Need notebook advice

[blackdevil0742]

So I'm having Gamedev - Graphics at a university and I need a powerful notebook. I'm not entierly sure what to look for. But I want it to have two processors, a powerful graphics card and it should have space for 4gigs of RAM. It must be able to handle 3D renderingand and multi-tasking. My budget is ~ $2,850 but can be a little higher. So what I want is names of notebook models and their specs. If possible a website where I'm able to costomize parts and that has shipping to Sweden.

Or if these specs are good enough:
15,4" WSXGA+ 1680x1050 - 6625WD
NVIDIA® Geforce 8600M GT
Zepto Wpro 300Mbit BGN
SAMSUNG DVD-RW Dual-Layer Burner
2.40 GHz Intel® Core™2 Duo T7700 800MHz
4 GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC5300 SODIMM (64-bit OS)
200GB 7200rpm SATA Harddisk
6 + 12 Cell battery
MS Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit - SE (or ultimate 64bit)
Intel® Turbo Memory 1GB (Vista)
 

[a-4-year-old]

step 1: no vista.

step 2: go for a dell XPS, its a gaming device but gaming device = powerful.

[RabidTreeFrog]

I'm pretty sure 4 gigs of RAM is a waste now, since no computers have the power to utilize 4 gigs as of now.

[a-4-year-old]

only vista, which is pointless because 3/4 gigs of ram will be sucked up by vista. 2 gigs on XP is more then enough for most everything (except gaming)

[blackdevil0742]

1. I do believe that it'sa waste of money to get XP now. I'm pretty sure the 3D apps will be upgraded to use 64-bit and stuff sooner or later. If I am to get vista which I want then 2 gigs of RAM is bad and suport for 4gigs is needed.

2. I looked at ome of thenotebooks. They were pretty expensive if I wanted any specs like the one above.

To get something similar to the one above:
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7400-processor (2,16 GHz, 667 MHz, 4 MB L2-cache
Windows Vista® Home Premium(English)
17,0"UltraSharpâ„¢ widescreen WUXGA-screen (1920 x 1200) TFT-screen
4048 MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
160 GB (7 200 rpm) SATA-HDD
512 MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce™ Go 7950 GTX

the pricewent up to $3695 the only "better" thing I se in this one is the bigger screen. Just adding the extra 2gigs of ram rose the price with $857. I must say that Dell(in sweden) is expensive.

[bja888]

You can get a bad ass computer and a cheap laptop for the price of a bad ass laptop. My laptop is utter crap, my desktop is crazy fast. I sync over my server for when I need to do a presentation at a meeting or something.

Why not do something like that? Or do you want me to point all the reasons why having a powerful laptop is stupid?

[Shivorken]

I would go for a laptop from dell. Nice, and cheap and they are good enough for work and gaming. My friend bought one from dell and it cost him $AU1500 and it was 2.4 ghz dual core with 4 gb of DDR2 ram, 512mb GFX card, not sure of HD but its quite big. He plays Oblivion on it fine (the latest one with that tanky graphics). His 4gb ram was upgraded from 2gb free of charge. IMO, the notebooks you have specified are quite over the top price wise, but if your rich, then go for it, I'm a cheap arse.


@bja888: He needs to bring it to uni ... can't bring a desktop can he? XD

[blackdevil0742]

As i said before the dell laptops seem very expensive for what you get in specs(on the swedish dell site). The one i mentioned im my first post is cheaper than the $2,850 price tag i set for maximum. I also exluded a mouse, speakers and extra batteries from the post as it wasn't relevant to what I really wanted. I just need more advice if there are better ones and hopefully cheaper or if there is something particular I should look for when i want to work with 3D.

I thougt i made it clear that the computer was for 3D. If it can play games then okbut I don't care as I have y stationary for that.

@ Shivorken are you sure it was that cheap? Those specs seem good for the price yet dell in sweden is a $$$ *****. Th speed f the HDD is kinda important to. I don't want the 5200rpm.

[Shivorken]

I have absolutely no idea about rpm (I don't even know what your talking about XD), but yes, there dell laptop i mentioned IS that cheap and i have two friends who have that laptop, the one who bought it later got an even better deal than the first guy and the price was the same (more ram, tanky GFX card etc...). My friend told me once about how at 3:00pm every wednesday on the dell site there is always a very very cheap special offer available but its only for one individual product.

[Dascoo]

RPM = Revolutions per minute

[FliesLikeABrick]

1) no vista
2) get a Thinkpad.

[blackdevil0742]

1. Why is vista bad? I did "downgrade" my desktop with it and at first I hated it. After a while like with XP  you got used to it. Yes some older stuff won't work, loads of annoying popups/warnings (that you can remove) and it uses more resources but it's not like it will affect the overal performance.

2. I searched for thinkpads and I didn't see anything different from notebooks, care to explain?

[a-4-year-old]

Yes some older stuff won't work, loads of annoying popups/warnings (that you can remove) and it uses more resources but it's not like it will affect the overal performance.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

Even Microsoft admitted that Vista was a failure.

[7th_account]

Hmm, well for many users vista is an improvement of XP. I love how I can hover my cursor over the down-right clock twice in a row now and it seems to handle wireless networks better too. But if you indeed are looking for the best possible performance along with compatibility and stability XP is your best bet.

[The Specialist]

Do not get Vista, it is a resource hog.  If you would look at the Task Manager program when running Vista, you'll see it's running 80 processes (80 system programs) in the background, which makes it extremely slow.  Windows XP, however, I think only has about 10 or 12.  The rest of the system specs on that labtop are fine.

Also, if you'll notice, everyone should be updating to Vista because its a new operating system, but everyone at work, offices, hospitals, schools, etc. still use XP because they know that Vista is garbage.  Maybe after a few Service Packs for Vista, then it may be worth to buy it, otherwise, don't.

[Domokun]

Windows XP is in my opinion the best version of Windows EVER!


If you get Vista. I kill you.

[FliesLikeABrick]

Vista is a resource hog, and on laptops it results in FAR worse battery life.

[blackdevil0742]

I haven't really noticed any real differences on my desktop in performance.
Comparison between my XP and Vista:
XP = 36 processes
Vista = 50 processes
Vista has 5% more CPU usage
Hard to know anything about the RAM as vista uses superfetch but overall it looks like it's a 20% more.

Gaming wise it may depend on the game. Some games have 30fps more than on XP while other lose 10-15fps on vista.

The only battery life I'll need is 2h at most. I'll have a powersource most likely when I work with 3D at the university.

XP is no different from vista when it first came. XP needed 2x better hardware from previous versions and it had its problems until service pack 1 came. Vista needs 4x better hardware and hopefully most bugs will be solved with the servicepack.