Hi there I'm wanting to buy a laptop for browsing, films and some gaming. I would like to be able to run Starcraft 2 and Team Fortress 2 at a good frame rate but not expecting high settings. I have been looking at the AMD 15.6" range as intel latest i3 notebooks without a dedicated GPU doesn't seem to handle games as well as cheaper AMD CPU & GPU set up's. Correct me if I'm wrong though. MSI AMD Dual Core Asus AMD Turion ii These are the two I have been looking at the most. I am going towards the first one unless if AMD Turion ii is a much better technology than the AMD dual core with a 0.2 mhz difference and £50 higher price tag with DDR2 3gb vs DDR3 4gb. Scan sometimes has these on today only offers so might get one a bit cheaper. But are these laptops any good? Or is there better ones available if it be ebay or other brands/sizes for similar performance? Thanks
MSI - The 4250 (rank 250/349) only just ranks in low end for gaming, 4GB is nice, the P320 (rank 192/495) is mediocre but not completely rubbish. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html Asus one - 4200 is worse (rank 252/349) 3GB is daft as it will be single channel so nice performance drop their and the CPU M520 (rank 176/495) is better than a p320 To be honest neither are any good for gaming especially the latest titles such as starcraft 2.
gaming and laptop in one sentence, i never thought id see the day. you should be ashamed of yourself. anything decent is very expensive
Good luck with getting a £400 laptop to run Starcraft 2 above 15fps. It is very dependent on CPU and most laptops have ULV processors now.
I find it genuinely disappointing how little laptops have developed on striking a balance between CPU and GPU! How difficult is it to implement a CULV/ION netbook? I have a CULV/ION nettop and it's a wonderful little machine.
"Gaming" and "laptop" just don't coexist in my part of the known universe. With a small budget it's gonna be disappointing...
M11x R1 is what I currently use to play SC2 and tbh it is disappointing. The CULV cpu is not powerful enough and is a massive bottleneck on the GPU. The M11x R2 onwards have Sandy Bridge processors and I imagine they will handle SC2 much better.
Okay maybe I should correct myself to deflect some of this hate Disclaimer to the blasphemy which is "Gaming" & "Laptop" located next to each other: I agree 100%, laptops and gaming don't work together. I am a desktop gamer end of. However, I do a lot of traveling seems I am at university, and always going between girlfriend home, girlfriends uni home, my home, family and last my uni place which is basically locations all around the north of England and Wales... Dragging around my Coolermaster Stacker 832 and a 24" monitor when I don't drive/can't afford a car is a nightmare. Seems she is a gamer herself, at times we at least have one gamer rig available.. but others it is not possible. I simply want to go on a super cheap laptop to do some web browsing, portable uni work on the trains.. but it would be nice to be able to throw on starcraft and watch a few replays or observe a game or jump on tf2 for a bit when the PC is either taken or I'm at a location with no available PC. The gaming bit isn't even important! Threw it in as it seemed more directly influencing the performance rather than asking "Excuse me I would like a notebook which turns on and I can browse the internet with." I want to keep the budget as low as possible as any higher and I might aswell just put together another rig. /// Jeeessshhh I had all this in my original post, but figured I would leave out all the personal stuff as it would be excessive information! Guess I was wrong! . Anyways thanks for... answering the original question & links
i am sympathetic to your problem but unless you get a very expensive laptop your problem will still remain
Alienware M11x R1 is £450. It will play any half-decently optimised console port at max, it will just struggle a bit with 4 player, max food count, SC2 blobs. It also has great battery life.
Update: got a Dell XPS M1710 on ebay for a reasonable price and good condition. See how that works out. Wish me luck. Thanks again for advice and links - the GPU rating one was very helpful + rep.
^7900 GS apparently - I will update specs with my own readings/pictures when I receive it and give an update for you! Just hope it has a good life span left in it.
Biggest issue with 2nd hand laptops is battery, they often hold little charge (vs new) and new batteries can be pricey. For anyone reading, specs of the 2006 Dell XPS M1710 are; C2D@2.16ghz 4GB 7900GTX-Go-512MB with a 17" 1920x1200 screen. Usually laptop gfx names are little to do with desktop part of the same name, in this case the 7900GTX-Go is 500mhz core, 500mhz shader, 600mhz GDDR3 with 24 pixel pipes and 8 vertex. Desktop parts 2006; 7900GT 450/470 660mhz GDDR3 with same 24/8 shaders. Desktop 7900GTX 650/700 800mhz GDDR3 also with 24/8 shaders. 7900GTX-Go nets 18,287 on 3Dmark03, 8,524 on 3Dmark05, 4,744 on 3Dmark06 and 71fps on FEAR 16x12 (0xAA). Source http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2887 FWIW I'd suggest a Shuttle for someone needing a compact gaming solution as gaming laptops are usually very expensive, thick, heavy, hot, noisy and power hungry with poor battery life. Generally Shuttles are well priced, more configurable, more upgradable, more flexible and with a HDMI easy to hook up to most displays when out and about.
