Laptop experts, put my mind at rest please

[Chubbz]

So I just purchased a Dell laptop, it's got a 128mb radeon and 1gb of ram, BUT it's got an 80gb with 5400rpm. Now, since the laptop is already on its way over, I can't upgrade the hard drive to 7200rpm or else I'd have to return the whole goddamn thing and reorder it. Now if my activities consist of playing HL2, maybe some WoW, and general movie watching. How much of a difference in performance lies between 5400rpm and 7200rpm? Put my mind to rest because this is driving me crazy, I feel like I just fubared myself over for the life of that laptop. Whaddya think?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Movie watching - no difference
HL2 - FPS will be exactly the same, map/level loading time will be longer

 

[Chubbz]

like 4 minutes longer, or a few seconds

 

[ottothecow]

5400 isnt all that bad so a few seconds (maybe more than a few....30 on a big map load but shouldnt be bad at all).

Its the 4200 drives that you have to watch out for. most laptop drives used to be 4200 and then they started speeding up to 5400 and 7200

 

[Chubbz]

well that puts my mind at ease, anything else to comfort my hard drive speed insecurities would be nice

 

[corkyg]

You rarely have everything perfect. Iwould use it as is, and then upgrade the HDD to a bigger faster unit, and then use the 80 GB one in an external drive case as a data drive. That's what I did starting lat year. Went from a 80 GB to a 100 to a 160! None ofthose lesser drives went to waste.

 

[Skeeedunt]

You'll be fine w/5400.

And in case you thought otherwise, upgrading the hard drive is probably easy (but costs money of course.)

 

[bigstrickler]

Just wondering, is the graphics card by anychance radeon xpress 200M with 128mb memory...cuz I have that in my laptop and it can barely handle cs 1.6 but it does do it with 100 FPS but you can tell its barely holding it there. Also it lags pretty bad in guildwars so I doubt it will be able to run HL2...If your looking for gaming, there is no other choice but a desktop heh

 

[Skeeedunt]

Originally posted by: bigstrickler
Just wondering, is the graphics card by anychance radeon xpress 200M with 128mb memory...cuz I have that in my laptop and it can barely handle cs 1.6 but it does do it with 100 FPS but you can tell its barely holding it there. Also it lags pretty bad in guildwars so I doubt it will be able to run HL2...If your looking for gaming, there is no other choice but a desktop heh

The man makes a good point... your laptop might still suck for gaming.

 

[bigstrickler]

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt

Originally posted by: bigstrickler
Just wondering, is the graphics card by anychance radeon xpress 200M with 128mb memory...cuz I have that in my laptop and it can barely handle cs 1.6 but it does do it with 100 FPS but you can tell its barely holding it there. Also it lags pretty bad in guildwars so I doubt it will be able to run HL2...If your looking for gaming, there is no other choice but a desktop heh

The man makes a good point... your laptop might still suck for gaming.

Yup...I bought my laptop with your same motive, gamming, so i bought my HP laptop: 512mb ram, athlon 3200+, 128 mb integrated graphics, 80gb harddrive. I found out this was very bad choice since the graphics card is not as powerful as I anticipated and all of this drains so much power that my battery life is very bad like 1 hour...so if you want to game I'd reconsider possibly a desktop. Laptops arent really meant for gamming

 

[Tweak155]

Originally posted by: bigstrickler
Just wondering, is the graphics card by anychance radeon xpress 200M with 128mb memory...cuz I have that in my laptop and it can barely handle cs 1.6 but it does do it with 100 FPS but you can tell its barely holding it there. Also it lags pretty bad in guildwars so I doubt it will be able to run HL2...If your looking for gaming, there is no other choice but a desktop heh

You don't need to get a desktop, this 1+yr old laptop runs HL2 1920x1200 easy, you just have to get quality parts, AKA spend money .

 

[bigstrickler]

Originally posted by: Tweak155

Originally posted by: bigstrickler
Just wondering, is the graphics card by anychance radeon xpress 200M with 128mb memory...cuz I have that in my laptop and it can barely handle cs 1.6 but it does do it with 100 FPS but you can tell its barely holding it there. Also it lags pretty bad in guildwars so I doubt it will be able to run HL2...If your looking for gaming, there is no other choice but a desktop heh

You don't need to get a desktop, this 1+yr old laptop runs HL2 1920x1200 easy, you just have to get quality parts, AKA spend money .

How much was your lappy? Sounds like one of those serious gamming laptops

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: bigstrickler
Just wondering, is the graphics card by anychance radeon xpress 200M with 128mb memory...cuz I have that in my laptop and it can barely handle cs 1.6 but it does do it with 100 FPS but you can tell its barely holding it there. Also it lags pretty bad in guildwars so I doubt it will be able to run HL2...If your looking for gaming, there is no other choice but a desktop heh

I don't get it. 100fps is "barely handling" these days?

As for the OPs gfx card.... he got a dell. It's either an X1300 or X1400 (he said 128mb, so likely a X1300).