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Mobile vs. Desktop Gaming
Mr.Tweak writes "TweakTown has just posted an article investigating Mobile vs. Desktop gaming in their latest article entitled "New Age Computer Gaming - Mobile vs. Desktop Investigation". The article compares a Dell Inspiron 8200 with ATI Mobility 9000 graphics to a standard desktop system with nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 graphics. Can notebook gaming really be taken seriously? We think so, and so should you!"
The biggest problem of mobile gaming is there is mainly one game in town, the radeon 9000. The gf4go is not bad but its not the best either. Mobile has caught up enough but its going to take a while for people to think of laptops as gaming machines.
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But only one problem battery. Yea unless we have long battery lives this wont really do. Most laptop owners will use it for gaming when they have spare battery life. So if we have 20 hour battery backup, which dosent burn you then maybe yes!
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Can notebook gaming really be taken seriously? We think so, and so should you!
Now this is freedom of thought.
Don't forget to think different.
We all know that ID didn't want it out because they don't want people to judge the final product on it. I also belive that most people who would download and install it are big fans, and be quite aware that it wasn't representitive of the final product. But when TweakTown publishes frame rates, without even an attempt at a dislaimer, they're not doing anyone any favours.
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hmm.. most of the laptop sales are directed towards business users. I doubt a laptop geared for gaming will sell that much. So in a way the test is good. Take a mainstream laptop, the kind most people will buy and then see wether it performs. Moreover many people get laptops on a temporary basis from the place they work, now a company will by the latest dell, but wont buy a laptop for gaming, right?
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do laptop's always seem to be "on the brink" of desktop performance? Do sites just repeat this news item everytime a more powerful laptops come out? The Geforce2go was a major step; this is a normal business cycle advance. The performance of laptops is never anywhere near the performance level of a similarly priced desktop, and that has been static for 15 years, yet over and over again we get reports about how laptops are becoming more and more like desktops... please.
Well get a decent pair of headphones like the Sony V700s and you should be fine on any 15inch because your face is typically much closer to the display. There are other issues with LCD displays if you're really that hardcore.
Why compare a laptop with a Radeon 9000 to a Desktop with a Radeon 9000 when you can compare it to something totally different and draw your conlusion about laptop gaming from that!
If you're looking at the performance of laptops for gaming, you make your desktop as similar as possible.. same RAM, same CPU speed, SAME VIDEO CARD. Otherwise, it's not truely useful stats.
First things first, let me get this straight. I'm all for frame rates. But i don't like to be elitist about it. 40 plus is fine for me, or anything where it doesn't realistically affect my frame rate.
Laptops do contain some awful video cards sometimes, and that's usually the decision made by the company at the time of specification. Way before actual production. But there are a few that are pretty good. Namely the high range of dells running 9700s and i believe there is a dell with a gf4 chipset in it also.
Say if you are thinking primarily of frame rates, i'm sure you could find something worth buying which wont be an embarrassment at the next LAN party. (I myself have a Dell 250n, and it's wonderful for me).
The main aim with a laptop is portability. If you remember the last BYOC LAN you went to, i'm sure you can also remember the annoying part of getting your pride and joy unplugged from the desk, all into the vehicle of your choice, and then unpacked at the actual location. With a laptop, it goes without saying this kind of affair is an absolute breeze.
That's why i chose my laptop over upgrading my desktop, which now stays at home. Yes, there are some games that take a while to load (namely Battlefield 1942, but i'm sure i'm not the only one facing *that* particular problem), but overall, the tried and tested LAN games (quake 3, UT, CS...) are all perfect for this machine, and many like it.
I noticed a comment about a 5.1 system being unavailable to a laptop. This is untrue, especially with the Creative Audigy external USB soundcard. And anyway, who's prepared to take 6 speakers to a LAN party? Chances are you'd use headphones anyway, and with many laptops carrying virtual surround sound in their chipsets, you could be better off with most desktop owners.
A note on the Alienware a51: i was actually going to buy this machine, but after shopping around (something i normally don't bother doing), i found that there are many better machines, at much lower prices. Realistically, You're paying for a brand.
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Why buy the AlienWare laptop when you can have the exactly same laptop for much much lower price??
It's even assembled at the same factory!
Testimony of a Sony Vaio user.
I got myself a Vaio gr314mp nearly a year ago. It comes with a 1200MhZ p3 and the 16meg version of the mobility radeon 7500 and runs a lot of games fine. Multiplayer Quake 3 and Medal of Honour in 1024x768 run at a perfectly playable 30-odd fps (with some smoke effects and alpha-blending off... the card OpenGL drivers need careful tweaking to get good performance.)
My main reason for going laptop was I am on the road a lot, so a desktop isn't feasible for me. I have to say, I'm very chuffed with the results.
I love being able to lie in bed and play computer games. I spent about 2 months playing neverwinter nights on the train into work, and that made the time fly. I've even once or twice played mohaa over wireless while cooking dinner. This shit is great.
But... I don't ever expect to be playing doom 3 on this baby. The big thing is always the graphics card (lower processor speed and ram tend to be acceptable a lot longer), and I don't think I'll be wanting another laptop for games once this one loses its edge, unless I know I can plug in an external graphics card. A year of gaming for about $800 of depreciation isn't quite good enough.
Can anyone tell me why external pci-cards haven't caught on yet? Bus bandwidth wouldn't seem to be an issue if the architecture was right...
As soon as this becomes the norm, or I can swap in a new card when I want to, I will be happy to play on a laptop and pay slightly over the odds for improving game performance. But as it is, the computer I have now will soon be utterly useless in the face of new games.
The mobile gaming idea is superb, and the reality of it is great. Throw longevity in the mix and I'll never go back.
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If in doubt, visit sometime one of those gaming forums sites, like EsReallity.com. Discussions of input devices do appear there more then often.
Not to mention the fact that I yet have to see at least one gamer (pro prefferably) which uses LCD (or similar technology) monitor. :)
Leonid Mamtchenkov