Laptops & PC games..

peetee · 5 Oct 2007 at 14:24

Got a choice of a few laptops hovering between about £300-£380 or so from US, machines are all dual core of some sort, with graphics ranging from GMA950, 6150, 7000, 7150, 7300(sure i spotted that in there) and x1200/x1250..
Which would be better for games etc? Not going to be used as a gaming laptop, just would like the option of playing the odd old game on it, not really old though.

Maybes pes2008 to plug into TV, C+C generals, WC3, cs1.6 or something?
Heck, maybes ever source engined games!

Anyone care to help me make a choice? If you want the list of avail laptops I could email you url or something? really need some help deciding though..
Would like to know how much difference in performance id see between each model, aswell as any known bad points about each. Im a student so Id like my money well spent!

Will also be used for general word processing, watching videos, maybes a bit of lightwave or video editing, no proper rendering though(iv got a decent desktop, this is just to take to uni sometimes, or to friends to play about on lan, and to take home to my parents/gfs with me if i go home for a weekend or something, as the pc is too big and I would like the ability to do some work!)

peetee · 5 Oct 2007 at 19:40

surely some people here have laptops using some of the above cards? I need some advice in which laptop to get, and which graphics solution would be the best for casual/light/oldschool gaming for me..?

All the machines are dual core and are fairly decent in processing power really, aswell as having 1-2gb of ram.
COME ON PEOPLE.

Plazek · 5 Oct 2007 at 21:47

As far as I am aware all of those are bad graphics cards. As in they are all budget range. You will really struggle to play any modern games that rely heavily on the gfx card.

peetee · 5 Oct 2007 at 22:05

ay i know they are all budget range, iv never heard of the x1200/x1250 before really though...
Like i said, Im not really wanting modern games, its just the odd thing like C+C generals, Warcraft3, cs/dod, source engine at most..
7300 perfectly capable of source engine though, is it not?
im guessing the 7000 is just completely crippled and useless?
6150 - not sure about this one, a lot of people use it for HD media centres, but thats mostly CPU dependant isnt it?

somebody help meee, the clock is ticking before my friend comes home

Xionic · 6 Oct 2007 at 00:25

my laptop ( a few years old now) is a 3500+, 896MB 333 RAM, 256MB Radeon Express 200M (128 dedicated, 128 assigned from ram) and it plays generals, wow, and most source games on decent settings @ 1280x800 (css no problem on high but hl2 needs to be mid-low) and even plays BF2 on lowest @ 1024x768 with smooth fps

cant see u having any issues TBH

PS: if you have any issues in source games PM me i have an autoexec (goes in cfg folder insteam) which disables some of the graphics hungry shadows and specular lighting to seriously improve frame rate without a massive graphics decrease

peetee · 6 Oct 2007 at 00:28

thats what I thought, my mate's lappy has a 200m and was ok with everything although now it spits out wc3 so im guessing hes virus riddled

Is the 6150 more powerful than the 200m? Its same generation so im guessing its probably about the same? The 7300 would be my pick out the bunch to be the best though.
I was actually looking for a 200m laptop, or one with an x700, as i think they are exactly what i need, but there isnt any at walmart

and theres no 7600s in my price range(that would have been ideal

)

peetee · 6 Oct 2007 at 01:08

acer website said:
Windows Vista® -ready NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7300 with up to 256 MB TurboCache™ flaunts true-to-life visuals for graphics-intensive games

Does this mean it has no vram and relies purely on system memory to use as video memory?

manic111 · 6 Oct 2007 at 01:32

Yip. Sorry! You will be able to run older games (maybe 3 or 4 years ago), and a small number of newer ones (although you will be hard pushed to run PES on it).

peetee · 6 Oct 2007 at 02:08

At the mo im writing down what each has, theres a fair few 7150UMAs, 6150s too!
Theres a GO 7300 which is
http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/as9410.htm
Does this mean it has NO VRAM what-so-ever? oh is that why you said YIP? PANTS!

Theres also an x1200..
'ATI Radeon Xpress X1200 graphics with 128 to 319 MB of dynamically allocated shared graphics memory'
Does that mean no VRAM for that one either? :| that was a Toshiba Satellite a215-s744 btw
Finally, perhaps the best choice..
HP Compaq 6715b .. '
ATI Radeon X1250, up to 512-MB shared system memory
Microsoft DirectX 9 capable'
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/321957-321957-64295-321838-89315-3368540.html
again - no true VRAM? :| Damn !
There was something saying the x1250 was based on the x700core though, which is reassuring as my mates x700 lappy was fine with BF2 + 2142.. Im not expecting that really though, although iv just come across this, cant really say that it makes much sense when it gets down to the bottom as a lot of numbers seem inconcistent and are missing too.

Should i bite the bullet and start concidering the intel x3100 ?
Or does the x1250 sound like the best bet? although by the looks of it theres no dedicated memory(DARN!)
Im a bit stuck atm, its all walmart have to offer