as well bring along the rest of the box, too. Until laptop displays improve, there isn't much point in playing fast-moving games like FPSs on them.
    • No gamer in their right mind would choose a laptop over a desktop for normal use. To do so would be stupid. You're right, a monitor is much better.

      The point is that some people can't use a desktop. Look at me, I'm often on a plane, on the road, here and there... I sling a laptop in my backpack... and sometimes I want entertainment! I can't possibly bring a desktop or a monitor with me.

      So there IS some reason to playing fast-moving games on an LCD and I'm glad machines capable of doing so exist.
      • Oh, of course a laptop is great for traveling and what not. That's why I got the GF2Go...screw the gameboy advance :)

        However, here, they're talking about taking it to LAN parties, and I would only do that if there were already a monitor there for me.
      • I travel about constantly for work, and try to get hotels with broadband, just so I can hook up my A31p (1.7 GHz Pentium 4, ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 with 64 megs VRAM) and punish the unbelieving. It's definitely a better game machine than 95% of the soi-disant desktop gamer's boxes I've seen - runs at 1600 x 1200 without a hiccup. There's some fancies that the FireGL chip doesn't do, and there's a wee bit of niceness that a full-fledged monitor has that this one doesn't, but really I'm hard-pressed to imagine a much better machine all-around for gaming, even though this is primarily a work machine.

        Ultimately, this is the future, too. That's a lot of real estate that my monitor and ATX case are taking up (and it's just an Athlon 850, too) - ultimately I see the majority of systems being racked mini pizza-boxes, wafer-thin clients, or laptops.

    • LCD are improving, and some displays have pixel refresh times low enough to make them viable for watching movies and playing games. Not exactly on par with monitors, but in many cases the advantages outweigh that. But as I said, this is only true for some displays, the majority is crap for gaming. As reference, read the LCD reviews on Tom's Hardware.
    • I use a toshiba satellite 3000, has a 1ghz P4m with the GeForce2 go, its nice, plays games really well but you do run into some issues, ie in Unreal Tournament, your char gets "stuck" kinda like if your lagging and your char gets stuck in a wall, but this even happends with single player, etc.. I say a laptop is good for mabey some langaming, definatly good for traveling, etc.. but not for, let say playing Unreal Tournament over the internet.. ;)

      on a second note, i never did notice the blur, mabey my screen doesn't have it, with better pixel refresh, or I just didn't notice it..

      -slak

    • I don't have too much trouble with blur on my screen. Sure its slightly noticeable where on a monitor there is NONE AT ALL, but it's not so bad that it keeps me from hitting my target when coming around a corner quickly. Or even when there is a fast action scene on a movie.

      I remember that when I bought mine there were 2 options for LCDs the default cheaper option was rated with a lower refresh so I kicked in the few extra bucks for the better screen.

      Just like if you by a bargain 17in monitor your not going to get the high resolutions or good dot pitch you expect from the more expensive models.
  • The exhaust stench of the portable generators mingles with the oily aroma of Sweat-Cooled(TM) "portables".
    The Mobile LAN party is underway!
  • Okay, all you 1337 G33ks running over to Dell to see what that rig costs, cut it out! I can't configure mine! :P

  • NOT good for car racing games. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nathdot ( 465087 ) on Monday June 03, 2002 @07:24PM (#3635333)
    As far back as Accolade Grand Prix on a CGA monitor, I have been subconciously angling with the screen to take corners with the car.

    Now if you too suffer this affliction, then you'll know playing a game like this on a bus to work could be fucking disastrous:

    The bus driver turns a corner, you angle to take an imaginary corner with the "car" and... BOOM... both you and your laptop are in the aisle.

    :)

  • EQ (Score:1)

    by ekephart ( 256467 )
    I've thought about this for awhile. If I could afford an uber-laptop I would play EQ in bed and take naps while I regenerate. I need serious help.


  • For year I've been under the impression that LCD screens simply don't cut it for serious gaming and that most hardcore FPS players still rely on their trusty CRTs. I gather that the problem was primarily one of there being a slightly slower reaction time and lower refresh rates.

