I'm going to use OpenGL and GLSL on my project. And I might play around with physics after. I don't know if I should buy this laptop Asus G50Vt-X5 or should I just buy a less expensive one Asus X83Vb-X2. $250 difference is really large for me. I have a powerful desktop by the way, but I really need a laptop because I have many free time in school. DarkBalls

A heavy, bulky laptop is something you'll come to regret, I've always felt. Identify a min spec (for me, it was ANY shader 3 capable NVIDIA chipset) and then find something that meets those and is a good laptop. Serious graphics work simply isn't the realm of a laptop, and it's a bad idea to try to shoehorn it in.

By the way, that's not the laptop I'm going to buy but the price and video card is really the same. I know this laptop is quite large but the weight I think is 2.5 for the 9800m gs and 2.2 kgs for 9300m gs.

Shader 3 capable? How about a 9100m is this fine? It can't run most of the new games but in 3D programming, I don't know.

The 9100m is a ??? on Wikipedia, but NVidia says it supports DX10, so I assume it's compatible with SM4.0 and below.

I know this isn't what you asked, but is there any way you could just take your powerful desktop up to college? (I'm assuming you're in college based on your last sentence in the OP; correct me if I'm wrong. [smile]) Laptops are nice for portability, but I think people (college students in particular, myself included) often overestimate just how much they need portability.

I do the vast majority of my game coding on a laptop. We live in an apartment, and my wife uses our desktop computer a lot. We don't really have space for another desktop (well, we could probably fit one in a stretch, but...) so a laptop was the next best thing.

The main thing which annoys me is the screen is relatively small, but if you can live with that, and unless you're writing the next version of Crysis, I'd say you don't need the best graphics card in the world. For me, as long as NVPerfHUD is supported, that's all I really wanted (and 4GB of RAM, it's crazy how many computers these days still come with only 2GB!)

Oh, and get a wireless mouse. I can't stand those trackpad thingys...

@Hodgman

So is this video card fine?

@nilkn

Too bad I can't bring it because I'm not the only one who's using it.

@Codeka

So a low end video card is fine as long it supports NVPerfHUD and also has 4GB ram and a good processor and also a wireless mouse. So a $600 is fine or maybe a 9100m which I think is cheaper is better? Right? Hmmmm....

I would get the cheaper one, which is also the lighter one. 6 pounds isn't too bad to carry around. The other is 8 pounds and at that point, you are better off just getting a desktop, imo.

I do the majority of my development on a very portable laptop and I have a 8400M GS, with only 128mb, and I think its fine. Its not a gaming machine, its a work machine. I think its better to develop on a slower machine anyways cause then you don't think something is working fine when in reality it isn't - the fast machine just makes it seem okay.

update: evidently the 9300M is an updated 8400M, like the one in my machine.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9300M-GS.9452.0.html

Unless you're planning to do some really heavy-weight 3d stuff on your laptop entirely, I think something like this would work quite well.

Satellite M300-034

It's got a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 256 MB, which is close to a 9300 GS. And it's under $1000. I usually have trouble finding laptops with a dedicated video card for under 1 grand.

Edit: This is in Canada, though. I can see you've found much better deals in the US. >_>

Quote: Original post by shurcool
Satellite M300-034

This is the laptop I have, and thus far it's treated me pretty well. Haven't had any real problems with it yet.