Gaming Prowess - The Sager NP9860
Gamers havea new dream machine to drool over, the Sager NP9860. Indeed in a recent review, Laptopmagazine found that the Sager supplants the Dell Inspiron XPSmachine as the ultimate transportable arcade
Gamers havea new dream machine to drool over, the Sager NP9860. Indeed in a recent review, Laptopmagazine found that the Sager supplants the Dell Inspiron XPSmachine as the ultimate transportable arcade.
They raved about the huge 17.1-inch WSXGA+ screen (compared tothe 15 incher on the Dell) and its crisp, clear, and vividvisuals. Lighting it up is possibly the finest feature of theNP9860, a tasty NvidiaGeForce Go 6800 PCI Express video card. With 256MB ofdedicated memory, the card promises to provide the mostperformance per watt on the planet. Laptop magazine ran the cardthrough the paces of 3DMark2001 with high hopes, but weredisappointed when the Go 6800 couldn't beat the Inspiron'snumbers.
Gamers shouldn't worry, though. The Sagerdominated when the laptop reviewers put the computer through areal-world test with a few games of Doom III and Painkiller. Onthe 1024 x 768 (Quality visual) setting, the Sager yawned at DoomIII, producing 60 frames per second consistently.
It doesn't hurt that the NP9860's power plant is a 3.6-GHz IntelPentium 4 with 1GB DDR SDRAM capable of speeds of 7,200 rpm. Thehard drive isn't too shabby either at 60GB. If you ever have tostop gaming and - gasp! - do work, the Sager can make you amultitasking master. Again, the Laptop reviewers came at the Sager with one of their lab tests. Thistime, the notebook broke a record with a PCMark score of5139.
Despite this performance, Laptop magazine complained about theshort battery life (1 hour and 21 minutes), which wouldn't lastthrough most roundtrip flights. The machine's audio system - fourspeakers and a subwoofer - didn't match its visual capabilities.And the notebook is a backbreaker at 12.5 pounds.
The machine is unbeatable as a gaming system, though, but couldprobably get passed over as an all-around computer.
To pick up your own NP9860, head to sagernotebook.com
