Gaming Great laptop?

[p1ngpong]

Can't I just buy the graphics card and put it in? Wouldn't that be cheaper?

No you cant change the graphics card of a laptop.

There isnt a lot of room inside of them, they are designed specifically around each ones set components. Plus if you did manage it you would probably encounter tons of compatibility/heat/power issues etc

Wow, this really makes me look like a first time laptop user

.

Could the GeForce 9200M GS run most games on low settings?

Here is a benchmark of that card, I must say its really really low scoring man.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForc...-GS.9453.0.html

I wouldnt get my hopes up on any intense gaming on it, sorry!

 

[playallday]

What about this one?

EDIT: I'm still thinking about this one... It costs $500 less! Could it run CoD on low settings?

 

[Taza]

Frankly, for any kind of laptop gaming you want a GeForce card. Just because of the drivers.

But overall, all of those laptops have not been good for their price range.

If you don't mind the gaming, the Eee 901 Linux is a fancy machine - and is a better machine with Windows on it too than the Windows version. Linux version gets extra stuff, Windows version gets a Windows license.

Or Eee 1000H if you *must* have a hard drive, but take note that hard drives react very badly to shocks, especially when on.

And oh, you can change a laptop graphics card. For almost all laptops it voids your warranty and for most laptops you need a specialized soldering iron, but you decidedly *can* do it.

 

[DrKupo]

Personally, if I were you, I'd buy a Macbook Pro, format it (remove osx), install Vista, and use that. The build quality is hard to beat, and every hp laptop i've ever used felt like crap. Same for dell.

 

[Taza]

Amusingly enough, the 13 inch aluminum MacBook just might be the best laptop for your needs once you use bootcamp.

MacBook Pros are awesome, expensive machines.

 

[da_head]

Personally, if I were you, I'd buy a Macbook Pro, format it (remove osx), install Vista, and use that. The build quality is hard to beat, and every hp laptop i've ever used felt like crap. Same for dell.

mackbook pros are way outside his budget range...and y would u install vista on it lmao.
i have an hp pavilion dv-1174ca rite now, and it's a fine machine..

 

[playallday]

mackbook pros are way outside his budget range..

Like $1,000 out of my $1,000 price range

.

And the HP's are well built, same goes for Dell. If you find you break it you really shouldn't have a laptop.

 

[Scorpei]

Taza, what the? You first suggest a HIGHLY underpowered machine for whatever reason (an Asus EEE PC) only to go on saying that another good idea would be to buy a macbook pro (which granted is a nice machine but too expensive for my taste). Also you are stating 'Frankly, for any kind of laptop gaming you want a GeForce card', well frankly no. Granted the ATi drivers were pretty bad, but so were the Nvidia drivers (I'm more of an Nvidia man myself). A mate of mine has a mobile 3650 which outperforms my 9300M G easily (though I have hardware decoding for h264 which is nice

). Neither drivers are all that bad anymore.

All in all if you want to do any gaming on a laptop of measurable proportions you tend to have to spend a lot. My 9300M G isn't cutting it for most games but works more then well enough for the light gaming I do on it (for the rest there is the trusty ol' PC tower which is more upgrade friendly). The 9200 is something I simply wouldn't invest in.

 

[Taza]

Highly underpowered and very cheap machine with a small size and a decent durability. You get value worth every penny with the Eee 901 Linux.

And the MacBook has good build quality as well, and pretty much everything he wants, in addition to being an Apple. I never suggested the MacBook Pro - I just said it's an awesome, expensive machine.

And we all should know why you should not use ATI chips for anything and Intel chips for gaming or wine, but eh. (Overheating and drivers in the case of ATI, horrible, horrible gaming performance and bad compatibility in the case of Intel chips. Note: Bad compatibility relating to using wine with an Intel chip. More importantly, it's OpenGL support.)

EDIT: And oh, playallday, HP's being well built? Anything but, they've shared the old Compaq curse. Dells are usually decently built, but nowhere close to Apple or IBM quality.

 

[p1ngpong]

I have to laugh at the way this thread is going.

