Which one to get Ultima or Ultima Pro

alarge · 30 Dec 2008 at 11:58

Hi

I am very close to ordering one of these two. I was looking at spending at the most £1500 which would point to a top spec Ultima, but I am aware that this would be never really be upgradable in the future due to thermal limitations.

So I was thinking I could spend £1800 and get the 17" Pro with same specs and hope that in the future I could put a 9800 gtx or sli in?

And now I have just seen I could get the Ultima Extreme Mobile Plus for £1889 with P8600 and uprgrade that later with a quad core and another GTX?

As you can tell I am not quite sure yet! Do they all come with the new intel chipsets (im45 or something) and with DDR3 system memory?

Thanks

Andrew

matt1 · 30 Dec 2008 at 13:10

I'd be tempted to advise you on getting the best possible machine you can afford now and don't worry about upgrading it in the future. These laptops are so fast and offer great gaming performance you won't feel the need to change it for a good 2 years and by then the newer tech stuff will be out and not make the upgrade path viable. That's my opinion anyway, some poeple like to upgrade their laptops but I'd prefer not to.

The Ultima, which is 15", is a fantastic size, I wouldn't want anything bigger for transport and convenience of having it on your lap etc. With a little spare money you could always get a TFT and run a dual-display setup if you needed more window space while working at your desk.

The new centrino 2 platform all use DDR3.

Jamesdavid3 · 30 Dec 2008 at 13:22

For £1800 you should get a gaming desktop pc, you could even buy a really good one now, then in a year or so upgrade it with the money left over or even buy a new one.

with gaming laptops theres no point in buying one, sooner or later a newer game will come out and you wont be able to handle it and cant upgrade.

alarge · 30 Dec 2008 at 15:22

I know what you mean about getting a desktop, the thing is I have one, but it's never where I want it if you know what I mean. I'm always needing it in my bedroom, in the living room, at a friends house or at work. Plus as a web designer it would be nice to have everything on one machine wherever I am.

I'm not a big gamer anymore but still love CSS and started getting into COD4! I just want the overhead so that if there are more cpu/gpu intensive games out there I want to play then I can (maybe not max settings, but still playable).

I'm pretty sure I will get the Ultima 15.4", mainly because its a portable machine. Actually a quick question to all Ultima users out there with blu-ray, is it a bother only having the 1050p screen or do you hardly notice anything? I'm guessing you would struggle to notice on a small screen! Also is it much bother to output 1080p via hdmi and also link the surround system via the optical sp/dif connection? I know it is all possible just hoping you can save like a secondary monitor resoultion profile thing that makes it plug in and play movie.

Thanks