The GTX 460M is a a geforce graphics card. It is more powerful than the FX 880M, probably by 2-3 times. I am not entirely certain, but the actual desktop card has 336 CUDA cores, and the 880M has only 65. Normally it's a clear winner, but if you care about 3d performance and efficiency more than games, the quadro is better.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/quadro-fx-4800,2258-10.html

You can see that workstation cards perform 10x better than their geforce counterparts, mostly due to geforce cards having a built in limiter (one of the reasons I dislike nvidia), but also due to the fact that workstation cards are heavily optimized for this sort of work, and do a damn good job of it. They're so expensive because you get support from nVidia, and you get performance where you need it.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-FX-880M.24735.0.html
you can read up about it a bit more here. The 880M is based on the GT 216 core, (GTX 220). The 460M is in the GF104 core, which is newer and better in every way.

If you want to value games over 3d applications, the geforce will perform 2-3 times better. They'll probably perform near each other for 3d applications though. I won't know without any sort of benchmarks though. Usually when people buy a workstation card, they use it professionally for 3d work however.

Apparently it heavily depends on your application which card will perform best:
http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/newsfeed.asp?nid=4960

For tl;dr skip down to about 85% where the conclusion starts and look for the program you'll be using most.

Well, since I don't play that many games, I'll be better with the Quadro, I value 3D applications more. And even if I did play games, I'm pretty sure the Hewlett-Packard 8540w would be able to run them. (And it's not like I'm going to need DirectX 11 using Linux.)

Note: The GeForce GTX 460M has 192 CUDA cores and the Quadro FX 880M has 48 CUDA cores.

Also, I found this: Linux 32 bit drivers and Linux 64 bit drivers.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 1 2011, 7:41 pm by Apos.

I have recalculated, and I can afford to buy a computer up to $2000 and maybe even $2500. Would there be an advantage in buying a computer in those price range? Would it last me longer? Or would it just be a waste?

There would be an advantage in a desktop (very small) but not in a laptop.

Since speed is directly related to the amount of power you use, and laptops are low power, you'll have to pay exorbitant amounts just to get more efficient components for a marginal increase in speed without increasing power consumption.

In desktops, you don't have power as a limiting factor, so you can safely buy the best of the best and make a badass machine.

If you can drop $1500 on a desktop, you can make one hell of a computer. Dropping that on a slightly better laptop is not worth it in my eyes.

It depends. If the extra money isn't a huge deal for you, I'd use the money to buy a laptop with SSD's instead of a conventional hard drive. They're much faster than normal drive and have a much smaller chance of failing, and don't require things like defragmentation to work to their fullest - but they cost a lot more per gigabyte, so unless you actually want to spend all of the $2500, I'd get a separate external hard drive for extra needs and have only 128 or 192GB on the actual computer (I'm on 128GB, and running a bit short; 192 would have been better, but I can't imagine needing more, as I keep videos on NAS).

I don't remember if you elaborated on something, but having just checked, the 13.3" Sony S can now have 1600x900 resolution (good, for 13") and an i7 processor. However, some of the features - like manual GPU-switching - will likely be incompatible with Linux. I'm too lazy to search for something else, just check the standard sites. And if you feel an urge to jump to Newegg, I believe most computers above 1k with discrete GPUs have Optimus (automated GPU switching), so you might want to research how that feature will work on Linux or if one of the GPUs will be rendered unusable.

The reason I was asking is because in the military, when you are in studies, you can buy a laptop and they will pay half the price until they reach $1000. Therefore, if I buy a $2000 laptop, I only pay $1000. Add $500 and it gives $2500 for a total of $1500 paid by me. (I checked to make sure I was eligible already.)

You guys should really stop trying to persuade him to buy a desktop. He's already said like five times that he wants a laptop. You can get a laptop for like $1500 that can run any game perfectly. It's not that big of a deal.

Yeah, just use the money on SSDs. They really make a difference - my laptop does things incredibly fast thanks to it. Word 2010 opens instantly; Photoshop CS5 takes four seconds, etc. It also boots up and exits sleep mode much, much faster than my desktop. And if you're going to carry the laptop around, the SSDs have a smaller chance of being damaged; for example, both my Zune 120 and WD External Hard Drive were damaged after being carried around in my backpack extensively, and though a computer hard drive would typically have some mechanisms to mitigate that, after having SSDs and other flash-based devices (Flash drives, Zune HD, the list goes on and on) which haven't broken on me, I'd avoid going for traditional hard drives anyway. I only keep a pair at home so I can back up anything, and I don't carry it around.

If I may ask... why do you want to boot Linux?

These SSD offer 256GB of data and cost between $400 and $500. Does that mean they have a cheaper quality?
A few years ago, my computer caught a virus. That virus corrupted all my files and I lost all my pictures from the past 3 - 4 years, all the programs I had, everything. (I knew I should have saved them somewhere else, but I never did...) Later, I discovered Ubuntu. I tried it in dual boot for a few months. Windows was still my main OS. Then, the boot times started to get very slow. The computer would freeze. But when I would boot in Ubuntu, everything was fast and smooth and I started to use it more and more. One day, I decided I'd do a full reinstall and ditch Windows completely. I haven't had any system failure since then. I guess it depends on experiences

It honestly shouldn't matter too much what you get; as long as its not some completely crappy non-standard SSD, it'll stop your hard drive from being the bottleneck in performance. Some manufacturers (Sony, for example) offer to speed them up further by putting them in RAID 0 configuration (two or more SSDs, but the data recorded is spread over both of them, speeding the whole thing up, possibly even doubling speed if there's nothing I'm unaware of); however, I'm not sure that performance boost is necessary. Might just be overkill.

