Calling all techies

[impp]

OK got a bit of cash burning a hole in my pocket, thinking a new laptop is the cure. Do you think either of these two systems will be able to run RO?

System 1
17.3" 1920x1080 Full HD LED Backlit X-Glass
Intel® Core i7 980X EE Six Core Processor 3.33GHz 12MB Cache 32nm
2x NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 485M 2GB GDDR5, 384 CUDA Cores, DX11 & PhysX
12GB Triple Channel DDR3 1333Mhz 3x 4GB DIMM
256GB Crucial RealSSD C300
320GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid with integrated 4GB SSD
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
8x DVD±R/W
Intel 6300 Ultimate-N WIFI module

System 2
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Six-Core 3.3Ghz 1366mhz w 12MB cache
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
2x NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 480M 2Gb GDDR5 DX11 in SLI
17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) Screen
12Gb DDR3 1333MHz (Tri-Channel)
256Gb Solid State Drive
250Gb 7200rpm SATA HDD
Blu-Ray-Writer Drive (with Blu-Ray Playback S/ware
Intel 6300 Ultimate-N 802.11 a/b/g/n up to 450Mbps

Quite surprisingly the second one is more expensive than the first?!?

Should I? Grateful if you guys could have a look and let me know if I am crazy?

[Cuchulainn]

I would rather buy a cheap notebook or netbook + favorable PC+22" monitor, instead of such a overpowered and overpriced 17" notebook. Hardly any person needs more than 4 GB RAM or more than 4 CPU cores. I hardly use all of my 2 GB RAM my PC has.

If you need a mobile computer with good battery life, you would probably buy something else.

But if you conviced you have advantage of so many RAM and CPU cores or if you have much money to waste, you can buy it ofc.

Quite surprisingly the second one is more expensive than the first?!?

The second one has a bluray drive. This makes a difference of about 100 euros. The brand, which you didn't tell us, could also make a difference.

[WhateverUSMC]

I am not a fan of laptops. I understand that, if academics are involved, than maybe one would be needed. If not...

First, net books and laptops are very good at being portable. However, that portability *usually* comes with a major cost; performance. Granted, I am certain both of these units you mentioned could run RO, and possibly well at that, but here's the other thing;

Repairs; laptops are small, and their parts tend to be smaller and more expensive to replace, especially if the parts are coming from overseas and subject to high tariffs (not to mention, some require bulk orders, i.e. you'd need to buy 12 main boards to get the 1 you wanted). Of particular note is the video chip, which on laptops is hard wired to the main board, requiring a send-in to fix.

Overall, I've found desktop towers to be cheaper and easier to fix/upgrade/replace.

My advise, I suppose, would be this; warranty and insure whichever one you get.

[Znurre]

My experience from having a gaming laptop has been pretty good.
It's easy to bring to LAN, has medium battery lifetime (2 hours) even with a 9650GT Mobile, and can run Regnum just fine.
However, one thing that is usually overlooked in laptop designs is the cooling.
Although my laptop can run Regnum at ~120 fps when I start it, it soon drops down to ~20-40 as soon as the GPU reaches about 90 degrees.
There is no way to cool that, and those laptop coolers sucks.

[Knekelvoeste]

Originally Posted by Znurre

My experience from having a gaming laptop has been pretty good.
It's easy to bring to LAN, has medium battery lifetime (2 hours) even with a 9650GT Mobile, and can run Regnum just fine.
However, one thing that is usually overlooked in laptop designs is the cooling.
Although my laptop can run Regnum at ~120 fps when I start it, it soon drops down to ~20-40 as soon as the GPU reaches about 90 degrees.
There is no way to cool that, and those laptop coolers sucks.

Make sure you keep it clean. I had the same with my laptop it was around 95 degrees celsius when gaming. So i cleaned the cooler (It was full with dust). It won't get any warmer than 60 degrees now.

[Znurre]

Originally Posted by Knekelvoeste

Make sure you keep it clean. I had the same with my laptop it was around 95 degrees celsius when gaming. So i cleaned the cooler (It was full with dust). It won't get any warmer than 60 degrees now.

Will try that.
The fan is making noises too, cleaning it might solve that

[-Logan-]

I run a gaming laptop and I can pretty much sum up what has been said. It doesn't matter how powerful your laptop is, the main problem you will run into after a few months is rapid overheating.

You can buy a cooling pad to keep underneath your laptop, but even those are usually expensive with minimal effect, or cheap and it breaks under the heat. Considering you buy one that runs on USB fans, well, then you're simply going to be blowing out power. There are even some that you can freeze up first in a freezer or whatever, and then use, but it would get pretty tedious imo to constantly freeze and refreeze it over and over again.

I love my gaming laptop, like Znurre said it's great for having more freedom and being able to take your games with you on the go, playing on your bed, on a couch, etc. It gets pretty boring (and sometimes unhealthy) to sit in the same spot for so long like you do with a desktop PC.

The only thing you need to watch is your cooling, nothing is perfect.

As far as an actual laptop goes, I'm pretty happy with my Samsung laptop. When compared to other laptops for the same price, I got nearly twice as powerful hardware. You don't need computers with those kind of specs you mentioned to smoothly run games, even for a 64bit system. I guess you could buy it in order to be a little ahead with games in terms of system requirements over the next few years, but will your computer still be in tip-top shape by then ?

The nVidia 9000M series cards can run Regnum with a little bit above average performance rating.

[Knekelvoeste]

Originally Posted by Znurre

Will try that.
The fan is making noises too, cleaning it might solve that

Watch out with those wretched plugs though Managed to pull it off the motherboard but i had the cables in my hand but the plug was still in the motherboard damnit..

[impp]

Thanks so far guys. Needed a reality check. Btw the first systems is a rock xtreme and the second a kolbalt. £4.5 and £4k respectively.

Currently running an acer 6920g, with 4gb mem on win7 64-bit. Idiots at acer sell it with vista 32-bit!?!? Which is limited to 4gb total not counting cache, video card etc.

The vc is a 9500m with 512mb dedicated which really struggles with RO since the last update. Fort Wars are robotic.

Maybe i should just look at getting a new video card???

Oh btw both of the systems are sold with win7 home which would suck as it is limited to 16gb system mem and these would have more.

[Mattdoesrock]

Originally Posted by impp

Thanks so far guys. Needed a reality check. Btw the first systems is a rock xtreme and the second a kolbalt. £4.5 and £4k respectively.

Hey, don't you owe me £4k/£4.5k?