    Possibly there have been advances in this area that I haven't heard about; anyone know what the current wisdom is on this?

    And is it realistic for us to be talking about serious gamers switching over to laptops if this vital component is not yet up to par?

    • Well, I've got a Dell Inspiron 8100 w/ 64MB ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 and UXGA 1600X1200 screen, and it's about the best looking thing I've ever seen. I've had zero problems with blurring, and it's so crisp it puts my 21" trinitron to shame. I was worried about refresh when I got it, but everything I've played looks fantastic.

    • Re:LCD Screens Suitable for Gaming? (Score:5, Informative)

      by martissimo ( 515886 ) on Monday June 03, 2002 @07:45PM (#3635432)
      good article about just that topic [tomshardware.com] at toms hardware.

      Basically the new LCD monitors coming out this summer and towards the end of year are getting very close to whats required for high quality gaming. any monitor with a response time of 20 ms or less will yield at least 50 images per second displayed, and there are quite a few nice ones that you will be able to choose from with thoose kind of times very soon.

      just be prepared to whip out close to 2 grand for one :P
  • I'm sorry, but my friends + chugging mountain dew + $3k laptop = disaster waiting to happen.
    Would YOU trust your prescious to a bunch of caffeine crazed LANers? (please ignore the fact that you yourself are probably a caffeine crazed LANer)
  • Even prior to the GeForce 440 making it into Dell laptops, they had some pretty decent 3D-capable systems. I have an Inspiron 4100 (1GHz PIII, 32MB GeForce2 GO), and I play Jedi Knight II, Medal of Honor and RTCW all at 1024x768 without any slowdown at all. The sound isn't too bad either (provided you use headphones or good external speakers...the inbuilt ones are *terrible*).
  • Latitude C810, 1.13, 512MB, GF4, 60GB, 802.11 enabled, single battery, light to average usage, I get about 3 to 4 hours. Pushing the CPU gets me down to around 1.5 to 2 hours.
  • Mobile Pentium® 4 Processor 1.6GHz-M 15.0 Dell® UltraSharp(TM) 256MB, DDR, 2DIMM (from 128MB, DDR, 1DIMM) 64MB DDR 4XAGP NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go(TM) 3D 30GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive Upgrade! Floppy XP Home Integrated Network Card Internal 56K Modem 8X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive Price Sub-total: $2,028.00 For a laptop, that's not bad, and anyways, we still know people playing CS w/ a TNT2 Ultra which can't begin to beat this monster. True, for a real LAN party player, a desktop is needed, for playing on a whim wherever you like, this does wonders.
  • I actually own the 1.6 P4m Geforce4mx laptop with 512 ram and 30 gig hard drive, and all i have to say is for 2704 after shipping this little box has huge nuts, and really i liked it so much i sold my desktop as i didn't need it anymore, just kept the monitor keybord and mouse, and now it runs better then my desktop did. I don't just had to put in my two cents from someone that owns an uber box. mmmm portable tribes2.........
  • What is the point of gaming on these high-end, high-speed laptops when the refresh rates of their screens are lower than what a typical CRT can offer? I distinctly remember a CNET review of a Dell Notebook Inspiron that featured a GeForce2 Go. It mentioned that the GeForce2Go could retain refresh rates higher than the notebook's TFT screen. This appears to defeat the purpose of hardcore notebook gaming, which of course requires fast refresh rates. (However, an exception would include most RTS games). In turn, this can degrade gameplay, especially with 1st person shooters. In addition, notebook screens are capable of displaying a limited amount of colors-around 1.5 million I believe, correct me if im wrong. Washed out images of flying objects, such as grenades in Counterstrike would make one's notebook gaming experience fragtastic...for the player and others.

