Laptops any good for PC games?

[iamme]

I know that the newer Radeon and NVidia (GeforceGo4) can probably handle gaming well, but what's the threshold for decent gaming?

Would a 1GHz+ laptop w/ 8MB of VRAM (2X AGP) be able to handle some newer games? Would the faster CPU compensate for the low video memory?

I'm not expecting crazy frame rates, but I mean would it be playable and look good? If anyone can share their laptop specs, and what games they play on them, that'd be great 🙂

 

[hans007]

i have a 700 p3 with an 8mb rage mobility 2x agp. its just fast enough to play like quake3 at really low res, or war3 at low detail , counterstrike, etc.

 

[iamme]

Now, would the extra CPU clock speed make games play faster and w/ more detail?

 

[bacillus]

even with extra clock speed, the videocard still remains the bottleneck!

 

[littleprince]

My laptop 1gh Mobile P3 with the 8mb Radeon, 512 mB ram, plays most games at the lower resolutions just fine. Its not something I do often though. Just occasionly to kill time, or at gf's place.

A faster processors with a bad vid chipset will not be compensation however.

 

[Muerto]

Would the faster CPU compensate for the low video memory?

No it wouldn't. It doesn't matter how fast your CPU is, if your video card is a peice then it will always slow games down. Even the "older" GeForce2 Go would be pretty good for most games. A friend of mine just got a notebook with a Radeon 8500 in it and he gets killer framerates, of course he paid through the nose for it.

 

[CZroe]

ATI Rage Mobility 128 (M3) and GeForce2Go user here, soon to be GeForce4 440Go user. The Mobility 128 (Rage 128 Pro based) will give you better than Voodoo3 performance, but it's buggy as hell and Compaq will never give you OpenGL capable XP drivers (You can trick Dell's to install). The GeForce2Go is disapointing, but still lightyears ahead of the Mobility 128 (MX400 class). I have high expectations for the GeForce4 440Go, but I know it still won't be able to even run the GeForce3-class demos on 3Dmark2K1... BTW, the older Radeon Mobility 7500 is neck-and-neck with the GeForce4 440Go in the benchmarks I've seen. If anything, it won a few more of them, but I'd still prefer nvidia drivers and compatability any day...

 

[Rand]

<< A friend of mine just got a notebook with a Radeon 8500 in it and he gets killer framerates, of course he paid through the nose for it. >>



Interesting considering there is no mobile Radeon 8500, nor is it expected for a number of months yet.
ATi's top mobile chip is the Radeon 7500 Mobility, and it's 7500 based FireGL brethren.

 

[tenoc]

To the posted question, no.