Playallday is asking if the stats are good on that laptop, and if it can run games all right. The question was answered.

Now we have a bunch of people making stupid suggestions like get a horrendously overpriced mac and put windows on it, or get a cheap underpowered "value for money" netbook instead, which has little use apart from surfing the web and running the lightest of apps (I have a couple so I know what Im talking about). I mean come on these suggestion are complete crap guys!



Dell and HP are ok, I would go with HP over Dell if I really had to choose between them. I know lots of people with Dells and all have had some sort of problems with their machine, but Dell have decent support so the problems were quickly resolved. But to be honest, if you have the choice avoid both.

For graphics go with Nvidia, ATI suck quite badly these days, and have bad compatibility.

 

[da_head]

i have an hp rite now, and it's pretty decent. macs aren't for gamers, and anyone who puts xp on it, is a cross dresser

 

[Taza]

The value-for-money Netbook - which is an awesome little machine - was recommended in case he's willing to ditch the gaming apart from WoW.

When then again, the latest MacBooks are actually competitive compared to their windows counterparts. Shocking, I know, how can a Mac not be horribly overpriced? The sky is falling!

Frankly, you still pay a little extra and a little more extra if you go with the comprehensive care option and full backup systems, but eh. Sometimes the Just Work is worth it, and in Mac case the hardware follows the standard too.

A good Dell or an IBM machine could also do it, but frankly, you ain't gonna get a gaming machine outta a laptop.

EDIT: And oh, "Macs aren't for gamers"? That's so 90's. Macs have been fine for gamers ever since they ditched PowerPC processors in favor of x86 compatible processors.

EDIT2: And p1ngpong: Maybe you just need to learn to use your netbooks properly. I've been gaming for a good while on my 701 and I could do so much more with the 901. Not that I need a laptop right now - the reason why I don't have a 901 yet.

 

[da_head]

@taza: and wat games r u playing exactly on that netbook of urs..?

 

[p1ngpong]

I game on my netbooks too, I run SNES emulators, play some older FPS and strategy games, I push them quite hard to get the most out of them.

A netbook is not a replacement for even a low end laptop though is what Im saying, in terms of functionality or performance.

Playallday obviously isnt looking fr a netbook, he wants a "great laptop".

edit@ da_head I can run empire earth 1, GTA 3, red faction 1 and 2, shogun total war, snes gba and n64 emulators, call of duty 1 all pretty well on my netbooks

 

[playallday]

Dell and HP are ok, I would go with HP over Dell if I really had to choose between them. I know lots of people with Dells and all have had some sort of problems with their machine, but Dell have decent support so the problems were quickly resolved. But to be honest, if you have the choice avoid both.

For graphics go with Nvidia, ATI suck quite badly these days, and have bad compatibility.
"Decent support"?!? It's more then that! I've had them cover over $500 on broken parts on my computer!

And guys, please stop talking about random stuff about Mac's.

And don't even say Macbook! (Mac hater here!)

Sorry I didn't say this before but I'm not getting the laptop that soon, maybe not until as far as May (when prices should be rock bottom).

Also does 288MB on a Video Card really help (this vs. this)? I'm really liking this laptop, fits my price range great. But I WILL be waiting for the prices to get lower. I don't want to spend more then $1,000 with tax (13%).

EDIT:
QUOTE(p1ngpong @ Jan 5 2009, 03:38 PM)

Playallday obviously isnt looking fr a netbook, he wants a "great laptop".

Sort of. I have a 256MB video card (GeForce) and 2GB of RAM on my computer now and that's all I really need.

 

[Taza]

@da_head: wat wat u u? Anyway, if I'm deciphering your question properly - stuff from a few years back. On the 901, anything up to San Andreas, maybe it'd even run Crysis. No GTA4/Far Cry 2, but maybe CoD4.

And in general - on the main page of Dell Canada, under the Boxing Day Deals, Vostro 2510. It's not horrible for it's price.

Posts merged

Dell and HP are ok, I would go with HP over Dell if I really had to choose between them. I know lots of people with Dells and all have had some sort of problems with their machine, but Dell have decent support so the problems were quickly resolved. But to be honest, if you have the choice avoid both.

