Hi everyone. I am getting ready to buy a killer gaming laptop to take to work with me. Will be using it as a desktop replacement as well :) Anyway I am leaning towards the *Sager 9860*. Most likely next week I will be pulling the trigger.

I'm getting it mostly for emulators and PC racing sims. MAME, Chankast, Nebula, FreeD0, ZNES are among the emulators I will be using the most. But since this I'm here, I just want to present some specs that this laptop has and see what you guys think and what percent of Mame games will run on it without any hiccups....

Windows XP Professional
P4 3.8GHZ LGA775800FSB w/HT(570)
--or--
P4 3.6GHZ w/2MB L2 Cache EM64T (660)
nVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 GDDR3
2048 MB 533DDR2 (2 DIMMS)
60GB 7200rpm

Total cost $4300(includes "No dead pixel" policy, free shipping, large backpack, and a two year warranty)

So what do you think will run under these specs? Can I expect all the Midway CruisN games to run at a smooth clip?

What about the San Francisco Rush games? Aren't those gonna be supported in Mame soon, and will take up quite a bit of processing power?

Then there's the Model 2 games in Nebula that I want to mess around with...especially Indy 500. Can I expect Indy to run at 60fps with these specs?

Don't forget Namco's System games in Mame. What about those? Which System 12, 21, 22 games will I be able to run in at a smooth framerate?

There's also the graphics card issue. I know that Mame is processor dependant, but between the GeForce 6800Go and the Ati X800 Mobility, which one would you choose?

These specs may seem like overkill to someone who isn't a die hard first person shooter fan and will just use mostly emulators, but some of these emulators like Chackast, Nebula, epxse and VivaNonno require quite a bit of processing power as well as good gfx card. Therefore I feel the processor needs to be as bleeding edge and future proof as possible.

Last but not least, are there any other alternatives to this Sager notebook that you recommend and feel is cheaper? I've checked out the Alienwares and was going to go with them, until I realize how long you have to wait to get one delivered....TWO MONTHS or so!!!! I know $4300 is a lot for a notebook but this is pretty much bleeding edge stuff here. I've seen the Toshiba satellites and HP Pavilions and wasn't able to to find one that have a graphics card as powerful as either the nVidia 6800Go or the Ati X800, not to mention they're limited to 1gig ram as well as Pentium 3.4 processors.


Thanks in advance :)

I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the...country


-theThe

or something.

CSP

> or something.
>
> CSP
>
When 20ghz comes out, Aaron will end up rewriting it and making it "more accurate" so that you'll need 40ghz. We'll never play anything of his at full speed ;). LOLz.

Check out the new Dells, the 9300. Similar spec you've mentioned works out to around 2.5k

Dells suck. I had an Insprion couple years ago and not even two days into it it crashed on me numerous times. Sent it back and it took me like 3 fucking months to get the entire amount credited back to my account. Customer service is absolute garbage and is outsourced to India.

Plus Dells don't offer raid configurations for their hard drives.

I'll go with the Sager via PC Torque.

I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the...country


-theThe

Darn... if you lose those 10 megs worth of savegames you'll be in deep shit!

Better get a raid... otherwise... imagine the risk!!



No.. really... what do you need a raid for. Chances are a laptop will get stolen of virus attacked before the natural life of your HD fades... so why waste the money?

(not in case of dells. In case of dell you could simply manage by recording everything to CD every day or so.)

> Dells suck. I had an Insprion couple years ago and not even two days into it it
> crashed on me numerous times. Sent it back and it took me like 3 fucking months
> to get the entire amount credited back to my account. Customer service is
> absolute garbage and is outsourced to India.
>
> Plus Dells don't offer raid configurations for their hard drives.
>
> I'll go with the Sager via PC Torque.
>
> I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of
> the...country
>
>
> -theThe
>


www.trator.com.ar - 3D Stuff and toons from me!

-Cracken-

AKA RAID 0. Sacrifice data integrity for speed.

> No.. really... what do you need a raid for.

Seconded. RAID on a notebook? The words "gilded lily" spring irresistably to mind for some unknown reason. Followed qucikly by "asinine."

I'm going with a Raid 0, because the maximum disk space available in each drive is 80Gigs (at this time....100Gig is backordered). So since the machine has TWO drive bays, choosing a second drive with another 80gigs and with a Raid 0 configuration makes sense, since it'll give me a total of 160Gigs. You can NEVER have enough hard drive space. And since this is replacing my desktop, that theory applies even further.

I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the...country


-theThe

RAID 0 on a laptop is not IMNSHO. Laptops are, by their nature, more prone to bumping, jostling, dropping, etc., than desktops. To counteract this, 2.5" hard drives are designed to be more shock resistant than 3.5" drives, but they're not shock proof. Data recovery from a RAID 0 array is a bitch and a half at best. It sucks to have to keep your data split among two separate logical drives, but it sucks worse to lose all your stuff.

(former AID user ISO a cheap RAID 5 solution)

> I'm going with a Raid 0, because the maximum disk space available in each drive
> is 80Gigs (at this time....100Gig is backordered). So since the machine has TWO
> drive bays, choosing a second drive with another 80gigs and with a Raid 0
> configuration makes sense, since it'll give me a total of 160Gigs. You can NEVER
> have enough hard drive space.

True dat. 500 gigs just ain't what it used to be...

> And since this is replacing my desktop, that theory applies even further.
>
> I'm just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of
> the...country
>
>
> -theThe
>