How's this laptop?

My old Everex XT5000T with nvidia go 7600 finally went belly up. In my search for a less than $1000 laptop that still runs CoH reasonably well, I came across this Samsung laptop.

http://www.circuitcity.com/applicati...25&CatId=4939+

Anyone out there using this and if so how is the performance? Is a GT540M capable of running UM at a medium level? I can't find it on gpureview.com to compare it.

Thanks

<- Interested in seeing the replies.

At first glance it looks like it should play on moderate settings very well.
But I don't know much about the "NVIDIA GeForce GT540M"

Here's some information on 540M

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.41715.0.html

it does seem likely it will support at least some level of UM

FYI - I may be delaying purchase of this laptop. Appears the 540M has something called Optimus technology that switches it between an integrated video and the discrete nvidia 540M for gaming.

Unfortunately, it looks like a bunch of games (maybe even CoH) has trouble with this since the launcher checks the video card capability before the game triggers the switch to gaming graphics.

Its starting to become the norm on laptops now. Maybe there are others who have Nvidia based laptops with OPTIMUS. It should go smoothly into "gaming mode" with a quick blink while it swaps from IGP to discrete.

We all know the fun with ATI drivers right (Read all the posts about how much fun we have with ATI drivers) So things might not be greener (or in the case of ATI redder) on the other side of the street.

That said, the Llano based laptops might be what you are looking for. They just released a few models of laptops with Llano based APUs. It should offer "decent" gaming performance* for a laptop for about $700. Expect more to be released "soon"

*no comment about the term "gaming laptop" and performance.

Like many "gaming laptops" make sure to get a beefy laptop cooler to keep the heat down on these things. Most of these things get really hot and I do mean hot.

17" screen will make the thing fairly heavy.

I find if you do want to buy one of these things, extended warranty is a good idea. Cost to repair after 1 year is usually enough that if something does blow (most only have a 1 year warranty), it would be cheaper to buy a new one. After 3 years you will have gotten your moneys worth out of the thing.

I'm dealing with a relative's Sony Vaio who uses it to play that "3 letter game we won't mention" well after 14 months it died. Just to send the thing to sony is $179.99 and "major repair" will cost $449-$600. So sucks to be him. I told him just buy a new one. Moral if you fork over big dough for a gaming laptop, fork over more for an extended warrany. It isn't that much more and considering the reliability of laptops, its good insurance.

YMMV.

According to this thread the problems with the nVidia Optimus thing should have been fixed with i20 - can anyone confirm? I was considering the same laptop.

Just for the record, I bit the bullet and went ahead and bought the laptop I was looking at - I got the RF511 with the 15" screen, rather than the 17" RF711.

I can definitely confirm that there's no problems with the Optimus thing, and the GT540M does kick in when you fire up CoH - I'm comfortably getting 30+ fps frame rates with the Graphics Quality slider put up to Ultra (haven't played around with the Advanced Graphics Settings though). Cranking the FSAA all the way up has a noticeable effect, but setting it to 4x still gives me 25+ fps, which is fine for me. Overall I'm perfectly happy with the laptop so far - it's not the most powerful around, but it does a pretty damn good job for the price.

(The 17" model does have a higher resolution screen though, so the results for that might be slightly different of course.)

I'm able to get playable results with minimal UM on my 1366x768 resolution Alienware MX11 laptop running a mobile Nvidia 310 card (again with Optimus).

For that matter I'm able to get pretty decent performance out of a cheap $500 laptop (non-UM of course) so anything recent with a discrete vid card should be adequate, obviously the better the card the better the performance. My 4 year old 1600x900 resolution laptop with a mobile 7950GTX card handles moderate UM and manages a framerate in the 30-40 range.