# laptop specs



## phyro (May 7, 2011)

Hey all, I am looking for some advice as to what is the "best" brand of laptop producer, and or brands for video, etc. I'm looking to build a "gaming" quality / style of machine for goofing around on, but my goal is performance. (i.e, Quake, WoW, Wolf, etc. etc.) The two things I wanted to ask:

* amd64 or i386?
* nvidia or ati?

Any additional advice would be great, Thanks!


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## UNIXgod (May 8, 2011)

* amd64 =) + fast ram (new sandy bridge can take 1866mhz ram in new laptops)
* nvidia

All brands make low end laptops so I can't suggest a specific "brand".


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## adamk (May 8, 2011)

Latest Intel and Radeon GPUs are not supported on FreeBSD at the moment, and if you get a laptop with an nvidia GPU, make sure it doesn't have Optimus.

Adam


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## phyro (May 9, 2011)

Ok cool, thanks for the info. I'm going to guess that the 32-bit version is better (cleaner for processing) with most first person shooters or stuff like WoW? Or is amd64 better?


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## UNIXgod (May 9, 2011)

phyro said:
			
		

> Ok cool, thanks for the info... I'm going to guess that the 32 bit version is better (cleaner for processing) with most first person shooters or stuff like wow? or is amd better?



64-bit will allow higher amounts of ram to be seen at the OS level. It also allows for a larger int.


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## phyro (May 10, 2011)

Ok, thanks. I've been trying to track down the fastest supported nvidia card. Sofar I have come up with a nvidia 485m card for laptops. Is there some way to see what the fastest supported nvidia card is?

In regards to nvidia's Optimus, it seems like that's just power management. Does that mean the card would work fine? But just not attain the longer battery life? Or it won't work at all?

Thanks again.


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## UNIXgod (May 10, 2011)

Look at the nvidia site. They have a support list with the FreeBSD driver.


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## adamk (May 10, 2011)

phyro said:
			
		

> Ok, thanks. I've been trying to track down the fastest supported nvidia card. Sofar I have come up with a nvidia 485m card for laptops. Is there some way to see what the fastest supported nvidia card is?
> 
> In regards to nvidia's Optimus, it seems like that's just power management. Does that mean the card would work fine? But just not attain the longer battery life? Or it won't work at all?
> 
> Thanks again.



The nvidia GPU won't work at all.  And since the Intel GPU is not supported by the current intel driver, you're stuck with vesa.

Adam


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## phyro (May 10, 2011)

That's perfect, thanks to you too.

Cheers.


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## Imanol (May 10, 2011)

64 bits gives you more ram, but pointers become larger, so in some occasions you won't notice a performance boost...

And for all the experience I've ever had, having 4+ GB RAM in a computer is unnecessary, unless you're (very) heavily into multimedia editing and resource-eating stuff like that...

32 bits will always give you 100% compatibility


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## Imanol (May 10, 2011)

Oh, and get NVIDIA, It's better supported in most OS's (don't know about FreeBSD)


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## UNIXgod (May 10, 2011)

http://www.nvidia.com/object/freebsd-x64-270.41.06-driver.html

Click on supported products. Also read the documentation on with the driver. Looking at release highlights looks like GeForce GTX 485M will work as well as other modern laptop nvidia cards.


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