Acer aspire 5750 15"6 - questions

[robcalcroft]

Hi there, I know what is good in a laptop and this one looks good just wondering what sort of games it can play e.g portal 2 or battlefield. Will an intel core i7 2630QM with 6gb of ram and a Intel® HD Graphics 3000 be able to play these games with no lag at all, I would just like to make sure that it can handle these games well (these are just a example of the sort of games but other ones in that type may be played)
cheers guys

 

[ubercake]

I'm assuming you mean Battlefield Bad Company 2?

HD 3000 graphics are not sufficient for lag free gaming. These are on-board graphics and will share the RAM with your system. Any setup like this is susceptible of a multitude of bottlenecks. This PC would be a very good productivity/multimedia machine.

If you want a gaming laptop, you need to get something with a discrete graphics card. Check out this chart:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Even the best laptop card (6970M) performs under the 5870 desktop card. This is showing results of synthetic testing, but can give you an idea of performance you can expect relative to other cards. The HD 3000 solution isn't explicitly mentioned on any of the charts, but my guess is it is one of those Intel cards mentioned toward the bottom of the 'common' chart:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/common_gpus.html

This review can give you an example of how the HD 3000 graphics solution works with various games:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-HD-Graphics-3000-graphics-solution.43710.0.html

Below the 20 mark w/ Battlefield Bad Company 2 at 720p with high details. Medium details will get you mid 20s but you can bet, with that average fps you'll be dropping below 20 fps off and on while playing even at medium details.

Again, don't expect this one to be a gaming machine. It would be great as a DAW or for some non-video-intensive purpose.

 

[robcalcroft]

Thanks for the info, could you recommend a laptop in the £500-£700 price range with suitable gaming abilities? Or if i was to get this laptop then upgrade the graphics card what would be a sufficient one? With this i am assuming the core i7 perform fine

 

[robcalcroft]

Out of interest to what extent would keeping the stock hd3000 have on the gaming would it be smooth and not up to the best or just not playable?

 

[ubercake]

Most laptops use motherboards produced for specific applications. The laptop you were looking at previously may not even offer the opportunity for a video upgrade. Most don't. There might not even be a slot for it or room in the case if there is a slot depending on the design. Also, you'd be hard-pressed to find any place selling notebook video cards.

When you buy a notebook, you can pretty much counting accepting the fact that you can upgrade RAM and Disk, but nothing else.

What sites do you order PCs or PC parts from in the UK?

 

[robcalcroft]

PCWORLD thats where im looking but could you recommend a laptop in that price range that would meet these needs?

 

[robcalcroft]

Just looking at an HP pavillion that has a radeon 6490M graphics card with 1gb ddr5
intel core i52410m and 6gb of ram would this be sufficient ?

 

[robcalcroft]

RIGHT! found a samsung RF511 with a GeForce GT 540M is this good enough?

 

[ubercake]

Once again, I'd refer you to the following benchmarks:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

The 6490M appears way down on the high-end list which is better than the HD 3000 solution. Still it is shown as underperforming many desktop cards from 3 to 4 generations (or 6+ years) ago.

Just to give you a point of reference, I have a laptop with a mobility 5870 card which shows up with 2x the score of the 6490 on the chart in the link. This thing is still choppy in Borderlands if I don't turn down some of the details. Once the details are down, it runs decent.

Here's a good option with a gtx 460 (very comparable to the mobility 5870 I have) and a i7 2630QM (better than my laptop processor - last gen i7 Q720):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230027

It runs around USD $1200. There are others on the newegg site around £700-ish that are comparable. My Asus laptop has proven to be a solid quality product with relatively great performance.

 

[robcalcroft]

would a samsung rf511 i52410 6gb ram and a Nvidia GT 540M run them sufficiantly, im not looking for harcore gaming just basic shooters not something graphics hungry like borderlands etc, something like portal 2?

 

[ubercake]

Here's Tom's comparison of the 540M to the 435M:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mobile-gpu-gt-540m-laptop,11743.html

Here's where the 540M sits relative to some other notebook cards:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-540M.41715.0.html

Here's where the 460M sits relative to other notebook cards:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-460M.33612.0.html

The 460M is still superior to the 540M and even the 555M and the system I suggested above with the 460M falls within your price range (if the USD prices equates to what you can purchase it for in England).

Check out the framerates of the 460M for Battlefield Bad Co 2 at high details... in the 50s, while those on the 540M are in the 30s. That's a 40% performance drop for near the same money.

The marketing of the 5xxM series products is really confusing. Systems with the 460M have prices close enough to those with the 5xxM systems that I'd still recommend something similar to my suggestion above which uses the 460M.