Laptop recommendations needed

[senecalalbrecht]

Hi all:

newbie here. can anyone make any recommendations for a decent but not expensive gaming laptop sufficient for SH2 and 3, older flight sims and brothers in arms.

I'm spooked but all the warnings about "laptop video cards not supported"

also, do be able to play newer games in the future which laptops would enable me to upgrade videocard in the future.

Thanks,
Karl Albrecht
Atlantik Kampagne

[FIREWALL]

The word "cheap" isn't in the Gameing Laptop Volcabulary.

[Pohl]

My Gateway MX6901M has given a nice battle against new games even if it has a Intel "video card" (965 Mobile Express ~ 365 mb) , I've played on it SH3, Rainbow Six Vegas, Penumbra Black Plague, Dawn of War Soulstorm, Left 4 dead, Far Cry, Bloodrayne 2, GTA San Andreas.....I get a normal framerate and almost run all games with high settings but lowest display (640-480 ~ 800-600) so I guess a laptop with a Nvidia card with no less than 256 mb will do fine

[flakmonkey]

To be honest you can run the game on pretty much any modern laptop since even the cheap crap you can buy will have a couple Gb of ram and a dual core processor. Its easier to look for what to avoid when purchasing budget laptops:

-make sure its a "proper" processor and not a celeron (or the AMD equivalent). Best off with a good core2duo (or higher).
-Avoid any gfx cards that arent either ATI or nVidia, although the game will run with intel cards there will be issues with reflections etc...
-Finally snag as much ram as you can, 3Gb+

The lappy i use for sh3 was a freebie and has a core2duo (2*2Ghz), 3Gb Ram, 250Gb Sata HDD, intel4500mhd gfx card (dx10) and vista home premium. Now its certainly not a gaming rig but still gets rock solid framerates in most games, even crysis runs ok. Only problem is the intel gfx have some problems with the water reflection in sh3 although strangely no problems with sh4??

Oh and avoid anything that says Sony and Vaio on it! they force you to update from their own vaio-update page for drivers etc, so far ive never seen any updated gfx drivers on their site (im about 6versions behind the current drivers!), and the drivers from the gfx card manufacturers site wont work since they are not certified compatible by sony!

[senecalalbrecht]

Thanks for that detailed feedback. I'll feel a lot safer buying something now.

[Shearwater]

Basically nothing to add. I'd just like to say that a rig that runs your games (SH3, FS2004) doesn't need to be expensive. My old notebook crashed recently, and I got myself a new one for 550€. It's a Toshiba A300D-215, 2*2.0 GHz, 4GB RAM, 256 MB graphics card dedicated or up to I guess 1 GB, 320 GB HDD. SH4 runs (but not extraordinarily well), but SH3 runs like a charm. FS2004 has very decent frame rates with all the sliders set to max, but as flakmonkey said, just make sure you have enough ram and a decent processor (RAM + CPU speed is more important here than a fast graphics card).

In general, a lot of games don't have any issues with notebook video cards. Most of them are desktop versions that have been toned down in order to reduce energy consumption and / or heat emission, but I guess the graphics processor is mostly the same.

[Tim D]

I have a Gateway 7805U with a 17" monitor, 4gig ram, 1gig nvidia video, and vista. It runs great with no problems SHIII and IV, FS2004 and Dangerous Waters. I got it at bestbuy back in Feb this year, you might be able to find one used or referb. But it runs a little hot at times so you would need a good cooler, it runs about 64C on SHIV on the laptop cooler.

[Sgtmonkeynads]

Get the best one you can afford. I sold my pick-up to buy an assus w90.
I love it. I just hope it will last about 10 years.
Don't let anyone tell you that you *NEED* something like a maxed out Alienware or something, you don't. Just about anything now days should play ShIII fine.

The #2 pick for me would have been something in the Hp DX series though, those ran under $800 at the time.