You can try buying a laptop and then removing the hard drive and installing the SSD, but unless you know what you're doing, I wouldn't recommend it. Just buy a laptop with SSDs built in.

I'm not convincing him to get a desktop, I'm convincing him to not get a desktop replacement.

However now that I know that I'm paying for you laptop, get the cheap one. j/k, get a $2000 one with ssd options from sony/hp/dell/whatever manufacturer. Don't spend more than $2000 though. I doubt you'll get away with buying an SSD and laptop at newegg and still get 50% off, so you may as well do it through an OEM.

just kidding, I'm in Canada.
If I go higher than $2000 it just means that I'll pay what is left. Let's say I was going to buy a Mac Book 17-inch, it would cost around $2500. Also, it's good if I buy a laptop from newegg. (It doesn't matter what laptop I take, they will only pay up to 50% of $2000. I could get a $10000 laptop if I really wanted.) All I need is the bill to prove I really bought the laptop.

Also, the other person that I'm buying the computer for said that he likes Mac computers and maybe he'd like a MacBook Pro more. Would it be a good buy? Would it last longer than the other computer posted above? Are they overly priced? MacBook Pro.

If you want to stick to Linux, then Macs aren't for you. You pay for the hardware and a preium for the software (which you won't use).

Stop being lazy and search manufacturers websites for yourself.

When you buy apple you're buying a well designed product gimped by innovative ideas, with better than average hardware and ridiculously overpriced RAM. The entire thing is geared towards the high end market, and actually does a very good job, but not for the price. However, since you're not paying full price, Macs suddenly become not so bad of a deal.

It's one of the few times I would actually recommend a Mac, but removing OSX is pretty much a waste.

I decided to go into a store (Future Shop) and see what kind of Laptops they had there. I had printed the specs for the HP laptop. In the end, the vendor started laughing somewhat at me (But not in an offending way). He said that the model was over 1 year old. He showed me a $1299⁹⁹ HP Pavilion. The computer is so new, they didn't have the complete spec sheet and even HP doesn't have it yet on it's site. But here is the non detailed list they had:
15.6" INTEL CORE I7-2630QM 2.90GHZ LAPTOP

• 8GB DDR3 Memory, 750GB SATA Hard Drive
  
• Bluetooth
  
• Full HD 1080p Technology
  

Dimensions(cm): 3.5H x 24.7W x 37.8D
Web ID: 10171334
DV6-6195CA - GREY

Also, since I'm going to be a student, I get a free Xbox with it

He seemed to know his product pretty well so we started comparing the HP 8450w with the Pavilion. He managed to prove that his Laptop was better in every single field. The only thing that I noticed was that it had an ATI dedicated graphics card. I asked him if it was any good for 3D work and he said it could do anything perfectly. Gaming and 3D animation and rendering. He also said that it would work perfectly with Linux. I asked him a few questions to make sure he knew what he was talking about and he passed. He explained to me that this year, ATI are making the best graphics card, better than NVIDIA though he agreed that it constantly switches after about each releases.

Of course, I continue to look around at different places.

Edit 1: I think this is the exact same Laptop nvm, the one at Future Shop had 2.5GB of Dedicated Video Memory Size. (Maybe there are other differences)

Edit 2: Found it!

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 20 2011, 12:43 am by Apos.

I just searched the thread... and, yes, the HP laptop you posted uses the first generation of processors, not Sandy Bridge. It's old. Every single laptop you can buy supports Bluetooth, many have 1080p resolution, 8GB RAM is likely overkill (though still nice). The processor is good, but possibly overpowered for your needs, which would affect battery life. Also, check benchmarks on that GPU, I don't know how good different GPUs are based on names. Battery life will likely be disappointing, it lacks Optimus technology, and it's heavier than it needs to be.

It looks like a decent laptop otherwise, fairly well priced. VRAM will likely not be a problem unless you start doing serious modelling.

Again, though, were I you, I'd get something customizable and with SSDs, if you can afford to pay up to $2500...

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 18 2011, 4:13 am by Centreri.

That Laptop supports SSD, I made sure to ask. Also, when I asked for battery life, he said it can do 4 hours easily, but if I wanted to make it last even longer, I can make the screen use less light. (There were more things I could turn off to make the battery longer, but I forgot.) And if it's plugged in, battery will never fail

Any laptop theoretically 'supports' SSDs. I've found nowhere, including HP's own website, where you can customize their Elitebook line. If Futureshop can do it, that solves that problem.

I wouldn't expect four hours. Official number is six hours, so I'd expect three hours on a good day without dimming brightness, hardware throttling, disabling wifi, etc.

What got out from what I asked him about SSD was that it would be better to wait 1 year before getting one. He said that prices will drop by a lot during the next year.