PocketMatrix

What about a Dell Inspiron 4150? I was able to configure one now with these features for $1700:

-Pentium 4 @ 1.7 GHz
-14.1" SXGA+
-256 megs RAM
-8x DVD/24x CDRW
-40 gig HD
-3 year warranty
-32 meg Mobility Radeon

It looks good, but I'm worried about the Radeon. Is it crap? How does it compare to a GeForce 2 GTS?


On another note can't believe how completely stupid I was when I bought my notebook. This was last summer, and I decided to spend about $500 on it:
-PII @ 233 MHz
-224 megs RAM
-20 gig HD
-13.3" XGA
-2 meg NeoMagic 128XD (obviously no 3D)

Now the damn thing's falling apart... the screen has black spots, the speaker volume is quirky, and the battery only lasts about 30 minutes even though I rarely actually use the battery

I guess I should've saved up a tiny bit more...

Oh well, sorry for being off-topic.

If you want to play games get atleast 512MB's of RAM if you can afford it. It's better to get more RAM and a slower CPU than less RAM and a faster CPU, especially a mobile CPU.

The Mobility Radeon 9000 is the fastest mobile GPU today. (http://www.anandtech.com). However, Nvidia is planning on releasing in early January (unless plans have changed) a mobile Geforce4 Ti 4600 that's 50% faster, in the weakest test, than the Radeon. The plans might have changed, however, because Nvidia is going to release a GeforceFX mobile GPU in March, the same time as the desktop GPU.

Plus, if at all possible, order the Dell UltraSharp 15" LCD screen. It's amazingly bright. There's nothing like it.

Wait a second... I thought that before Dell offered a UXGA (1600x1200) screen with the 4000 series Inspirons... however, the feature seems to have disappeared. Why?

No, not really.

The problem is that with shared memory you get horrible contention for the RAM. Look at it this way - with normal RAM only one thing can be read/written at a time. So, when manufacturers put the graphics card memory as "shared", it means that whenever the graphics card reads memory to throw out at the screen (and a graphics card is a high-bandwidth device by default these days).. the processor is RAM-starved... which is not good. You throw stuff at the screen.. and your processor sits there twiddling its thumbs.

Basically it means that for gaming performance, having shared memory cripples both the graphics card and the processor when they're used together.. which is exactly what a game does. It's going to *stink* performance-wise (I suspect).