I'm getting it in the neck from she who must be obeyed for the amount of time I'm spending upstairs playing Call of Duty online - despite the fact I only do it when the soaps are on :rolleyes:

So I was wondering whether it was worth investing in a laptop - but I'd like to know whether I could play the latest pc game releases on one?

Any ideas?

Yeh just make sure you get one of a good spec with a decent graphics card. Only reason laptops used to fail for games was because of the lack of 3D support but it seems to be pretty much covered these days. Getting a cutting edge graphics card in a laptop maybe about twice the price though:(

http://www.rockdirect.com/

I got my Laptop from here, its amazing and has nevr let me down. Its 1 year old today too!

http://www.alienware.co.uk/main.aspx

Another good alternative. I don't like the design to these machine, but most people seem too!

Good Luck and Have fun!

If you want a Laptop to play games you are going to have to spend a fair amount of cash.. My Amilo 1800D plays games quite well and is a year old now, can play Farcry with no problems in quite high detail and doom 3 fine in low Res high detail.. You need at least a Radeon 9200 or equivalent, the Radeon 9700 is standard on the revised Amilo. Or the Nvidea equivalent.. you need to spend £1000 or more if you want it to last!

my dell inspiron 8600 is fine for playing games (one of the reasons i bought it), Rock have a good reputation as well.

Or if your loaded get one of these: http://www.alienware.co.uk/Product_Pages/notebook_gaming.aspx

a belated thanks for all the replies :thumbsup:

I've been to PC World today and they inform me that the only important thing tha I need is an ATI Integrated Graphics Card as opposed to one with a normal graphics card. Is this right?
When I asked what the difference was he scratched his head and ummed and ahhed. The only difference that I could see was the price, the laptops with an ATI thingymebob all started about £950 - and that was for a 64mb card.

Was I being had over?

The purchase is looming so would appreciate advice - was looking at spending about £1000.

Cheers

An integrated graphics card simply means the card is built onto the motherboard, rather than being a removable card which fits in a slot. On a laptop, you'd expect the graphics card to be integrated - so no problems there.

ATI are a manufacturer of video chipsets, and they have a wide range of graphics cards covering every budget. However, their Radeon 7x00 series are slow by today's standards.

If you get a system with a Radeon 9700 or Radeon 9800 Mobility card, it will give you very good performance.

Also note that although a decent graphics card will give you very good video performance, the rest of the laptops' components will need to be of a suitably high-spec as well to prevent any speed bottlenecks. You'll need a fast CPU (a fast Pentium 4, or Athlon XP) a fast hard disk (say, 5400rpm and 40Gb+) and enough RAM (I'd recommend at least 1gb).

If you went for a slower Celeron CPU laptop with a fast video card, it would be like running a relay race with Linford Christie and Bernard Manning in your team.

Originally posted by spook
I've been to PC World today....

...Was I being had over?

Yes, don't go there again please!

I can quite happily play games on machines without top end graphics cards. If you're not going to be playing the latest system hungry games all the time then spending some money on a decent laptop with good specs will see you right.

If your a serious gamer and will be playing the latest games then, no, no, no, NO, NO! a laptop will never do, they're just not designed with gamers in mind, especially the cack they sell at PC world...

the fastest mobility chip is based on them 9800 I think, I have one in my PC, its quite good, but even still, its now currently high-end and not super high-end... there are better cards out there now...

gaming will and always will be an expensive hobby for the PC, as its always expensive upgrades, buying a laptop is a BAD idea if your main usage will be for games...

I'll give you a lowdown of what the average gaming PC these days needs minimum:

2.5ghz P4 processor or AMD 2500+ (an AMD 3200+ 64 bit would be best)
512mb of RAM (1Gb is really nesecessary to play most of the new games at their best!)
ATI 9800 pro, or Nvidia 5950 (an Nvidia 6800GT or ATI X800 pro would be best)
7200rpm HD's with 8mb cache, preferably a 2nd HD so that the pagefile isn't on the same HD.
a decent Sound blaster card, Audigy 2 or something

you wont find laptops with specs like that, it doesnt happen, cus they're designed and made for people to do their office or University work, not for someone to sit in their living room to play Doom 3 or Half Life 2 ;)

btw my PC:
AMD XP 3200+
1Gb RAM
ATI 9800 pro
3 7200rpm HD's totatlling upto 390Gb

and it still only plays the latest games half decent, it's all about graphics cards, and laptops just dont have the good stuff :P

definitely don't buy or take any advice from pc world. About the only thing it's good for is taking a look physically if they have a machine that you're already interested in.

Integrated graphics means that it's part of the controller chip, these are slow and I don't think ATI actually do any integrated solutions.