    Well, thats my 2 cents.
    • Since I have one of these systems I can comment on the displays. In all honesty I've never had a problem with slow refresh rates. They are fast enough that you don't see any fuzzy images or washed out images. When people actually see a fps run on my machine they comment on just how clear and clean everything is. The displays are very crisp. No CRT can compare.
  • I might be the only person wondering about this, but so far there are no laptops that support true directx 8/8.1 features such as vertex and pixel shaders.

    I know that very few games out there actually use them, but until laptops come out with a chipset like the Ati Radeon 8500 or Geforce3/4Ti, you're still stuck with basic Directx 7/OpenGL 1.3 (without modules) functionality.

    This may not seem very important, but after seeing the Doom3 previews, I can say that pixel shaders and shadow buffers will be a must-have from now on.
  • I just bought one of these puppies last week. I'm chomping at the bit for it to arrive now :)

    Been completely mobile for years (no desktop), and the only thing I ever really had complaints about were the video cards. I won't be worrying about that anymore, evidently :)
  • Given how everyone always trumpets how fast their extreme gaming systems are, it's sad we don't here more about extreme slow gaming.

    Sure, playing through Quake at 180 fps is cool, but winning Quake at 5 fps, ah, now that's a challenge.

    My greatest act of low-powered gaming was winning Unreal on a PowerBook G3 300. This was MacOS 8.6 or so, with manual memory management and everything. I had to create a custom Extensions set boot mode to even get enough free memory to launch Unreal.

    The two most challenging aspect were graphics and controls. The Rage Pro was very aenemic, and I was lucky to get 15 fps out of it. And I had to use hardware scaling, since the LCD was 1024x768, and the card could barely do 3D at 640x480. Also, it had to run in 16-bit mode, which those old ATI card had huge dithering problems in. So it was kind of like watching a blocky yet blurred filmstrip in a snowstorm.

    Controls? Well, of course, the keyboard and, wait for it, the trackpad! No mouse for me! If you haven't played through a first person shooter using a trackpad for aim, you haven't lived, at least not lived badly.

    The nice thing about this is that you can play in bed when your girlfriend is asleep. The startling thing was she actually married me even after that.

  • Great, so they benchmarked the effect of 3 different power settings on framerates. The results look nice, but they don't say anything more than "if you want more performance, you get shorter battery life.". I wish the morons had compared it to one or more desktop systems, a standard P-IV 1.4 GHz with an equivalent GeForce card for one. I assume the laptop has less horsepower than a desktop, but they could have at least done testing so that I could confirm or deny that assumption, but no they didn't.
  • I'd rather have a Sager Notebook [sagernotebook.com]. Although you can't get it in Dell's nice Enhanced UXGA it can come with a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz and a Radeon Mobility 7500 which outclasses the GF4Go in speed. At 2.4 GHz it can last almost 4 hours with the optional secondary battery. Also, even though it is bundled with Windows almost all the hardware is Linux friendly. See for yourself.
  • OK, OK, I'm an unusual case. I'm a professional graphics programmer who writes computer games for a living. I would just love to have a laptop to work on; but I'm doing all my work on consoles and GF3 and up hardware (basically it needs pixel shader 1.0 and higher).

    I'm almost resigned to never having a laptop - because no doubt by the time an integrated laptop solution with ps1.0 or higher comes out I'll have to be supporting DX9 based hardware :-(.

    BUT, this also indicates that unless something changes, playing the latest greatest games on your laptop is just a fantasy.

    What we need from laptop manufacturers is the ability to slot in a card just like a pluggable harddrive. Then they could supply some ridiculously bulky addon (complete with its own fan and maybe power supply :-)) - so that uber-geeks and gamers can upgrade their video.

    Or is there some way to do this already? I build my own desktop systems and its trivial. Do any of the hardware guys reading slashdot have links to how I customise various laptops? Thanks.

    StrutterX

  • GeForce GOs from a User's Perspective (Score:3, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Monday June 03, 2002 @08:10PM (#3635544) Homepage
    I have an Inspiron 8000, which was the first Dell to have an nVidia chip. It has a 933 PIII-M and a GeForce 2 GO. I have had this laptop for about a year now (I think) and I thought I'd tell you guys what these chips are really like.

