laptop advice

[Frantic Slayer]

ok guys, im thinking about getting a new laptop for college. basically as far as gaming goes i want it run everything in my steam account (i have a crap load of source stuff if u can believe that).
so what i was looking at has the following specs:

Proc: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26G 1066MHz FSB
NB: Intel PM45
Ram: 3GB DDR2 800
Gfx: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 256MB
HDD: 250GB SATA 5400rpm
OS: POS vista
screen size/res.: 16.4" @ 1600 x 900

what do you guys think of the screen res vs. size?

thanks,
Frantic

[Laz]

I would suggest going with a system with an nVidia graphics card, but everything else looks great.

[Blue Cypher]

I would agree with Laz as nvidia graphics not only tend to be slightly better performance with laptops, but also most games on steam tend to run bettter on Nvidia cards anyway, there is a good reason for this but cant remember why at the moment.

[Infinity]

Cause Nvidia has a better business development team and has thousands more games coded with nvidia drivers as the standard than ATI.

The big limitation in laptop gaming is going to be the throughput of the hard drives. So if you can get one that has 10k drives you will see more performance increase than anything else.

[Rogue Five]

yeah i'd go with an nvidia card, but thats just me and everybody else here ;)

and an amd processor as its just as good, but less expensive.

[Laz]

yeah i'd go with an nvidia card, but thats just me and everybody else here ;)

and an amd processor as its just as good, but less expensive.

Actually, AMD has gone downhill quite a bit. I just built a new machine, and while every machine I've built in the last 10 years had an AMD chip, I ended up going Intel this time because of how powerful and inexpensive their new chips have become.

Along with the fact that AMD decided to buy ATI and still lets them fail at making and supporting their video cards kinda blows.

[Rogue Five]

oh well i got a laptop with a Turion64 dual core and its fine in my laptop. i got an integrated GPU, that needs to change, but its nvidia.

i knew that the one we got for desktop a few years ago was amd and it was great, but i had no clue that they were flopping around...

[Blue Cypher]

The problem there rogue is you cant just throw in a graphics card in a laptop.

[Rogue Five]

darn it i know that now... thats ok it runs TF2 and half life fine, and it is able to run UT3, so i should be alright with SGW... and im sure i could figure out how to put one in, even if it meant adding a huge bump on the bottom of the case... which defeats the purpose of a laptop anyways so im not gonna do it.

[petruchio]

Actually, adding a graphics card to a laptop is a lot harder than you might imagine. You'd actually have to have a slot on the motherboard for it (not all do), and you'd have to make sure the driver is available for your OS. And then there's the problem of actually finding a modular card that works with anything other than the motherboard it's designed for. There just aren't a lot of them out there, and they are usually only available through "unapproved" (read: illegal or at least unauthorized by the manufacturer) channels. Fortunately, that's starting to change, but upgrading graphics on a laptop is a nonstarter in 99% of the laptops out there.

[Rogue Five]

i was just kidding. how would i actually go about doing that. and would i actually cut a hole in the casing of my laptop? most likely not.

but they should make it easier to do that. oh well.

[Laz]

i was just kidding. how would i actually go about doing that. and would i actually cut a hole in the casing of my laptop? most likely not.

but they should make it easier to do that. oh well.

It's likely your graphics card is on board, meaning it's part of the Motherboard. In that case, there isn't even a slot to plug a new card in.

Pretty much 98% or so of the laptops out there can't be upgraded, and even if they can, the cards they can use, probably aren't much of an upgrade.