Comments on: Price Comparison: MacBook Pro vs Dell Notebook

By: kancer

kancer — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:28:13 +0000

putting both companies aside, a notebook having a dedicated graphics card will really crank up its price. i currently use a 8600M GT right now and the price difference of the same notebook, with the same specs, but different gfx (the other one with the intel x1300) is around $200. thats how expensive it is

if a simple 8600M will increase the price that high, what more if you put in a beast like the 8800M GTX

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:31:46 +0000

@Jthon:

I’ve just done some checking and you’re right, that 8800GTX is a much faster card. In fact there seems to be some annoyance online that Apple didn’t at least use the 9650 as apparently it’s a fair bit quicker than the 9600M while not really using nay ore power…

I found a review of the Alienware system and apparentley when that gfx card is juicing battery life is well under 1 hour so I think I understand why Apple didn’t use a card of that calibre! If you want a gaming laptop to take to LAN parties and leave it plugged in to the mains it looks like the way forward, but I think most professionals (which is where the MacBook Pro is aime,d not gamers) would want the 4 hour battery life.

Still at least this explains why the DELL costs so much more and aside from the gfx card, gives you so much less…

By: Jthon

Jthon — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 03:01:36 +0000

That 8800GTX M while a smaller number is a significantly faster card than the 9400M. The 9400 has 32 stream processors and the 8800GTX M has like 112. When it comes to gaming the 8800GTX M will blow the Apple system out of the water so so the Alienware is actually better.

Even so I seem to remember Alienwares are a bit bulky, and you won’t get anywhere near the same battery life as the Apple due to the more powerful graphics card.

By: Lightsource Media

Lightsource Media — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:25:34 +0000

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