    I should tell you that I've taken to doing all my gaming on my laptop because my desktop has some hardware problems and I haven't gotten around to fixing them. So while it's no GeForce 3, it works great. My gaming consists mostly of Counter-Strike. It runs at 1024x768, almost always at 60 FPS. The smoke gernades slow it down, but what do you expect. I should note that the 60 is my refresh rate, and I run Win 2k so it probably maxes out higher. The LCD screen is GREAT and you can see things very well. I doesn't blur during action and such. The only problem is it's impossible to play FPSs with a pointstick or touchpad, so I keep a USB mouse handy. But what do you expect?

    The laptop does get warm after alot of CSing, but I'm not suprised. It's not hot at all, and doesn't seem to effect anything. When it does get hot the fan(s) come on, but they are quite quiet and you can't hear them over the game unless you keep it quiet.

    Basically what I'm saying is that for what I do (gameing wise), the GeForce 2 GO works great. Considering that this is basically a GeForce 2 MX or so, I'd like to see the GeForce 4 GO, which is basically a neutered GeForce 3. Things are great on the 2D side too. And, yes, I've played Quake 3 and such a few times and it works great as well. No, you're not going to get 200 FPS with 4x AA at 1400x1050 (the native resolution), but then again, it IS a laptop. I should also point out that I game with my AC adapter, not having it might trigger the power miser stuff and slow the GPU down, I don't know.

    While I'm on the subject, I'll also point out that the LCD looks great in ANY resolution. I doesn't look like it's been cheesily stretched (like my old Winbook did), it looks like it's the native resolution. But if you don't like it, there is a hot key that displays the image 1:1 on the screen, centered, with a black border around it for non-native resolutions if you want. I prefer full screen (which is nice on a 15" laptop).

    In summary, these things work great. I've never tried the ATI, but I bet it would be just as good if not better (but I don't like ATI, and that's another discussion). Before this, my laptop gaming was limited to SimCity 3000, The Incredible Machine, Solitare, and other 2D games. Now I can do all that and headshot people in Counter-Strike from a hotel room without one of those lanboxes-in-a-suitcase.

  • This is really the main last big thing holding them back after they got the nVidia chips.
  • I have a Dell 8100, it rocks, but you know what would rock even more on these beasts? It's almost a workstation replacement, I can do most 3D setup that I need prior to rendering, I can even do some test rendering on it too with heavy features like radiosity and caustics, I never though I'd see the day when a company would have such decent 3d performance on a mobile platform, for both previewing (opengl) and rendering.

    One thing that I would kill for, and that's about the only "workstation" thing missing, (and don't laugh) would be a IDE raid-0. Battery consumption is not an issue, IDE drives doesn't consume near as much as the CPUs, neither would a raid-0 chipset (or who cares about the chipset, I could live with a software stripeset as long as it's on 2 distinct channels), and besides, if it would require more cells on the battery, so be it. They make batteries last for 3 hours on inspiron 2500 laptop (8 cell battery option), of course for number crunching and all it wouldn't last as much, but the point is, I'd take the floppy space and cramp in another 40GB ide drive in there, 2 channels, double the space, double the speed and tripple the fun ;).

    Right now you can get a gig of ram in your laptop, you can get firewire, you can get wireless connectivity, CD-Writers, dvd players, you name it, the IDE raid feature is the only thing missing. Since the 2.5" drives aren't as big as their 3.5" cousins, it could be a good tradeoff, and I'd gladly take the performance too.

  • I'm typing on that machines older brother in a way. Dell Inspiron 8100. I have the Mobile PIII chip. 1.13Ghz. 512 MB ram. 32 MB GeForce2 Go. 15" 1400x1050 screen.

    Now granted there is no way my machine can compete with a decked out desktop system. However, in terms of the-best-of-both-worlds this maching can't be beat. I've got a killer mobile system, and a pretty hot gaming machine. Machine-wise, I'm pretty near the top when I go LAN partying. It's nice being able to show up with your equipment in one hand and jsut opening the screen and be ready to go.

