This question is for those of you who either own or have seen laptops from Voodoo, Alienware, Hypersonic, etc…

My Sony Vaio laptop is nearly 2 years old now, and was thinking of getting the new VGN-AR170. It has all the new features that I think a laptop should have, including a Core Duo Processor.

The reason I like Sony is, doesn’t matter what is under the hood of the laptop, there screens is just beautiful to look at. As I use the laptop mainly for work, I do however watch a lot of movies and play the occasional game. Last game I played was NFS Most wanted. And it preformed ok, on the normal settings.

How do the screens compare versus a custom built laptop from say Voodoo, Alienware or the likes of these companies. As I have never had the pleasure of seeing one of these machines?

I have a couple things for you. I feel that machine is very expensive for its spec's. Sony's page says: $3,499. Below is chronicled why I feel this way.
1. That machine has a nVidia 7600 GT video card. You can go to my Mobile GPU Comparison page, and check out the performance.

In a nutshell it is a midrange card with a 128 bit memory interface. It has 8 pixel pipelines and 5 vertex shaders. but yet they still mate it to...

2. 17" WUXGA resolution screen. This is 1920 x 1200 resolution, it is extremely small for a 17" monitor, and when you push resolutions this high with a midrange video card, you are going to be taxing its abilities. The reason you would use resolution this high would be HDTV uses. You WILL NOT have an enjoyable gaming, video rendering, multimedia experience with this screen GPU combo, yet they kind of lead you to believe that by using a...

3. T2500 Intel Core Duo 2.0 Ghz. Great processor, specializing in media creation, rendering and multitasking. Literally like putting a rocket on a tricycle. But even with the rocket, instead of using rocket fuel, they feed it pump gas when they try to support this much implied power with...

4. 1 Gig of RAM in (2) 512 MB chips. This is a $3,500 machine, it is being billed as a powerhouse, what good is (2) 512 MB chips? At least a gig on 1 chip so you can upgrade in the future, but for this much it should have 2 Gigs, especially with what they are billing it as.

To answer your question, the screens from premium notebook vendors like VooDoo, Alienware, Killer Notebooks, are all going to be very good. The ODM I use actually manufacturers the screens fort the MACBook Pro, and several other highly regarded machines, and I believe Sony is one of them.
I hope this helped you out, and you may want to check out my Executioner.

Look for one with the 7900GS Geforce. It consumes less power than the 7900GTX but still runs great. I have one and it plays every game out at 1900x1200 res. Just had a LAN Party all nighter and it performed beautifully.

Why did you bump a 2 month old thread?

The 7900 GS can not compete with the 7900 GTX, it is a simple fact. Just like how you got this "deal from DELL" and you post it 3 times and all I ever read in it where people saying they couldn't get the same "deal" and asking about the coupons for it and you jumped all over them telling them to "calm down."

Your 7900 GS in your own post was getting a 3D'05Mark of 6400 (when you were telling the truth), then suddenly a day later, to better compete with the 7900 GTX it was getting close to 9,000 in another post.

The 7900 GS in an SLI.... 2 cards gets it's A$$ handed to it by a single 7900 GTX. In actual gaming like Oliv, BF2 or FEAR 7900GTX will shows its power in high mapping area. Thanks to 24 pipelines and 512MB vram. It's got 25% more memory bandwidth, 20% more pixel pipelines and 12%+ more vertex shaders. It's less than a plain 7800!

Like for example start oblivion, it will say "detected video card setting" at medium with a 7900 GS. Now try it with a 7900 GTX, it sets it's default to high, same thing for GRAW. I noticed about a solid 12+FPS up constint in oblivion going from GS to GTX! And it true thats when the 24pp\8vs and 512MB of GDDR3 @700Mhz starts showing it stuff, thats why no one should ever COMPLETLY base their card on a synthertic benchmark!

Dude, you're getting a DELL... we get it.