Just ordered a T42p (GVU) from Bill

[asiafish]

T42p 2373-GVU, seems from the chatter on this forum to be a good machine.

Does anyone have any experience playing "Sith Lords: knights of the Old Republic 2" on the same or similar model? How about Doom 3?

I use my Apple PowerBook for most WORK-work, and bought the ThinkPad for the serious work of movies and games.

My only worry is that the 1200X1040 resolution isn't supported by most games, which will force a non-native resolution that on some LCDs jsut doesn't look that great. How do these panels work at 1024X768 or 800X600? Is the image quality tollerable for gaming?

Andrew

[Nabeel]

I play 'em at those resolutions, theyre more than tolerable..look just fine!

[asiafish]

Just arrived! I'll get back on once I put it through its paces. Rome: Total War should arrive in today's mail, that should be a decent test!

[Kingwulf]

Do you remember whats included in your new 2373GVU box when you first got it?

I bought GVU from ebay and he claimed its new but it does not include the extra trackpoints and 1 mini screw (for the removable CD/DVD drive I assume) which I recived with my old 9XU.

[asiafish]

Yes, my GVU included the trackpoint caps and the screw for the optical drive latch.

[T42p]

So did mine....This stuff should be included

[gcchatel]

Yeah, that's my machine too. I've had it since last august, I haven't had one problem with it. Mine came with trackpoints and the screw also. You'll love it!

[asiafish]

I second that. Hardware-wise, this is by far the best laptop I've ever owned.

[mlykke]

So asiafish what about telling us how it performs in the games you mentioned and so on so all us other who still havent decided can benefit from your knowledge?

[asiafish]

Doom3 is fast enough to play, though not as fast as a real gaming rig (I don't know how many FPS as I really never bothered with benchmarks, just playing the game). It is slower than Doom II was only my old Pentium II back in the day, but not jittery unless the screen is filled with monsters (more than 4).

Rome Total War and Knights of the Old Republic 2 play beautifully (Kotor2 is buggy on any system though). These games play at full speed without the slightest hint of jitters.

The GVU makes an outstanding game machine, at least for me, as I have no desire to lug a 9lb monster when I go to play a game.

[mlykke]

Hmmm...slower than Doom 2 on a Pentium 2? Thats a LOUSY performance. Hell i could play Doom 2 on a 486....So that would indicate something like 3 frames a second witht hat comparison

Isnt there a way to turn on a FPS indicator in Doom 3? Dosnt most games have that option today otherwise its pretty hard to test.

[asiafish]

Pentium II was cutting edge when Doom 2 was released and played very smoothly.

[mlykke]

Oh well.....im not feeling more sure of anything. Some claim to get decent Doom 3 performance on even the regular T42 with 9600.

[asiafish]

9600 will be just as fast as FireGL on Doom3, maybe even a tad faster as its drivers are optimized for games. The only advantage for gaming of the FireGL is that it has double the memory, so more of the textures and what-now can be enabled. I haven't tried it on a regular T42, but I would imagine they are almost the same.

[mlykke]

[censored]! Excuse me for my language but what the hell is the point in getting the T42p then if its just the same?
I can buy the normal T42 and upgrade it with more memory and so on for a smaller price.

[asiafish]

The T42p was never designed for games. The reason to spend more is for applications that require an openGL certified workstation chipset.

You can add more system memory to a regular T42, but you cannot add more video memory. The 9600 chip in the standard T42 has 64MB of VRAM, and that is all it will ever have. The FireGL in the T42p has 128MB of VRAM.

In some games, the gaming-optimized drivers available for the 9600 give a bigger boost than the added memory of the FireGL, while in others, the opposite may be true.

I use my T42p to play games and I've been very happy with the performance. If I was after ultimate gaming performance, however, I would have bought one of the 12lb Alienware things. As I prefer a lightweight machine with excellent ergonomics, I went for the T42, and since I had some extra money to burn, I bought the "P".

[mlykke]

Yeah - Im not after ultimate gaming performance. Fact is i would proberbly only be gaming once every 6 months - Im just being picky since i will be paying a decent amount more for an IBM

But i found the solution - I just ordered the biggest T42p and the biggest T43p so i can check things out for myself. Both in regards to video performance but also the noise level.

[asiafish]

The two should be almost the same in every aspect of performance, with the new one slightly faster, but not a lot.

[danny_isr]

[censored]! Excuse me for my language but what the hell is the point in getting the T42p then if its just the same?
I can buy the normal T42 and upgrade it with more memory and so on for a smaller price.

yeah sounds weird to me too.
T43- x300 getting slammed here all day long because of it's video card.
if the FireGL card doesn’t performs much better on games , then what's the point ?? Beyond me why people waited for the T43p and paying much more for it. (and i'm talking about the guys that did it for games performance ONLY)
sounds to me like marketing hype .

As usual, benchmarks/data sheet Vs real life performance totally different story .

[mlykke]

Yeah - But if those two are the same im even more confused. I was told that the card in the T43p would perform more like an X600??

Maybe i should add a regular T43 to my order as well just for comparison. Just seems a bit insane as it'll cost me around 11000$US plus shipping to do this kind of testing.
And before you say that the price sounds high thats because i dont live in the state. The prices where i live is much higher(actually if i bought them in my own country i would have to pay something like 20K$ for those three machines) but im getting them from germany.

Christ this is nuts...!

[danny_isr]

i
I doubt you will see any drastic differences in real life performance .
Probably the only drastic difference that you WILL see is in the prices

[asiafish]

Sounds like you are spending way too much time and money for what is liekly to be very subtle and slight differences between them.

I had a similarly tough decision between the GVU I bought and a non-P T42 with otherwise similar spec at about $100 savings and another lower-spec T42 at about a $500 savings. I am sure the lower machiens would have done what I wanted, but I just went right for the top-dog that my budget would allow and will enjoy this thing for the three to five years it takes for me to outgrow it.

[mlykke]

Yeah i know. This is stupid - no question about it.
But i just ordered a 1.86 Ghz T43 as well.

Im just having a really hard time believing that there will only be a small performance difference between them since the price difference is quite staggering.

But two good things will come from doing this.
The first being that i will get the piece of mind that im able to make the right decision. The second being that i'll publish my findings in this forum giving people a good chance to see how the machines actually compare to each other instead of reading ten different review from ten different magazines/sites saying different things.
And once and for all we will establish whether or not there is any significant performance difference on theese machines - especially graphics wise.

And after doing this i need to be shot and NEVER EVER think of laptops again for at least 5 years or i'll go insane(guess its too late for that).

[IR0NMAN]

I have a GVU with 1GB of ram and Doom 3 might be the only game that do not run well (haven't tried it), but Half-Life 2 runs pretty well, and CounterStrike:source and Battlefield Vietnam also runs well... Now i'm just crossin my finger so that Battlefield 2 is playable at low setting on the GVU

Also, the extra 64MB will really help if you want more eye candies... but seriously, if you bought a T42 for work, i don't think you have much time to play anyway

[asiafish]

Doom 3 is totally playable on the GVU, I have no complaints. It isn't like watching a movie, but its close enough for me. It really only bogs down when there are a lot of monsters on the screen at once, otherwise its quite smooth.

[Highline]

Doom 3 is totally playable on the GVU, I have no complaints. It isn't like watching a movie, but its close enough for me. It really only bogs down when there are a lot of monsters on the screen at once, otherwise its quite smooth.

Congrats on your new purchase! I bought my TP from bill also... November of last year. could not be more happy with it!

I play Call of Duty on my TP all the time... and I watch TV shows and movies on it quite frequently. One hell of a machine!