Ok so a friend of mine is about to get a new laptop as his old toshiba is about to die, I've just got a new dell for my mother a vostro 3550 with these specs: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (64 BIT) with Recovery DVD Intel® Core™ i5-2410M 2.3GHz Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Services, 15-month 4096MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM 15.6 inch High Definition LED Display (1366 x 768) with anti-glare LCD Back Cover : Silver 320GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator HD 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software Palmrest : Fingerprint Reader Biometric Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera Internal Backlit Keyboard Primary 6-cell 48 WHr Lithium Ion battery I know its very good specs for what my mother wants to do with it (not alot really) and massive overkill for her, but how would it be for playing games on? Would it be able to play things like dragon age 2, starcraft 2, crysis, bioshock? i'm guessing on low to medium settings?
In a word - no. I have a £1200 laptop with dedicated GPU and 2.8GHz Intel mobile CPU - and it sometimes struggles to play a game as graphically base as left4Dead at times. I can play Civ 5 on the lowest settings and it looks horrible, and hopeless in the later stages - so more graphically demanding games like Bioshock and DA 2 would stuggle to say the least, I would have thought.
The problem is most mid-range laptops have a decent CPU but poor integrated graphics options that are only generally good for browsing the internet and office apps. You probably have to spend around £700-£800 to get a laptop with a half decent dedicated GPU that is even capable of playing games at low/medium settings at 1366 x 768 or a similar resolution. If you can wait a bit, i'd see what Llano based laptops offer in terms of price/performance, as at least the GPUs on offer should be far better than the integrated Intel offerings.
my not dissimilar spec'd laptop can play Civ4, Sins of Solar Empire and single player Minecraft on the lowest settings. If you're content with playing older or less action orientated games, you might get away with it. But more importantly the monitor resolution is horrible for games (and just about anything other than simple tasks. You just don't see enough to be comfortable, in my opinion.
Laptops really aren't good for gaming. For the same money, you can build a fairly capable gaming rig, but as chris66 points out, you have to invest significant monies to get only average returns.
This. Its been this way for years. Unless you have Alienware or top of the range gaming laptops, you might only be able to play modern games on medium settings or so. £500 will definitely not get you this. Why not build a desktop?
cheers for all the responses guys, he needs the portability of a laptop rather lugging a desktop, to and from uni, I did tell him i could build him one, but he was set on getting a laptop. I also kind guessed the outcome of seeing if a £500 laptop could play games, but thanks anyway. In the end he ignored all my advice (the fool) and bought one of these http://h40059.www4.hp.com/uk/homelaptops/product.php?id=XE009EA&experience=direct
i understand where your friend is coming from. I am a soon to be graduated student and bought a laptop with the intention of it being portable and both being able to game on it. I must say it lasted a year where instead i built my own desktop and bought a netbook. I'm able to take notes on the netbook at uni and use it on campus, whilst gaming in a big powerful desktop back at the flat is a brilliant compromise. Whilst it is a bit of a pain carrying a massive box filled with the PC from my uni to home accommodation, it sure beats tweaking the hell out of each game trying to get the most out of a laptop GPU. He will see...
indeed he will, I don't think he's massively bothered about playing games, it was a kinda 'it would be nice' kind of thing, shame he's too impatient and went to pc world and bought that so so hp, rather than a much better dell business laptop i recommend him, but oh well.
I got a laptop for going to uni, only a cheap 13", was never in any doubt that I was bringing my desktop, however since i's such a pain lugging to and from LANs (800D), I've now just built myself a small LAN/server PC (PC-Q08) So while the journey to and from home will be even worse with another computer to take, atleast the LANs will be easier
I bought my brother a Sony Vaio E-Series, i3-350M, 4GB DDR3 and Radeon HD5650 last summer for around £600. Was pretty impressed with its gaming capabilities, obviously not going to run the likes of Crysis on high settings. Plays BFBC2, Starcraft 2, CoD 4 and Medieval all on at least medium if not high settings at its native resolution. Connected upto to a 24" monitor, we drop teh settings but still smooth gameplay and medium settings.
