High Detail Gaming and 3DMark
We also ran several of the games at higher detail settings to put more of a load on the graphics cards. Not surprisingly, performance sometimes becomes unacceptable at higher resolutions and detail settings with these laptops, depending on the game. The GeForce 9800M GTS and 8800M GTX may be some of the fastest mobile graphics chips currently available, but they're both still slower than a single desktop 8800 GT 512MB because of the more stringent power requirements. We'll also include 3DMark results here for reference; we put a lot more stock in gaming performance than in 3DMark results, but at least 3DMark results are easily generated and easily compared.
The patterns on the previous page are continued for the most part, with a couple items that bear mention. First, Assassin's Creed DX10 is faster than the DX9 version on the Sager NP9262, so there's at least some small driver glitch with the tested NVIDIA SLI drivers. You can also see that several of the games are all but unplayable on everything but the Sager NP9262, particularly at 1920x1200. It's interesting that the Sager is still CPU limited in quite a few situations, so the faster models that are now shipping will benefit from the CPU upgrade.
Looking at the 3DMark results (and then hurriedly moving on), most of the charts are similar to the gaming results. The integrated graphics on the Alienware m15x are clearly not for gaming, with performance that's about 5% of the slowest of the gaming laptops. It also is unable to run in 3DMark Vantage, since it lacks DX10 support. While you definitely won't want to do serious gaming using the X3100, we will see in a moment how useful it is when we get to the battery life tests.
As a final summary of gaming performance, we offer the following table comparing relative performance between the various graphics solutions at 1920x1200. While CPU and platform will still have a small impact, in most cases the GPU(s) are what will determine frame rates at higher resolutions.
| Performance Relative to GeForce 8800M GTS (Gateway P-171XL) | ||||
| Gateway P-171XL FX | Gateway P-7811 FX | Alienware m15x | Sager NP9262 | |
| Assassin's Creed DX9 | 100.0% | 119.9% | 124.2% | 150.3% |
| Assassin's Creed DX10 | 100.0% | 103.9% | 116.5% | 226.0% |
| Company of Heroes DX9 | 100.0% | 118.4% | 132.5% | 255.7% |
| Company of Heroes DX10 | 100.0% | 117.4% | 124.3% | 275.7% |
| Crysis - Medium | 100.0% | 103.1% | 123.7% | 261.2% |
| Crysis - High | 100.0% | 106.7% | 126.9% | 251.3% |
| Devil May Cry 4 | 100.0% | 155.0% | 163.5% | 177.2% |
| ET Quake Wars 0xAA | 100.0% | 100.3% | 108.6% | 167.5% |
| ET Quake Wars 4xAA | 100.0% | 99.5% | 104.2% | 182.1% |
| Race Driver: GRID 0xAA | 100.0% | 122.4% | 127.3% | 205.9% |
| Race Driver: GRID 4xAA | 100.0% | 118.1% | 120.2% | 227.0% |
| Mass Effect | 100.0% | 114.2% | 120.2% | 190.4% |
| Oblivion | 100.0% | 124.3% | 129.7% | 236.9% |
| Unreal Tournament 3 | 100.0% | 128.9% | 126.9% | 195.7% |
| Average All Games | 100.0% | 116.6% | 124.9% | 214.5% |
| Average for HQ Settings | 100.0% | 112.0% | 120.3% | 227.0% |
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JarredWalton - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
We reviewed that http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=324...">six months ago. Dell hasn't updated it to support the 9800M (yet?), but otherwise it would be very comparable in performance to the Sager unit. The Sager is still a bit faster because of the desktop CPU, and it consumes a bit more power and is a bit heavier. The Dell is also more expensive because of the cost of mobile CPUs, so if you want i.e. an X9000, it's over 3X the cost of an E9500. Since both weigh a lot and cost a lot, you might as well get the fractionally larger Sager/Clevo.cheetah2k - Monday, September 1, 2008 - link
I understand you reviewed the 1730 6+months ago (and I bought one based on that review with the extreme CPU and SLi 8800GTX's) however some of us would like to see how it still stacks up to the competition, and being a "round-up" and all, I think it makes sense to include it, even if its just for old time sake.JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 2, 2008 - link
I did mention the laptop, and there are a few games where we tested on both laptops. However, we don't generally get to hang onto $5000 laptops for a long time, so I can't just go back and retest the M1730. In terms of performance, the Sager is going to be slightly faster on the CPU, but overall gaming performance is a tie. If I were to pick between the two now, I would probably go with the Sager for the high-end, because price is a bit cheaper for the same level of performance. Plus you can run quad-core if you want (though that's not really useful for games). I'd be much more likely to go with the Gateway units for the price, but obviously the Dell and Sager are over twice as fast in most games.SniperWulf - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link
While I agree with you on the astetics of the P series, its price/performance ratio and upgradability are unmatched at the moment. A few months back, I picked up a 6860FX and have been nothing but pleased with it. I've replaced the CPU with a used X7800 ES, and swapped the hard drives for 2x Hitachi 200GBs in a Raid 0 array.I didn't do it all at the same time of course, but thats the beauty of it. Whenever you need a lil bit more horsepower, all you have to do is just shop around for parts
Kardax - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link
I took a chance and got a P-7811 a couple weeks ago. Its stability has been rock-solid, even after hours of intense load.My only complaint would be that the keyboard has a Bluetooth enable/disable option, but there's apparently no Bluetooth hardware inside...
JarredWalton - Friday, August 29, 2008 - link
Hi guys,I'm *sure* there are typos in the article (or errors in speech recognition). I've spent most of the past two days trying to finish all the writing and graphs, so go easy on me while I get some sleep. In the meantime, if you want to point out errors, reply to this post and we'll (eventually) correct them. Hopefully, none of the issues "ruin" the article for you or make it "unreadable". ;-)
Good night,
Jarred Walton
Senior Editor