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It came, it saw, it conquered, check out my new PC
- Thread starter Agent Icebeezy
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Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
isamu said:
No dead pixels. Everything came to a little over 4000. I got extra stuff like external hard drives and stuff. Take that away, around 3800
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
dark10x said:
I bought these games. I'll do pics later as well
Agent Icebeezy said:dark10x said:
I bought these games. I'll do pics later as well
Dammit Agent.....you're really tempting me dude. Fuck....I'm gonna be a broke fucker if I get this behemoth.
Couple more Q's:
How long did it take for the Laptop to get to you from the time you ordered?
Has the machine crashed on you at all yet?
Does it run hot?
The sad part is that I don't play FPS games and I'm mainly getting a laptop to play racing sims and emulators, which I hear aren't as taxing on CPU speed as FPS. But still, I'd like something that'll chew up and spit out any game I throw at it.
isamu said:
Just to deliver some answers regarding mine...
I've had my 9860 for almost 3 months at this point. I have no dead pixels.
I ordered mine from PC Torque and it arrived in my city in just 4 days. However, due to a snow storm, it sat in the UPS facility for another 4 days or so (and they would not allow me to pick it up).
It hasn't crashed much, but I can recall a couple times. With the old display driver, choosing v-sync in Doom 3 would cause a crash for some reason (but that doesn't occur with any other version of my display driver). It's mostly rock solid.
It does not run hot. I'm using a special bios update, though, which runs the fans more often. It idles around 39c and generally floats between 48c-58c while gaming (and that's with an OC'd videocard).
My config ran just a bit over $3000.
Hey what's up Dark. Thanks for the comments. Since you're here let me ask you a couple things:
You said....
1)You mention that you use the laptop as an external scaler. I too want to use a new laptop as my HTPC, to scale DVD movies and possible game consoles. What kind of connection does the Sager/Alienware have that allows external connections such as conoles? S-Video in? Component in?
2)Does it read the signal and scale it in realtime? Is there any lag in the controls?
3)Can you describe how the picture quality of dvds look in comparison to your regular dvd player whilst using D-scaler from your laptop?
4)Is DVI out essential and is there a benefit to the picture quality over using the standard VGA out?
5)Most importantly, what kind of customer service are you getting with Sager? Do you have 24hr CS telephone support? Are they inhouse or outsourced to India?
Thanks in advance
You said....
1)You mention that you use the laptop as an external scaler. I too want to use a new laptop as my HTPC, to scale DVD movies and possible game consoles. What kind of connection does the Sager/Alienware have that allows external connections such as conoles? S-Video in? Component in?
2)Does it read the signal and scale it in realtime? Is there any lag in the controls?
3)Can you describe how the picture quality of dvds look in comparison to your regular dvd player whilst using D-scaler from your laptop?
4)Is DVI out essential and is there a benefit to the picture quality over using the standard VGA out?
5)Most importantly, what kind of customer service are you getting with Sager? Do you have 24hr CS telephone support? Are they inhouse or outsourced to India?
Thanks in advance
Input available: S-video, composite, coax (all via TV tuner/capture card)
Output available: S-video (480i), component (HDTV)
It seems to scale in realtime when inputting something into the machine. There appears to be no lag in controls or audio. Dscaler is freeware, though, so there is fiddling to be done. The included tuner software as well as most other similar pieces of software only allow for 30 fps, however. Dscaler is the only program I've found thus far which supports a full 60 fps. It also happens to feature very good image quality.
Output is even better, though. HDTV output is very crisp and clean. I was used to 480i s-video output from my desktop, which made reading Windows very difficult at anything above 800x600. Using the component video output, I was able to run at 1080i resolution and clearly read everything. The TV produced near PC monitor results. DVD playback via the laptop looks f*cking awesome!
Very good. DScaler does a better job than the DVD internal scaler as well as my TV internal scaler and allows playback at 1080i (not that any DVDs are actually recorded at this resolution or anything).
Yeah, DVI is an actual digital output. This machine obviously features both. In fact, VGA out is achieved by using one of those DVI-VGA dongles often included with new video cards.
I have a 2 year warranty on the thing which is outsourced (US company, though). Also, I am able to contact PC Torque with any questions or need of aid. They have been VERY helpful with everything I've asked and are quite pleasant to deal with.
I also know of someone who was living in Japan and was required to send a machine in for repair (not the 9860) as it was damaged during a move or something. He was able to send the PC back to the US and have it returned without any real hassle. Since I will be moving there in a few months, this was a concern. Hopefully I won't have to take advantage of it, though.
Scalemail Ted
Member
Seth C said:
Where'd you pick this up from?
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