Laptop CPU/GPU processors?

[Guest theeldergeek]

I'm looking for a gaming laptop, and see the new breed of CPU's are "i5" and "i7" - huh?? What happened to Core 2 and Quad??

 

Anyway, I'm currently gaming on a Win7 Dell XPS M1710, but despite it being a high spec lappie in its day, it doesn't quite cut the mustard with Win 7 and games. It used to be OK playing BF2 using Windows XP, but it is struggling under Win7 for some reason.

 

So, the hunt is on for a gaming laptop, 17" screen preferred, but it really has got to be able to play BF2 and Modern Warfare type games at a decent resolution and frame rate.

 

I'm afraid high end and modern spec is something I've lost touch with these days, so can anyone help me out with some insight/comparisions of processors and hardware which could serve the purpose intended?

 

I really don't know what I want (Acer, Alienware, Rock?) but I guess my budget is going to be top end £1500 max.

[SYNACK]

First up stay well clear of Alienware, they are shocking in support, reliability, service etc.

 

i7 is better than i5, here is the table of i7s Intel Core i7 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, the mobile ones are the Clarksfield (i7 9xxQM, 8xxQM, 7xxQM) and arrandale ones with the arandale being the later and probably more powerful ones (i7 6xx M)

 

The new ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 5800 Series Graphics GPUs are probably the best mobile ones about at the moment.

[RinSewand]

Might be a daft suggestion - but have you gone and manually found the newest drivers for your current laptop? 7 should have roughly the same performance as your XP install if done right...

[Guest theeldergeek]

Might be a daft suggestion - but have you gone and manually found the newest drivers for your current laptop? 7 should have roughly the same performance as your XP install if done right...

 

Yeah, that's what I thought. I've turned Aero off, and dumbed down all the other niceties that Win 7 brings, but I'm still finding jerky gameplay at anything over 1024 x 768.

 

Of course, it could simply be BF2 is pants on Win 7

 

I did note that the drivers I was using were beta Nvidia for the GPU, so I have downloaded and am now using the Dell Vista32 driver. Haven't had chance to play the game yet, so will do that tonight and see what happens.

 

Would still like a spanky new lappie though

[Arthur]

For £1,500 you could get a really nice gaming desktop (or SFF) with a big LCD which will be even better for playing the latest games on.

 

For the money, it's hard to beat Asus' gaming laptops. If I had to get one I would go for something which has a Core i7 and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 like the G73JH-A1.

[danrhodes]

+1 REP for Asus Gaming I run a rig of pure asus, and intel and OCZ. Never had a single issue!

[Guest theeldergeek]

For £1,500 you could get a really really nice gaming desktop (or SFF) with a big LCD which will be even better for playing the latest games on.

 

For the money, it's hard to beat Asus' gaming laptops. If I had to get one I would go for something which has a Core i7 and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 like the G73JH-A1.

 

I've had to give up my desktop machine (hand built with love, care and devotion) as SHMBO wants her dining area back, so a laptop is my only real option as we just don't have the room for me to set up a desk with desktop machine

 

I'll take a look at the Asus machines, not a brand I'd thought about to be honest.

[ahuxham]

Everyone harps on about the 920 d0 stepping being the end all, however the 930 is out now and the 920's are starting to fade, they are costly, added you need triple channel memory and a socket 1366 motherboard (X58 Chipset)

 

Where as the i5 750 will clock to the to 2.66ghz verse 2.80ghz of the i7. Both will overclock to 4.00Ghz without any fuss, and then the only difference being Hyperthreading of the i7, and having 8 threads (Two per core) verse the 1 per core of the i5. There really isn't an application demand for having 8 threads.

 

i5 uses the P55/H55 chipset as well which is faultless.

 

 

And to answer the question as why new chips are out.

 

1) New manufacturing process, moving everything to 45nm, and now 32nm.

2) Greener processors, the smaller the nm, the less W they need (or so they say)

3) Triple Channel memory, 1800-2100mhz frequencies.

 

4) The new 32nm Intel Core i9 is due for release very soon, 6-core, 12-threads, expect the £1000 price range for that.

[Potato-Peeler]

Dell do a studio xps for just under £700 with an i-7 mobile, 4 gb of ddr3 ram, and a decent radeon gfx. I have been trying to justify it for myself recently

The Dell Online Store: Build Your System

And both the i-5 and the i-7 are quad core, thought i believe only the i-7 has hyper threading, so the i-7 can have upto 8 threads running at once.