ATI or Nvidia stand alone graphics are what you want (although physically these are not removable cards as you would expect in a desktop).
The 9x00 series for ati is top of the range for laptops, 97 having a slight advantage over 96, nvidia might be the x700 or something like that.

It's rare to find a laptop with a good graphics card and low spec other components, so that shouldn't really be an issue.

Have a look at www.whatlaptop.co.uk, it used to have a good forum, but it's not so popular now, but the rest of it's website is upto date I think.

My Laptop is Pentium 3.2Ghz
1GB Ram
ATI 9800
1 7200rpm 80gb drive

Runs like a beast. It also has a 17" Monitor. So i can safely say that a laptop can be a gaming machine. I have never had a problem with it.

Originally posted by Cyclone
The 9x00 series for ati is top of the range for laptops, 97 having a slight advantage over 96, nvidia might be the x700 or something like that.

It's swings and roundabouts with which is better actually, the 9700 is a directx 8 card, it doesn't have the improved pixel and vertex shader 2.0 pipelines, whereas the 9600 does as its a directx 9 card, but its slightly slower in power... basically you'd get more FPS (frames per second) with the 9700, but it might not be exactly what the game wanted to show.

anyways, what you really want is an X800 or an nvidia 6800 GT ;) but they're expensive as hell, and not for laptops!

Lickable: you tried running Doom 3 on your laptop? or Half Life 2? It'll probably run crappy like mine, and it definitly will with Chronicles of Riddick ;)

the thing is with games is that once a new card comes out the games are made to run full speed on the new card, leaving lower cards only just coping... but at £300-ish for the latest cards I'm sticking with what I've got for a little while ;)

as far as I can determine the only difference between the 9600 and the 9700 is that the 9700 has twice as many pipelines and a slightly lower clock speed. Which still results in the 9700 being somewhat faster than the 9600.

Ha - a bit more research and it turns out that the mobile 97k is in no way related to the desktop version.

So it's still 4 pipelines, but is a newer design than the 9.6k.
Basically they are both dx9 but the 9.7k is around 25% in all scenarios.

Originally posted by xafier


Lickable: you tried running Doom 3 on your laptop? or Half Life 2? It'll probably run crappy like mine, and it definitly will with Chronicles of Riddick ;)



havent tried Half life 2 or Riddick, but Doom 3 runs great, even on the highest level of quality. Will see if i can find a demo of riddick.

opinons please - would this fella be ok for gaming?

here (http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/store/dix_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0079065405.110838384 7@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccddadddldhkmdjcflgceggdhhmdgmi.0&page=Product&sku=985857&category_oid=-21720&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null)

the graphics chip is 3 generations 'old' so it's not going to be the most capable machine around.
Also - never buy anything from Dixons.

Taking a brief look on www.whatlaptop.co.uk i'd say this is a better machine (more suited to gaming)

SYSTEMAX TOURBOOK 5207
PRICE £851/£1000 (EX/INC. VAT)
PROCESSOR Intel 1.7GHz Pentium M 735
MEMORY 512MB DDR SDRAM
HARD DRIVE 40GB
SCREEN SIZE AND TYPE 15-inch TFT
DISPLAY RESOLUTION 1400 x 1050 pixels
GRAPHICS CARD ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
DIMENSIONS 328 x 270 x 30mm
WEIGHT 3kg
PC CARDS (TYPE II/III) 1/0
WIRELESS LAN 802.11g
ETHERNET Yes
USB PORTS 3
FIREWIRE 1
STANDARD WARRANTY 2 yr C&R
WARRANTY UPGRADE N/A
CONTACT 0870 729 7645 www.systemaxpc.co.uk

or maybe this one;

CARRERA TRAVELSTAR G900
PRICE £979/£1150 (EX/INC. VAT)
PROCESSOR Intel 3.2GHz Pentium 4
MEMORY 512MB DDR SDRAM
HARD DRIVE 80GB
SCREEN SIZE AND TYPE 17-inch TFT
DISPLAY RESOLUTION 1440 x 900 pixels
GRAPHICS CARD ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
DIMENSIONS 397 x 275 x 45mm
WEIGHT 5kg
PC CARDS (TYPE II/III) 1/0
WIRELESS LAN 802.11g (Optional)
ETHERNET Yes
MODEM Yes
USB PORTS 4
FIREWIRE 1
STANDARD WARRANTY 3 yr RTB
WARRANTY UPGRADE N/A
CONTACT 0871 222 3456 www.carrera.co.uk

group test of laptops 1000 - 1300 is at here (http://www.whatlaptop.co.uk/c5HlL99o-WckGXZs.html)