Spec and cost of a gaming lappy?

Chris [BEANS]

Chris [BEANS]

Chris [BEANS]

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Right. I'm now officially hugely out of touch with gaming and what specs are needed now days.

I'm looking to buy a lappy and was wondering if I spent £400 - £500 on one, would it play upcoming games like C&C3 etc?

I'm not expecting really high resolutions or all the eye candy, but simply to be able to play them at all.

I figured this thread was better off in here as my questions specifically relate to playing games........

Cheers
 
hrmm not for £500. In the laptops around that price range, its normally integrated graphics card setups they have. Add an extra £200 and you might be able to get one with x1600, x1400, 7400go 7600go graphics. Whether that will be ok for upcoming games is doubtful. (unless your happy playing everything at bare minimum)
 
You want a good gaming laptop?

You will be looking towards the £1000++ range.

It is much better to just buy a pc for games. Although I did buy the macbook Pro as my laptop ( but this isnt for gaming ).
 
akirru said:
Yeah but remember he does state that he just wants to play games on the bare minimum.
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nowadays most new and upcoming games require minimum level of dedicated GPU though.(minimum shaders etc)
 
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Got a gaming laptop for my sister in September which cost about £900.
You may be able to get away with spending less but to be honest with a £400-500 budget your only option will be to look secondhand. New laptops in that pricerange simply won't have a good enough GPU.
 
Lolcb said:
You want a good gaming laptop?

You will be looking towards the £1000++ range.

It is much better to just buy a pc for games. Although I did buy the macbook Pro as my laptop ( but this isnt for gaming ).
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I'm looking to buy a lappy
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he's already decided hes getting a laptop for gaming.....

Of course a desktop will be better for purely games but thats not to say a laptop cant play top spec games. It can its just less flexible and usually more expensive than its desktop equivalent.

I know of at least 3 suppliers that can give me a good new gaming laptop for around £900 (With 7600go, 7700go x1600 or x1700 graphics)
 
hp nc8430
dv9000t
Asus F3JV (£750 inc vat with 7600go core2duo 1 gig ram 2year warranty etc)
Asus F3Ja ( £730 inc vat x1600 version)

basically you can get a fairly decent laptop that will run newish games but a low settings for under £900 no problem But expect them to have the midrange graphics cards x1600, x1700, x1400, 7400go, 7600go and 7700go etc.

edit: found a midrange 15" for about £580 inc vat with comparable specs (ie with x1600 graphics) but unsure about build quality


Also google Zepto to find them. They offer some customizability in their laptops and they are very competitive price wise.
 
I'm also thinking of getting a laptop which I'll occasionally use for gaming, it has a Core 2 duo and 2gb of ram and an x1400 128mb, do you think that it is good enough to run stuff like Company of Heroes and HL2?
 
But if hes paying to get a gaming laptop that does the minimum levels now, it wont last the next gen of games and most definitely wont cope when DX10 comes through (eventually)...

In all honesty if you are after a gaming laptop you need to be buying something top end (£1500+) to make it last a year of games especially at the moment. If you do decide to buy something cheaper then dont be surprised you having to sell it a lot sooner than expected when the next game you wanna play hits the shelves.

Gaming laptops just are an oxymoron which truely only exist for the mad minority that can afford their upkeep. Most ppl think keeping a normal desktop up-to-date is too expensive, so I dread to think how expensive a gaming laptop is, even if you tried to get it at the minimum level...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
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If you do decide to buy something cheaper then dont be surprised you having to sell it a lot sooner than expected when the next game you wanna play hits the shelves
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pc gaming isnt all about "the next biggest new game with uber graphics"
pc gaming for me is never about "the best game is the one with the best graphics"

The endless pursuit of graphical perfection does not make the game any better.... just more expensive (upgrading) :rolleyes:

devs seem to fall into this trap too though :rolleyes:

gameplay > graphics

and there is a ton of games out there which will play fine on a midrange gaming laptop. Should we all just abandon classics of yesteryear just because they dont look as pretty?


it wont last the next gen of games and most definitely wont cope when DX10 comes through (eventually)...
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2008 at earliest for dx10 gaming dominance tbh
 
Surfer said:
devs seem to fall into this trap too though :rolleyes:

gameplay > graphics

...

2008 at earliest for dx10 gaming dominance tbh
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Surfer, agree with your points in general, but looking at the OP that we are all replying to negates them in this case Im afraid. Sorry...

The OP is looking for a laptop for upcoming games, unless Im mistaken the majority of which probably wont have much better graphics, but will still have higher demands on the hardware, getting something that hits min spec now, just wont cut the mustard in literally a few months...

Devs dont fall into the trap so to speak, the consumer allows them to be lazy when designing games and the large majority for some reason think a new game much equate new polished graphics even if the gameplay is the same (or generally worse). Now hardware is improving hand over fist, much more quickly than game development, so this just makes them less inclined to optimise their games...

Im pretty sure 2008 is about a year away as I said, any laptop (or desktop for that matter) with whichever graphics card is going to suffer when its not DX10 complaint, we will still have games that work (well) on DX9 plaform, but as above devs will try and concentrate on the next tech (yes the majority of gamers will still be on DX9, but for some reason the PC market isnt always govern by common sense)...
 
well i agree with all that lol :D . At the end of the day a laptop is never going to compete with a desktop on gaming performance and upgradeability because it isnt built to. In saying that i much prefer using a laptop over a desktop. (But i treat it like a multi-functioning device and portability over just purely as a gaming system)

It will be middle if not end of 2008 at the earliest imo for dx10 to become common. I mean look how long SLI/crossfire has been around and there isnt exactly a feast of games supporting it. (yeah i know things are different with dx10 and vista with MS doing the hardsell on it)
 
ps3ud0 said:
devs will try and concentrate on the next tech (yes the majority of gamers will still be on DX9, but for some reason the PC market isnt always govern by common sense)...
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It's a bit of a chicken&egg type situation though. If developers didn't bother coding for DX10, then people wouldn't rush out and buy DX10 cards, and hardware manufacturers wouldn't be pushing the technology forward so much.

Or, in other words, developers refusing to code/optimise for DX10 because of a perceived lack of installed user base would be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, since it would hamper the demand for the hardware required.

It's probably a bit of a moot point anyway, since by 2008 even dx9 titles are likely to require (well, benefit significantly from) very fast hardware, i.e. gf8 of better, which supports DX10 in any case.

People buy GF8 (a dx10 card) to play dx9 titles
People bought 9700pro (a dx9 card) to play dx8 titles
People bought Geforce3 (a dx8 card) to play dx7 titles

etc.
 
i got mine for £980 and its got a core 2 duo 2ghz, 2gig ram, nvida go 7900 gs, 17" at 1900x1200, 80 gig hd at 7200rpm and its a damn good for games i play cs:s at 1900x1200 fine.
 
i got mine for £980 and its got a core 2 duo 2ghz, 2gig ram, nvida go 7900 gs, 17" at 1900x1200, 80 gig hd at 7200rpm and its a damn good for games i play cs:s at 1900x1200 fine.
 
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