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General Category => Technology and Programming => Topic started by: Alexander Morou on August 19, 2008, 12:34:25 am

Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Alexander Morou on August 19, 2008, 12:34:25 am
Greetings,

I'm thinking about buying a new laptop (so I don't have to pack up and nearly forget ten cords, a bulky keyboard, a large monitor, and a mouse), but before I drop nearly five grand, I was wondering if it would even do what I need, here's the specifications of the laptop I'm eying:

  Alienware Area-51 m17x Extreme Gaming Notebook
The reason for such stupid specs in certain areas is the demand I'll be placing on the system.  I'm about to do heavy research in 3D programming, 3D modeling, and heavy image or media design.  As it is it's not uncommon for me to over utilize my system at 1 GB (so 2GB of usage is normal, but I don't go higher because my system just lags).  I also don't breach 2GB usage due to my system just not being able to handle higher intensity programs.

If I decide to go for this, it'll take about three months to save up for, which means when I'm done it might even be cheaper than the 4923 price tag.

If you think I'm crazy, perhaps you can suggest some alternatives.  Just remember I'm a programmer and a program not working on a 64 bit system merely means I find a way to make it work (though sometimes not possible).  The software I use now is mostly 64-bit compatible, and the software I make is based upon a framework that's scale-able to 64 bit with ease (just a recompile).

I'm not terribly fond of Vista, but Microsoft's recent decision to retire XP and stop distributing it to PC manufacturers makes it difficult to do much else.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Mama Luigi on August 19, 2008, 04:54:10 am
Correct me if I'm wrong, but would you not want a mobile workstation graphics card?

Lenovo ThinkPad W700 (http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?vt=5&GroupID=37&Code=W700_AMD&hide_menu_area=true)
(btw this is the only laptop I could find with a Quadro FX 3700 (http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_3700_m_us.html))

Also, you can deck the SHIT out of this thing. Yes, you can even have a Wacom digitizer ON YOUR NOTEBOOK. It looks to run circles around that overpriced Alienware shit.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: ATARI on August 19, 2008, 04:00:48 pm
You can use altered drivers on graphic work station cards like the Quadro that gear it more towards games rather than for work station applications.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Carrion Crow on August 19, 2008, 09:43:01 pm
My friend has an alienware from 2 years ago and it won't play guitar hero. Nuff said.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Terin on August 20, 2008, 03:28:33 am
Alienware's are notorious for getting VERY hot.  I know a few people who got them as gaming laptops and they constantly shut off automatically from overheating.

Most of what you want to do can be done with any Core 2 and a good/reasonable graphics card.  I was looking at a Dell Studio 17" (with the 1080p built in) and maxing out the processor, screen, and video card, and tossing in a few other widgets and it set my price at about $1500.  Toss in an employee/student discount and a coupon and you may be in business for closer to just $1000.

I don't think we're going to get more for buying an Alienware vs. a Dell, other than fwapping rights.  If you really want a crazy-ass machine, go to ibuypower.com; you can easily drop a lot of money there.  Their highest end gaming laptop IS probably worth the money and a SHITLOAD better than an Alienware, just for the sake that it has things like a Quad Core in it, 2x graphics cards, 2x HDD blocks, 1080p resolution, etc, etc.  Sad fact, though: it probably only has 15 minutes of battery life.

Check this puppy out and drop your jaw: http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/configurator.aspx?mid=293

Just my few cents, though.
--Terin
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Mama Luigi on August 20, 2008, 03:56:15 am
Anyone know how the Quadro FX 3700M stacks up against 2 9800M GTs in SLI?
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Alexander Morou on August 21, 2008, 12:03:25 am
Well, I decided I'm going to save up a little longer and get a desktop that makes the laptop unable to compare.  This time, I'll be building it myself.  Perhaps the people here can verify the build status (ie. does this combo clash) of what I've selected:

















































Name
Description
Price (USD)

Processor
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 Yorkfield 3.2 GHZ - 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775 136W Quad Core
$1459.99

Memory
Corsair 2x4096MB (2x2048) PC12800 DDR3 1600MHz Memory
$1011.98

Motherboard
XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard - NVIDIA nForce 790i, Socket 775, ATX, Audio, PCI Express 2.0, SLI Ready, Dual Gigabit LAN, S/PDIF, USB 2.0, Firewire, eSATA, RAID
$349.99

Hard Drive
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
$294.99

LCD monitor
Samsung 305T 30" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 6ms, 1000:1, WQXGA 2560x1600, Dual DVI-D, USB
$1249.99

Power Supply
Cooler Master Real Power Pro 1250-Watt Power Supply - SLI Ready, 80PLUC, 135mm Fan
$329.99

Video Cards
3xBFG GeForce GTX 280 Video Card - 1GB GDDR3, PCI Express 2.0 x16, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, HDMI Support, VGA Support
$1349.97

Total
$6046.90

Hopefully after three months of saving, the prices will have dropped a bit.  As far as cooling solutions go, I was thinking about a Liquid Cooled system, but I'm not sure what would be best in this case (mostly for noise reduction).  The optical drive would be a standard drive I've lying around (in my old dell), case, I'll figure out once I decide what I want visually.

Anyone know anything about noise reduction kits?
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Mama Luigi on August 21, 2008, 06:38:51 am
Jesus-titty-fucking-christ.





