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HoTWiReZ's DoMaiN
HoTWiReZ's FoRuM
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AthLonWiReZ
Moderator
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 188
Location: Fing South Carolina
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 Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 4:37 pm Post subject: Good Buy, or Bad Buy? |
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$549 for THIS?
It's a MD2614u from Gateway.
Either way I don't care, I didn't get it for heavy gaming. It's on sale at Best Buy this week.
Last edited by AthLonWiReZ on Fri Jan 16, 2009 10:44 am; edited 1 time in total |
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HoTWiReZ
Site Admin
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 688
Location: VA
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| Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2009 10:41 pm Post subject: |
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Hey man, I'd say that's a pretty good deal. Let us know how it holds up. (Sorry, I got your email at work and then forgot to look it up when I got home.)
Some thoughts:
The memory amount seems like an odd number.. I guess it isn't unheard of to see 2 1.5 GB sticks, but 3 GB seems more like a DDR3 number than something you'd see with DDR2.
The monitor is just slightly larger than what you have now, and has a really funky resolution. 1666x768 is one I've never seen before. Hopefully there will be no compatibility issues there (If not, then it's an upgrade!)
Nice sized hard drive, and as I'll bet it's SATA, you'll be able to drop a 500GB one in for under 100 dollars when you're ready to upgrade it.
Vista 64 is what I'm running right now, (dual-boot with XP so I can be compatible with whatever I need) and I think it's ok. For your system, you may want to slap XP on it for more speed, or just leave Vista on for its visual appeal. It's up to you. I do notice on here that when running XP things happen pretty much instantly, whereas in Vista I do feel a bit of a lag. I would imagine that a laptop would suffer the lag more than my system, so be aware that you can make it faster if Vista bugs you too much. Oh, and you may want to edit your post to give the full name and model number of the laptop so that others can find this in the future. |
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AthLonWiReZ
Moderator
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 188
Location: Fing South Carolina
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 11:31 am Post subject: |
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I think the Memory is 1x1GB and 1x2GB. I will open up the bottom soon to see how I can upgrade. Hopefully I can replace both with 2x2GB SO-DIMM DDR2 PC2 6400, about $40. HERE
The monitor resolution wasn't a problem when running COD4. It was very sluggish, so upgrading the memory should help a little because the ATI HD3200(integrated) shares memory. I don't anticipate too much trouble with games if I have the graphics turned down some. I can live with that.
The hard drive is SATA. It would be nice to find a 7200RPM 500GB. I noticed on newegg, the 3 available 500GB drives were only 5400RPM, and only had a 8MB cache. Some 320GB drives were 7200RPM with a 16MB cache. Wouldn't the 320GB perform better? 320 seems like plenty, or is it? HERE
I suppose I could sell the old laptop, or go through the Gateway recycling program to make a little money. Could I use that version of XP on this to dual boot like yours? Would games perform better using XP? Educate me! |
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AthLonWiReZ
Moderator
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 188
Location: Fing South Carolina
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| Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, the memory is EASY to get to, and both sticks can be removed. I could replace the processor rather easily too, but I won't since I have a 3 year warranty on it. Memory is what I want for my birthday. |
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