Good for games?

Cianos

Hi
Trying to buy a lappy, but it has to be capable of at least comfortably running newish games. Are these two any good?

Centrino 1.6ghz
DVD/CD RW Drive
40Gb
1Gb RAM (2 x 512mb modules)
Infrared
2 x USB
32mb ATI Radeon
14.1" SXGA screen
ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 AGP
Modem
Wireless internet LAN card
XP Home with COA
Dell carry case


Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz
512mb RAM
DVD/CDRW combo drive
40Gb hard drive
Built in WiFi wireless internet
14" Screen
32mb ATi Radeon Mobility 7400 graphics
Good batteries
Dell carry cases

XP Home with COA


Any thoughts much appreciated.

TerrorFirmer

Neither will play any new games at all for that matter actually.

Sorry

Cianos

MobileInfantry wrote:

Neither will play any new games at all for that matter actually.

Sorry

Not even CSS or anything? Thanks :v:

Sleipnir

You can't have a Mobility if you plan on playing new games.
a 32MB graphics card? I bought one about 3 years ago and it certainly wasn't the highest you could get then either.
Laptops just ain't designed for gaming.

TerrorFirmer

Cianos wrote:

Not even CSS or anything? Thanks :v:

I don't know about CSS. A 32mb Mobility is basically, one hell of a crap card for gaming. I don't think it would work, afaik Half Life 2 and its mods require a minimum of a Gf3 Ti or the like - which is well above a 32mb mobility.

You'd be able to run older games grand, like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Soldier of Fortune II, Vietcong, etc...nothing new will work unfortunately.

However with a better card that Centrino could be nice for modern gaming

I wouldn't touch the p4 1.8 if I were you, especially if you want to game.

Cianos

Thanks again guys. So, with a better graphics card the Centrino would be nice for gaming...how much would the graphics card cost, and after that would I be just better off to buy a new machine altogether?

TerrorFirmer

You'd prob need buy a new one. GFx aren't easily upgradable in Lappies!

If you want it for modern gaming, you are going to have to accept you're going to pay alot of money.

A 128mb mobility x700 would be the miniumum you should be looking for, and even with that it's not great at the newest games at all. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend?

Cianos

I'd be willing to spend around 800, dont mind it being 2nd hand.

Endurance Man

The minimum your going to be looking for is a 64meg ATI X300. My bro just got his Acer with this GFX card and CSS is flying along at decent settings . We havent tried BF2 but i think on low settings we should be alright. Also, you will need 1gig of ram for the likes of BF2.

Cianos

Endurance Man wrote:

The minimum your going to be looking for is a 64meg ATI X300. My bro just got his Acer with this GFX card and CSS is flying along at decent settings . We havent tried BF2 but i think on low settings we should be alright. Also, you will need 1gig of ram for the likes of BF2.

So what kind of price range dyou think id be looking at in order to get a competent gaming lappy?

Endurance Man

Well new i would say your looking at 1000-1300

manchine

For what it's worth I'm able to play HL2 on my Dell D600.
1.6 Centrino, 512 RAM (2x 256), ATI 9000 - 32mb

Didn't think it would work as well as it did. Needs to have all the effects turned down but still plays very well.

TerrorFirmer

Endurance Man wrote:

The minimum your going to be looking for is a 64meg ATI X300. My bro just got his Acer with this GFX card and CSS is flying along at decent settings . We havent tried BF2 but i think on low settings we should be alright. Also, you will need 1gig of ram for the likes of BF2.

But try playing FEAR on that! Every setting low, hardly overly future proof!

Laptops for gaming are a big no no unless you really have cash to burn.

Can I question why you'd want a lappy for gaming as opposed to a desktop?

For the price of a good future proofed gaming lappy, you could easily afford a work suitable lappy and a decent desktop

ambro25

@OP - the first spec indicated (Centrino 1.6 etc.) is pretty much that of a standard DELL D600 (between £330 and £400 on eBay), and as posted above, that will run up to 1-year-old-ish game reasonably well, and even some more recent ones (but try the demos first to be sure).

Forget the second one (7400? - going by ATI's name 'codes', that sounds pretty old, unless it's actually mobo-integrated graphics and that's even worse, since 'integrated graphics' that will eat into your main RAM and perform worse than a dedicated acceperator for the same amount of VRAM or more).

To those who have posted about FEAR and BF2, please bear in mind that these two games are about as gfx- and resource-intensive as games get these days, and that a lot of other games still being released to this day have setup options that will make them more than playable even on the above spec: as posted above, a Boardsie runs HL2 fine on his D600, and I'll second that with

* the CoD2 demo (800x600, medium detail, no AA, and 35 FPS+ )
* the Grand Prix Legends demo (800x600, medium detail, no AA, and 40 FPS+)
* Star Wars Battlefront (1024x768, medium detail, no AA, and 35-40 FPS)
* Operation Flashpoint (1024x768, full detail, 50 FPS+)
* LFS S2 Alpha P (1024x768, full detail, 50 FPS+)

on my D600 (1.6, 512 RAM, ATI M9 32MB).

Per Mobile Infantry's post, for your budget, you're better off grabbing yourself a decent desktop rig that you'll be able to upgrade time and again and a lappie for whatever-you-need-the-lappie-for, but not gaming. If you must game with the lappie ( ), then grab some older stuff, i.e. CS 1.6 used to run peachy on my C600 (PIII 750, 256 RAM, ATI 8MB gfx).

My €0.02