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I want a laptop that candle handle games well ! What should I look out for ?

  • 11-09-2007 06:30PM
    #1
    lucozader
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 588 ✭✭✭


    What's a good laptop

    I am on a budget

    also how do i know what graphics card it has and what is a good one


Comments

  • #2
    IconoclastCynic
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12 ✭IconoclastCynic


    lucozader wrote:
    What's a good laptop

    I am on a budget

    also how do i know what graphics card it has and what is a good one

    A lot depends on weather or not you want to take the leap to Vista (or in a sense, future proof yourself). From what I've come to find, some games won't work on Vista notebooks (BF2142 won't work on the newer Vista Inspirons from Dell) and a lot of games will run but poorly (like UT). So, if you want to keep in touch with your old games, you might want to stick with XP. But then again, the issue may simply be drivers and it'll be resolved soon.

    Anyways, the reason it depends in part on the OS you chose is because the newer graphics cards are being tailored towords Direct X 10 and Vista like nVidia's 8m series.

    I think I'm getting ahead of myself, though. The way you tell what graphics card a computer has is by looking at the specs. If you see nVidia or ATI, it's talking about graphics. If you don't see either of those, it probably has integrated graphics from Intel or something. If you intend on gaming with this notebook, steer away from integrated graphics.

    By rule of thumb, the higher the number next to the brand, the better it is, but this isn't always so. If it gives you any further information, you want fast, so if you see anything with MHz you want more of it and if you see anything with latency you want less of it and obviously you want higher memory.

    If you're looking for the best graphics possible, you want nVidia's GeForce Go7950 (for XP), nVidia's GeForce 8700 (for Vista). I'm very uncertain about ATI (unfamilliar with them), but, Mobility Radeon X2600 looks like the one for Vista, and Mobility Radeon X1800 (maybe? someone verify this for me?) for XP.

    Another thing to consider if you're looking for the best of the best in graphics is multi-GPU solutions. There are several vendors out there that will make you a SLI (the name for nVidia's multi-GPU solution) notebook, most notably being Alienware's newest notebook. I'm yet to see a notebook featuring Crossfire (ATI's multi-GPU solution) though.

    If you find any notebooks with anything mentioned above and a price you're willing to pay, it's probably a good idea. Needless to say, there are other things to consider but if a notebook comes with top of the line graphics, it probably won't have a ****ty processor on it or something.


  • #3
    RoyalMarine
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,824 ✭✭✭RoyalMarine


    nVidia's GeForce Go7950 is amazing.
    i have it in my dell.
    i replaced my harddrive, and have xp and vista dual boot.

    xp for all my games ( obviously )
    but not every laptop has the option of putting one of these bad boys inside.
    dell only do these graphics cards on certain machines.
    mine is a dell xps m1710.
    but it cost me 1900.

    only advise is dont buy a laptop thats got a half decent graphics card in it.
    seriously it will be outdated and its near to impossible to replace a graphics card in a laptop.
    if your on a budget dont buy the first thing you see. do a LOT of shopping around and make sure you get the best deal available.

    before i bought mine, i shopped for 2 weeks, and posted the specs on here, and everyone told me their opinions. that made it easy to pick which one was suitable.


  • #4
    TerrorFirmer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 29,930 ✭✭✭✭TerrorFirmer


    If you're on a budget: Vostros 1500 with 8600MGT from Dell, can be gotten for about 900. Good for games, not fantastic, but remember that in a laptop the video card alone really drives up the price. Other then that, you can get 8400GS equipped laptops for about 700, but while its great for older games like Counter Strike Source and that type of thing it's very poor for the latest games.

    There's no point mentioning Go7950GTX or X1800 mobility, those cards come in expensive notebooks, and when you said 'budget' I'm assuming its one in which those cards are way outside your limit....

    Laptopsdirect have plenty of decent laptops with the 8600GT for about 1k as well, if you don't want to go Dell.

    Whats your budget anyway?


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