    Some down sides I've noticed with my machine so far as follows. One, when you hook up an external mouse something keeps you from making rapid movements get through the system. You can only move the mouse at a relatively slow pace or it will skip on the screen. Two, battery life stinks. Don't plan on playing games without being hardwired to the electrical grid. Even with dual batteries in my system. 3.5 hours is all it will do. On the plus side. If you step down the processor speed and do normal work. Like work on a spreadsheet I can get roughly 6 hours of work time. Not to shabby. Three, the plastic case is kind cheap and the chassis has a lot of flex. ie. don't pick it up by the corner.

    Any bad stuff is pretty much nullified by the fact that this machine is pretty much a one of a kind. Mobile desktop to a new level.
  • We've got one of the dell laptops mentioned here.
    Had to get the binary video driver from Nvidia for
    X to work, and the unit weighs about 3.2Kg.

    It runs quite nicely, except that the performance is lower when the mains power is removed (Mobile CPU's lower their Hz to save power).
    here are the bogostats:

    2385.51 bogomips - 1196.502 MHz (batteries)
    3185.04 bogomips - 1595.321 MHz

    We're not running quake on it tho'
  • ...when the 130nm Athlon XP chips come out. Hopefully that includes notebook chips, and maybe someone will finally have the cajones to build a decent Athlon notebook. I want brute force computation along with my GeForce 4, dammit!
  • My LAN gang lugs boxes around bi-weekly and I find my OC'ed Celeron@992 w/1GB SDRAM and a GeForce2 MX sufficient to whoop ass in CounterStrike, Wolfenstein, and UnrealT. But after screwing up my back, lugging around a 17" CRT (for gaming) and all associated crap made me take a gander at the various notebook offerings.

    A buddy of mine has one of those Dell Inspiron 8100s with the GeForce2Go. The light weight and 60 second setup really caught my eye. I gave it a whirl, but the blurring motion and artifacting problems (yeah, driver was updated) made the experience disappointing; especially a big fat block right on the crosshairs that made sniping all but impossible. Before long, the novelty wore off and I was back on my own box.

    I haven't given the GeForce4Go-based notebooks a whirl yet and they're pricey.

    My solution is to opt for a nice 17" LCD and get one of Shuttle's new SS40 series boxes when the AGP version comes out. Stick in a GeForce4 Ti4600 and you've got a small gaming system that won't blow your back out.

    This'll have to do until we can get some whoop-ass wearables for a bit of augmented unreality. :)

  • Debian on Inspiron 8200 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jojor ( 545317 )
    I recently bought the laptop the article is about, if anyone is interested, here are my current thoughts:
    1.) XP sucks. yea well I know thats obvious but it was pretty damn strange to see my laptop struggeling with a 100mbit/s network connection to keep writing the data to the disk. my 1.6ghz 256mb RAM was at 50% usage as an ftp client while the server barely made the 10% mark.

    2.) to get debian on it is pretty damned hard but it looks like everything is working apart from hte modem. Infrared, USB, PCMCIA (hot swapable), network, Graphics, twinview, DVD/CD-RW, etc.
    graphics are sweet, unreal isnt stressing the thing to much even at full resolution etc.

    3.)its a desktop replacement, make no mistake about it. you can knock a bull unconscious with it. its big but its good.

    4.) dell service...nahhh, first wrong keybord then an unordered french one, then the right one, finally and you have to call up dell to build it in.

    speedstep isnt supported under debian AFAIK but I am pretty sure the speedstep equivalent of the NV card is.

    its a good laptop if you dont need to carry it around a lot. dell isnt exactly customer caring but at least the quality of the thing is good.
  • ::Drools::

    ::Wipes chin::

    ::drools more::

    I was just looking at this the other day...pity with the config I wanted it would cost more than 2 desktops for me...almost $3000.

    Still...::drools even more::

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