Anyone have a Dell XPS Gen2 laptop?

[foq]

Uhh FYI today's AMD processors are slower than today's Intel processors. C2D > A64x2, C2Q > Phenom. There is no such thing as a 319mb video card, so you have 319mb of your system memory reserved for video related stuff and an onboard GPU--don't expect it to run too well.

And used stuff is of course cheaper, brand new is expensive. Buying electronics off of Ebay is a very stupid idea, nonetheless, I am not implying that you do it - hope not! lol - but I am just saying. You can not compare a price from a used item from Ebay with a price for a brand new item from Best Buy. The price of the used electronic item does not reflect the performance of the new version of it. lol.

Used means anything could have been the matter with it, refurbished, or the owner just does not want it anymore. In any case, it is not positive because it is an unwanted item which that original person wants to get rid of, and he is looking for someone to dump it on.

I personally would never trust to buy a used piece of electronic equipment from a stranger on the Internet. That is a very naive thing to do. I hope you will not get burned for it and it will not die on you. Because dealing with repairs, shipping it, the costs of it, customer support and all that shit is a bitch. I personally would never take that risk.

For me, saving a few bucks is not worth the trouble of dealing with the consequences of it later if something goes wrong with it, which the costs of repairing it could surpass the original price of the item and all the headaches associated with it.

Why would it not play?

If yours ran it with no problem then mines should rock it. My laptop is newer, newer parts, most recent dual core AMD CPUs at 64bit, twice the ram of yours - 2GB and ATI 319MB of video memory. I have no worries.

I was actually thinking of getting the Steam version. They have lots of sales, and I will play it on my desktop, which in specs it is slightly lower then my laptop - 1 CPU.

[Quazy]

I already beat COD4 tonight. Yea, I had it cranked up to the highest settings, graphics, textures, etc.. Extremely smooth and absolutely no "hiccups" during game play. I seen those exact toshiba satelite models on Ebay selling for about $350-$500 bucks. I bought mine used from the original owner w/ 403 days left of total care warrantee. It is mint without even a scratch on it. Im not sure if your toshiba will even play COD4? You might have to turn the settings all the way down..

I have it for the 360 but I did not get further then the character creation part lol, simply because of my lack of time. I have not touched my console for a while now.

[foq]

I have no idea myself. My experiance with COD4 was pretty bad cause I jumped straight into multiplayer on someone else's setup, the controls were all weird and the sensitivity was mad high so I got pwnt :/

I take it you've played Oblivion? :p

How long did it take you to finish the SP, if you say above 15hrs exploring everything I am copping it! :d I tend to play SP games slow, gawking at the graphics and all the textures from all the possible angles.

Also is it outside a lot or inside as well, does it have structures such as houses, complexes, etc.? How do the levels look like? Are they diversified - meaning different from each other - and not all looking alike?

[foq]

COD4 plays great on my uncles Pentium D 3.4 (pentium D's suck anyway) with 2GB DDR667 and a 7950GT cranked all the way up

Question, how does COD4 run, smooth and fast? Did you crank all the settings all the way up? How does it perform then?

I ask this because my desktop is similar to your laptop only that I got an AMD processor and 1.5GB ram.

Hey, I hate to burst your excitement bubble but have you noticed when this laptop was released and reviewed? February 2005, that makes it 3 years old.

How much did you pay for it? I hope you did not pay the 3K as the review site suggests. I also hope you bought it form a trustworthy source or Dell.com.

Also, it has a single Centrino mobile processor, I have a double core AMD Turion 64bit. In my opinion, AMD is more performant, and once I went to it, I never looked back on Intel. Aim for double core processors, single cores just do not cut it anymore, and the price for laptops with them dropped dramatically.

And the 80GB, just won't suffice nowadays. That HD is too small. I have 2 HDs in my home computer, one is 80 the other one is 250, the 80 one, now is down to 13 in just 6 months - I reformatted.

Here is my laptop's specs, the overview is the first tab.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....#productdetail

My laptop is one step down from that one, also I noticed CNET reviews it in a very monotone way:
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/tosh...5.html?tag=sub

Yet, the reviews on Best Buy are all postive from buyers and the ones from Amazon are excellent as well:
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satell...3223436&sr=8-4

The only drawback is that my powerful laptop is very power hungry therefore eats a lot of battery fast. It is not a problem for me because I just want to use it at work where I can plug it in, but if you take yours on the road then that might be a problem.

Your video card is nice, memory wise, but 3 years later a lot has changed in video technology. Sure you can upgrade it, but opening a laptop is a bitch - at the high risk of damaging it - you have to get behind the keyboard - and the card is going to be expensive and having a professional do it for you is just going to cost you more.

I suggest you pack it up and return it. If you live near a local Best Buy, they have very good deals on laptops and you can get something very good for around 800 dollars. Not to mention, if you have any problems with it or you do not like it you can return it in 14 days for refund or exchange, no questions asked.

Mines, believe it or not cost 800 but I got a 50 dollar back rebate.

[Quazy]

Hey Tia! Thx for chiming in. This is a XPS Gen2 gaming laptop. Its loaded. Heres more info. on it: http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/dell...4.html?tag=box I did ALOT of research on laptops and the only ones that I could find that were just as good or better(I read a million reviews) was the alienware laptops, but they are twice the price.

The Video card is not integrated and can be upgraded which is awesome. You need atleast 1gb memory + a 256mb vid card just to play COD4. The graphics look so real that it is like you are really in the game....but then again, Ive never really played anything else but quake 1 for the last decade. lol

There were some reported issues with the disks and installing COD4 that I heard about, you are not alone on that one, I am happy that you got it resolved and are enjoying it.

I expect a full report on COD4 when you are done with it or after you spend some time with it. I definitely want to get my paws on it but a short SP experience turns me off, even though I heard the MP component is very strong. A SP mode with decent length is a requirement for me. Tell me how long it took you to beat the SP mode after you are finished with it.

Ya, laptops are not really meant for gaming.

If you read the small print on gamebox nowadays you will see that it is written that systems with integrated graphics or some laptops may not work. Therefore they are not supported, you buy at your own risk if you plan to play on those systems.

On the other hand, if you buy a gaming laptop that may be a different story. Alienwares are one kind but they are extremely expensive.

Not very long ago, I got a Toshiba laptop AMD dual core running at 2GHZ, 2gig ram 200GB HD and 256MB ATI vidcard. It has Vista on it. I have not gotten to play with it much but when I do all the updates and finish configuring everything, I pray and hope I will not have any issues with it.

[Quazy]

Ahh I got COD4 working. I had to run it using my external usb port DVD burner...lol I still dont understand why COD4 wont even try to work and doesnt even show its in the DVD/CDROM drive on the laptop when all other CD/DVD's work just fine. Anyhoo, I got it working and the graphics are amazing!!!. I also got the colors working a little better(in quake) by clicking the small box that says "run with 256 colors" in the properties on the glpro icon. lol

[foq]

Yeah Dells are fine if you don't plan on doing a major upgrade. A lot of time the BIOS is locked to only certian processors. You have to look up your model number or something so you can see your list of "upgrade paths". Not only that but when you first get any prebuilt it is loaded up with so much crap it takes like 10 minutes to boot up and has like 60 processes running. >_<