For graphics go with Nvidia, ATI suck quite badly these days, and have bad compatibility.
"Decent support"?!? It's more then that! I've had them cover over $500 on broken parts on my computer!

And guys, please stop talking about random stuff about Mac's.
QUOTE(playallday @ Jan 1 2009, 02:51 PM) And don't even say Macbook! (Mac hater here!)

Sorry I didn't say this before but I'm not getting the laptop that soon, maybe not until as far as May (when prices should be rock bottom).

Also does 288MB on a Video Card really help (this vs. this)? I'm really liking this laptop, fits my price range great. But I WILL be waiting for the prices to get lower. I don't want to spend more then $1,000 with tax (13%).

The stuff about macs isn't "random stuff" - they're actually very good machines, even for gaming. Well, the nvidia-based macs are. Of course you pay a little extra, but that build quality increase really shows when you're using a laptop as opposed to a desktop computer. Mac OS X and Mac hardware are two very different things and can well work independently.

 

[playallday]

Oh wow, the laptop I was looking at is sold out now... Maybe there getting a new one...

EDIT: See any laptops on this site that are good? I can't find any now... Maybe you can. They have good prices from what I see.

 

[da_head]

@da_head: wat wat u u? Anyway, if I'm deciphering your question properly - stuff from a few years back. On the 901, anything up to San Andreas, maybe it'd even run Crysis. No GTA4/Far Cry 2, but maybe CoD4.

aww is "wat" and "u" to difficult to decipher? i'm sorry about that.

run crysis? lmao good luck with that

 

[Taza]

Frankly, if you'll be buying in three months - ask in two, not now. The prices and availability tend to jump a lot.

 

[Scorpei]

A MAC is overpriced, if you don't fancy features such as 'backlit keyboard' or 'Auto dimming LCD' (the latter of which can easily be created, and has been I think, for a windows machine that has a webcam). Aside from that and having mac osx, you pay around 600 euros more for a mac that is comparable to your run of the mill laptop (or hell even has the same hardware). Don't get me wrong though I like the mac book. I would buy one if I were to have the money to spare but I don't

. Nor do I feel the need for a full aluminium case.

If you want a mac you buy one, you know you are then also paying for 'extra features' and some design choices (such as propetarian nearly everything, funny you mention mac following the standards

). If you want that, and look only in that market, then they are indeed not overpriced.

MAC's in essence aren't for gamers, unless you bootcamp of course. The few things that run are WoW and UT I suppose under Mac OSX.

As for gaming on your 701, I'm surprised it even runs WoW. The thing has a 630MHz celeron together with a GMA900 which absolutely dies when gaming. I never worked with it but the GMA950, which is in the 901, I have and it is also hella slow. Try playing for example counter strike source with it, I say you will not go over 25 fps regardless of your settings. If you do it will be pretty much unplayable. All in all I can't see how you can tell someone you can game on it (especially throwing in games like CoD4 or even Crysis!).

Spoiler

Just because I feel like it. A Macbook at the apple store costs at least 950 euros which brings you:
a 2.1GHz intel core 2 duo
1 gig of RAM
120 gigs HD
intel X3100

Now naturally we don't want that (the X3100 isn't really great an all) so lets go with the next model:
2 GHz intel core 2 duo
2 gigs of RAM
160 gigs HD
Nvidia 9400M
And the alumitub body
All for the cheap price of 1199 euros. A little comparison (in case you don't like Ati I just picked a random Asus laptop with a price range of around 700 euros:
ASUS X71SL-7S023 brings you
2 GHz intel core 2 duo
4 gigs of ram
250 gigs harddrive
nVIDIA GeForce G9300M GS
For the low price of 650 euros. Doing the math that gives me: 1199-650=550 euros for hardware that is quite comparable. Even when we take the cheaper macbook you are still 300 euros better off with better hardware.

A final suggestion to the TS, if you want a laptop to game a lot on, it's going to be hard to find. Generally video cards in laptops are pretty slow. The 9200 isn't a good choice even for general gaming. With a 1000 dollar budget you should be able to do a lot better

.