Laptop buying advice

[Twiz]

I'm looking to buy a laptop. My budgets about £400. I just need it to be able to run games at least moderately well (if it runs Half Life 2 and GTA : San Andreas it's fine) and have as much ram as possible. I've seen this :

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=17484

which looks pretty good. Is a Geforce 6600 "Go!" anywhere near as good as a Geforce 6600?

I'm also looking at this :

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/133384/show_product_specifications

I'm a complete laptop newbie and know next to nothing about what sort of system specs I'm looking for, can someone with a bit more laptop experience advise me on this? Can I get a better deal for my money?

Thanks muchly

[Scribbly]

[edit]

I should read posts more thoroughly..

[terrorbite]

Scribbly, he said his budget was £400.

I doubt you're gonna get a decent games playing laptop for that price though.

Granted its a new, resource hungry game, but my laptop (which has an nVidia GeForce 8600GS in it) struggles playing Call of Duty 4 on average settings.

Edit: Well, it doesn't struggle, but I was expecting to be able to play it on high settings no problem... although I guess its only a laptop.

[Swirl]

You can customly choose everything from www.pcspecialist.co.uk and (I think) it's pretty cheap. It certainly claims to be.
There are two laptop choices - one comes with:
128MB (SMA) INTEL GM965 + D-SUB + TV-OUT
(graphics card)
and the other comes with:
512MB GEFORCE 8600GT + D-SUB + TV-OUT.

The second one is better in terms of performance, and would enable you to play the latest games like the orange box. Perhaps even the first option could play HL2 but I would go for the second, just because you can play the more recent games.
Basically everything else from pcspecialist you can custom choose yourself - and it seems pretty cheap to me :)

[Edit] oooh sorry the laptop with the higher spec starts at £617 (with no addons etc.)

[Twiz]

Ok I kinda thought I wouldn't be able to get a decent gaming laptop for that price....but do you think either of the two I'm considering would do the job, at least on a crap setting? This picture suggests the card in the second choice is capable of pixel shader 2 and a whole load of other pretty good stuff, though I might be wrong:

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/2513_large_SiS_Roadmap_2007.png

Also, which laptop has a better processor?

[terrorbite]

The one in the second choice is most likely crappy integrated graphics, and if you're going down that route you may as well get a laptop with Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics. Most new laptops at the moment that don't have a dedicated graphics card use that.

If I were you, I'd probably get an Acer Gemstone. They're the new range of Acer laptops, and you can get the lower end ones pretty cheap:

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5720-1A2G08Mi_Laptop_LX.AVG0X.177/version-1.asp

That one has a Core 2 Duo processor.

[Twiz]

That looks good, thank you!

Ok I've upped my budget a little bit and I'm thinking about getting a Dell Inspiron with the following specifications:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T5450 (1.66 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2-cache)

2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]

160GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive

Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100


Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive

any feedback on whether or not that'll be any good for what I want to do? Also would it be worth the extra £30 to upgrade to a 1.83ghz processor (same cache same fsb)? Would I really notice the difference entertainment/gaming wise?

thanks

[Scribbly]

Hello, few points:

1) If you want to play games you're going to need a decent graphics card, anything with the word "integrated" in it won't suffice.

2) You're talking about gaming but Half Life 2 and GTA : San Andreas are outdated, any 'ol system can play those games.

If you want to play games you're better off comparing if you can play Call of Duty 4.

That game does actually NOT require that good of a system:

# CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 2.4 GHz or AMD(R) Athlon(TM)
# 64 2800+ processor or any 1.8Ghz Dual Core Processor or better supported
# RAM: 512MB RAM (768MB for Windows Vista)
# Video card (generic): NVIDIA(R) Geforce(TM) 6600 or better or ATI(R) Radeon(R) 9800Pro or better

For example: Crysis requires a lot more to play it decently.

3) You do realise laptop with budget <> games isn't a very good combination?

[The Grim Reaper]

1) If you want to play games you're going to need a decent graphics card, anything with the word "integrated" in it won't suffice.

2) You're talking about gaming but Half Life 2 and GTA : San Andreas are outdated, any 'ol system can play those games.

If you want to play games you're better off comparing if you can play Call of Duty 4.

1. Very true in most cases, let alone compatibility issues with some games

2. Thats what he wants to play

3. I dont think its going to be for gaming, so i think one that does COD4 well would be a little over price

That looks good, thank you!

Ok I've upped my budget a little bit and I'm thinking about getting a Dell Inspiron with the following specifications
So whats the new budget?

Once again, integrated wont work as well. Even an Geforce Go 6150 works reasonably well for older games. Try and find one with a *600 or *300 or something. Thats a great dell other than the graphics card. Pity the graphics card tends to define laptops price.

Perhaps this (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123120) if only it wasnt 550. A 7300 should do HL2 ep1 at around 40fps on mediumish settings which is good. I've seen Vice City running on a really old computer, so im sure san andreas would work great on the 7300.
FYI I have little knowledge of the pound other than its approx 2.5-3x more than the NZD. I also have little knowledge of hardware sellers (in the UK/EU).

edit: The 3rd one across (http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspnnb_1720?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs) if you can afford afford it looks very good for the price. I dont know what an 8400 is like however, but it should be sufficient.

edit2: If you customize the 2nd on across with the 8400 or the 8600 it comes to 500 and 550 respectively. If you go for the 8400 you can chuck a better processor in there too to come to 550.

[Twiz]

Thanks that's really useful, I think the laptop with an 8400 with a better processor is probably my best choice...I'll have to see what I can afford I guess!

I've got a bit of background knowledge on integrated graphics vs dedicated card graphics when it comes to laptops now, thanks everyone :)

EDIT: My PC just started working again...screw it! I'm gonna get an Eee PC now. Cheap and useful.