Uh... for one I guess I'd say go for water cooling. I have no personal experience with it but yeah that's a must if you want a cool and quiet system... so I hear. Maybe invest in a SSD drive to put your operating system on? 16GB would be good. Also - it would be criminal to not put a Blu-Ray drive on that if you like movies. You may want to invest in a nice sound system too.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Alexander Morou on August 21, 2008, 07:07:17 am
I think I'll start with what I have listed and invest in the Blu-ray later on.

Edit:
I've decided if I do go forward, it'll be liquid cooled.  I'm also hoping that the Intel Skulltrail motherboard gets a much needed update to allow the upcoming Core i7 processor (as in something similar to a Skulltrail 2).  I also have to consider a few things, whether the purchase can be warranted.  For a six grand computer I could replace the engine, and transmission in my car, and repaint it.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Mama Luigi on August 21, 2008, 03:15:55 pm
Your car will hold it's value a LOT better than any computer you build/buy.

As a general rule of thumb, computers lose their value at about 2% per week... then the next week they lose 2% of that value, ad infinitum.

... not trying to talk you out of it... actually sort of. If you build a brand new price meets performance PC you'll end up spending about $700-$900. A computer with these specs will run any game (including Crysis) fine but will also have enough horsepower to do those cpu-intensive things like you mentioned.

Here's this "price meets performance" PC I'm talking about:

CPU - e7200 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115052)
A great overclocker and is the same as its e8200 brother, minus some 3 megs of L2 cache.

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-EP45C-DS3R (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128351)
Has some great features, including DDR2 and DDR3 RAM slots. With the processor I pointed out, DDR2 800 would be fine, but if you ever upgraded your processor you could get some more powerful RAM.

Video Card - GTX 260 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130370) or Radeon HD 4870 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129113)
Both these cards show similar performance. If it was a month ago I would have strongly encouraged the Radeon but a friend got one and tells me his video card gets really hot and his comp crashes a lot due to shotty drivers. Idk though, don't take his word for it.

PSU - OCZ 700w PSU (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341002)
Very good price per watt, and OCZ is actually a pretty quality PSU manufacturer. Good deal, in my opinion.

Case - I'll let you decide ;)

HDD - Western Digital 640GB 7200 RPM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218) x 2
Get 2 of these and run them in RAID 0. You'll see a nice performance gain in your computer.

This will land you somewhere around the $900 to $1000... depending on the case you get and what kind of shipping charges you'll have.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Alexander Morou on August 21, 2008, 03:43:47 pm
My car's worth 1500, so if I sink 6 grand in it, I can get 1500 to sell it.  The problem with cars is once they devalue, they don't go back up, unless it's to enthusiasts for that specific car.
Edit:
To go along with what you were saying above, which wasn't there when I originally posted O_o;

The other reason for the stupid specs is I've always wanted to build a PC where I didn't have to worry about the price.  Which is why I'm saving up to do it.  By the time I have the money, the specs might even improve.

The reason for the triple GPU solution is to see exactly what this GPU killer Crysis really is like with a 3way SLI solution that should at least be playable (http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-280-sli-triple-review-test/13) at 2560x1600 on max settings.  I'm currently using a 15.4" HP Pavillion Laptop with 1GB system memory, a video card that uses system RAM to work, I can't even play Half Life on this thing.

There's one more thing I might need to add:
I code in a managed world.  Which means I have a higher spec minimum than a straight C++ game.  It also means that I have to be very careful on how I manage memory to prevent GC stutter.  To prevent the managed architecture from causing an issue when I do start to get into 3D development, I think I'll need specs that are above the norm (that is: C# vs. C++).
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Mama Luigi on August 21, 2008, 04:20:26 pm
:| if you say so.

That is a shit-ton of money though. I just don't see this thing really paying for itself... maybe you do (and you would have a much better idea than I would). If you make a lot of money then I'm sure this really is nothing to you.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Alexander Morou on August 21, 2008, 05:13:05 pm
I take home about 400 USD a week.  So when I say it'll take 4 months (assuming 4.3333333333- weeks per month...) or so to save up to buy this, that's if I save every dime I can (minus rent, food, et cetera).

It'll be the last computer I'll ever buy for a while, so if that's the case, I might as well make it worth it.

As far as paying for itself, there's a certain satisfaction I'll gain from finally getting a system that's not two to five generations old when I power it up.  Not only that but being able to get into 3d programming will help, the extra horsepower is just for kicks.


Edit: Might be a bit longer than I thought.

Custom Liquid Cooling systems aren't cheap.  The ones that are cheap, are closed systems that cool specific systems.  From my estimates, the total price for cooling the system is about 800-1,000 USD.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: ATARI on August 21, 2008, 05:57:41 pm
okay
since mama luigi won't say it, I will

you're a fucking idiot if you spend 6000+ dollars on a computer
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Alexander Morou on August 21, 2008, 06:04:28 pm
Why thank you.

I'm not only an idiot, but a fucking idiot.

What I spend my money on is my business.

You can lock this.
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: ATARI on August 21, 2008, 06:09:03 pm
what i never said you shouldn't do it go right ahead
Title: Thinking about a new desktop (no longer a laptop)...
Post by: Bill Murray on August 25, 2008, 02:21:47 pm
haha nice thread 20 points