New Laptop?

[dodrudon]

I've been thinking about getting a new laptop, as my current one is 2-3 years old, and a Thinkpad, so isn't really suited for gaming (though it runs Source at a respectable .5fps).

I looked around and saw this:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220277

ASUS M51Sn-A1
* Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.66MHz
* NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS
* 15.4" Monitor
* 250GB HDD
* 3GB DDR2 RAM
* Fingerprint reader!!!!!
* Vista Home Premium (I will likely upgrade to Ultimate)

Apart from the CPU, the specs are all very nice (moreso than my desktop even), the graphics card even support DX10! My question is though, is the graphics card good (it certainly has a high number ), and will the CPU speed be an issue, both for gaming and for general use? Hopefully, it will last me at least the next three years, and work well for current and future DX10 games (hopefully no PhysX card requirements!).

My understanding is that DirectX 10 shifts some of the computation off the CPU onto the graphics card, so theoretically for graphics the CPU does not matter, but for calculation-intense games it does (though I doubt a few d20s is going to encumber such a CPU).

Also, I've noticed that in NWN my area load times are consistently longer than others, and I have to wait a disgustingly long time between area transitions in NWN2... is this a RAM, CPU, or graphics card problem?

Thanks!

[dodrudon]

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834201001

o.O *sends an email to Santa*

[MurphysLawAgain]

Dod- your load times may actually be a hard disk issue. Laptop disks usually spin slower than a desktop computer, and this would account for the load times. Your specs for the speed of the new laptops disk are 7200rpm. Usually desktop hard disks are 10 or 15k now. Older laptops usually had disks spinning at 5400rpm. You could try defragmenting your hard disk so that the info can be found one pass, rather than the machine hunting all over the platters. If this speeds things up then the hard disk is the speed bottleneck. If you are spending this much for a laptop then looking for a faster disk might be beneficial.

--EDIT-- my article above quotes from Santas wishlist laptop rather than your chosen laptop. I suspect the diskspeed in this one is even slower ......

[chainlink]

Area load times would seem to be down to your graphics card capabilities as I often run three copies on my machines and the area transitions are much slower on the older graphics cards with less memory.