question: what parts makes a laptop a good gaming machine??

[nycdude]

Hi all,

This can be posted in the notebook forum also but its also hardware related so I hope this is ok.

What parts are needed to make a laptop a good gaming platform??? The cpu, vid card, HD??

Any Thoughts
Thanks

 

[Matthias99]

In rank from most to least important:

Video card
Memory (size matters more than speed)
CPU
Hard Drive Speed (mostly affects loading times for games; size is irrelevant)

That said, if any of those components are *really* slow, the whole system will drag. For instance, with a Pentium 2-500Mhz CPU, no modern games will run well, even on a Mobility RADEON 9600Pro with a gig of RAM. And no system with 64MB of RAM is going to do anything quickly.

 

[beatle]

I agree somewhat. I would put CPU above memory and video card, with video as #2. You can usually turn down the eyecandy to get better framerates on a slower video card, but a slow cpu with a fast video card will have the same low framerates no matter what effects you turn on or off. Memory will only really affect performance if you have 256, and even then some games may run acceptably.

As Matthias said, any component being way out of date will make it seem slow. Fortunately (or sometimes unfortunately) in a laptop, the CPU and video card are usually around the same level of technology.

 

[nycdude]

Thanks for the reply.

If you have a Radeon, does the video card memory size matter between 32 vs 64 and will older models game well???

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: beatle
As Matthias said, any component being way out of date will make it seem slow. Fortunately (or sometimes unfortunately) in a laptop, the CPU and video card are usually around the same level of technology.

Unless you get a laptop with "intel extreme" onboard / shared AGP non-graphics.

Right now a Radeon 9600 or (vaporware?) geforce 5700 are the top graphics cards for a laptop. If you want to be able to play next year's games those are the two to look for.

If they just aren't in the budget, and older radeon is still much better than intel extremely bad shared-memory graphics, and 64 MB is better than 32 MB.

 

[Matthias99]

Your CPU can certainly limit your gaming, but once it's over 1Ghz or so, it's rarely an issue. The framerate differences in most real-world games between a 1Ghz CPU and a 3Ghz CPU are not that big; almost all the load in a modern game is on the video card. Look at 3DMark03 as an example.

 

[doug]

Many laptops are targeted for business uses, this means the video performance is only important for 2D business applications. In general I believe even current bottom of the line video cards have more than enough power for 2D business apps.

So pay attention to the video card.

Processor speed is the next part to look at.

A good screen is important as well.

I wouldn't worry too much about RAM, from what I have seen *most* games don't use that much anyway. You can start with 256MB but make sure that the machine can accept up to 1GB of RAM for the future.

Your laptop hard drive is going to be slower than a desktop but it primarily affects load time not playability so don't worry about it.

 

[nycdude]

If all else being equal, which would be better, a P4 or a centrino as cpu???

Thoughts.

 

[Matthias99]

The Pentium-M (the processor part of the "Centrino" package) is vastly superior to the P4-Mobile. You get about twice as much battery life, and I believe the Pentium-M 1.6Ghz is about as fast as a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz.

My concern about RAM for laptops is that many (even newer ones) ship with just 128MB unless you add more at exorbitant expense. That's not really enough for gaming these days, unless you only play older games. 256MB is okay, and 512MB should be enough for at least a few years. 1GB is overkill right now for all but a handful of titles (mostly MMORPGs like Everquest or Asheron's Call 2).