"Gaming"/General Purpose Laptop

[nitevision88]

Hello-

I'm looking into buying a laptop for college that I can do a bit of gaming on. Looking at notebooks in the $1500 range.

I came upon this Asus notebook, the F3JP (Asus F3JP)
It looks pretty legitimate; Intel Core 2 Duo T7200(2.00GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA 1GB DDR2 667 120GB 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 for under $1250 - And I would likely throw another stick of memory in that to bring it up to 2GB.

My question is, is Asus a solid company to buy a notebook from? I know they're solid for motherboards, I've had a mobo from them for a few years now and it has worked fantastically, but not too sure about laptops.

Your collective thoughts?

[Sora]

Asus make quite some good gaming notebooks actually. They are my favorite to recommend to people becuase of the gaming performance they offer for the price.

[ThirdLeft152]

i was looking at that exact laptop when i was fixing to purchase one and from the specs it looks like it would handle games fairly well.

while it is not a power house it supposedly will score a hefty 2000 in 3dmark06.

Notebookcheck: Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List

its probably not the most reliable site but it looks pretty good to me. someone correct me if im wrong.

[Sora]

Combined with the CPU the whole notebook I would say that it would get around 4k maybe which is in no way a bad 3Dmark06 score.

[ThirdLeft152]

no not at all. im still a little iffy about my choice of laptops lol. i ended up getting a thinkpad r61, but i think i decided i wanted more work/school related features then gaming. i mean thats the reason why i have my desktop.

[Nukem]

Newegg.com - ASUS F3 Series F3SE-X1 NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T7100(1.80GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA 1GB DDR2 667 160GB 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon X2500 - Retail

the CPU isn't 2.0 (Which won't matter much) but you get the better graphics card and bigger HDD...

or you could go with something like this that has all you want, plus a decnet GPU, HDD, etc...

Newegg.com - HP Pavilion dv9330us (RV112UA) NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T5300(1.73GHz) 17.0" Wide XGA+ 2GB 160GB 5400rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 - Retail

[kobe24]

yeah hp laptops i hear r not bad

[nitevision88]

Newegg.com - ASUS F3 Series F3JP-AP035C-A NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T7200(2.00GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA 1GB DDR2 667 120GB 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 - Retail

** I messed up the original link. But yeah - how exactly is the X2500 (on the other Asus that was suggested) a better graphics card if it's 128VRAM versus the 256VRAM of the X1700. Won't the 256 be better in the long run?

[nitevision88]

Thanks for the replies.

After reading a little bit more, I'm starting to think that perhaps the
(Newegg.com - ASUS F3 Series F3JP-AS096C NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T7200(2.00GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA+ 1GB DDR2 667 160GB 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 - Retail)
would be worth the extra cash, considering the larger hard drive space and the WXGA+ with 1440 x 900 res, versus the 120GB and 1280x800 res of the (Newegg.com - ASUS F3 Series F3JP-AP035C-A NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T7200(2.00GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA 1GB DDR2 667 120GB 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 - Retail) model. Especially because CDW offers the AS096C model and I can get a bit of a discount there via my dad's company.

Since I do tend to multi-task quite a bit and use the computer for many things at once, the real-estate on the screen is definitely important, so I'm thinking it might be a good idea to opt for a higher resolution. Although, I'm not sure about gaming with the higher res if the graphics card is not extremely top of the line. Do any problems arise when one games with a resolution that is lower than the pc's native resolution?

Figuring that I'll get at least 10% off if I buy the $1400 notebook at CDW, should anything be stopping me from going ahead and buying the AS096C model? Or does anyone think that perhaps there is another, similarly priced notebook that I should get instead?

[baron5]

wen it comes to laptops i have heard as mentioned asus are great brand to consider and also i looked at some great msi notebooks too.