budget laptop I can play games on while deployed

[petebert]

looking at laptops, will end up using it for all sorts of stuff but want it to be able to play games while I'm in Iraq, dont know if I'll bother getting a stick or mouse and play FPS or M$ flightsim but I plan on playing slower stuff like sim city 4 which can be quite a hog on my home system, I checked Dell, HP and Gateway, looks like HP's have a good cut in price from the rest, probably because they go with AMD which is fine with me, thing I dont know about is these video cards, dug around this site but couldnt find any benchmarks, HP is offering a ATI Xpress 200M 128MB, the one I threw together with that card, 512MB ram and a Sempron 3000+ comes to $800, I can get a athlon 64 3200+ for $50 more. Dells seem to offer more video card options, Radeon X300 and 9000's but all $1000+

 

[SNeaKyTiKi]

im sure that would be good, isnt the 200m the PCI express version of the x300. So your saving money and you'll get similar performance. If you can i would recommend going for a gig of ram over anything else. I doubled it in my laptop and noticed a huge performance increase from 512mb to a gig. I usually use at least half a gig of memory anywhere up to over 600 mb so it does come in handy.

<i>I'm a Sneakytiki!!!</i>

 

[SNeaKyTiKi]

here's a <A HREF="http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=66018" target="_new">thread </A>about its performance. It basically says it should fall around an ATI 9600 which aint bad.

<i>I'm a Sneakytiki!!!</i>

 

[petebert]

its been difficult to find any reviews on it, if it runs like the X300 it shouldnt be too bad, here's a similiar system, they said they got 11 fps on halo which sucks <A HREF="http://www.pcmag.com/compare_products/0,2575,,00.asp?a=148537,150037,153595&pt=2&sid=1565" target="_new">http://www.pcmag.com/compare_products/0,2575,,00.asp?a=148537,150037,153595&pt=2&sid=1565</A>

 

[SNeaKyTiKi]

yeah i dont think halo runs as well as it should on any PC. I was barely getting 30-40 fps with a 9800 Pro on high settings which sucked and i have a gig of ram with a 2.4 northwood.

I have a FX5200 Go on my laptop and it can run HL2 pretty well given that its a lower end card. And yours will be even better than that.

Look at benchmarks for a 9600 or a X300 and i bet thats where your card will be.

<i>I'm a Sneakytiki!!!</i>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

here's a thread about its performance. It basically says it should fall around an ATI 9600 which aint bad.

Reread the thread they go on to restate that the 200M and X300 are nothing like the Mobility R9600.

I have a FX5200 Go on my laptop and it can run HL2 pretty well given that its a lower end card. And yours will be even better than that.

I disagree with both of those statements. I also have the GF5200GO and it doesn't pay HL2 pretty well, it barely plays it and at reduced settings, which on a laptop means blur thanks to interpolation. It's not as bad as playing D3 (suposedly made for the FXs ), but it's far from 'well' or good.

Look at benchmarks for a 9600 or a X300 and i bet thats where your card will be.

No, look at the benchmarks for an X300SE, that would be closer to the 200M, and even then that might be generous. I've bee looking at the 200M+Turion Compaq and it's a nice machine, but it actually seems to be WORSE than the full 128bit FX5200GO (probably close to on par with the 64bit).

I'm also sceptical of it's OC'ing abilities, even the MR9000 and FX5200GO have some headroom, while I doubt the 200M will get much of a boost and being memory limited may have difficulties (while I can OC my FX5200GO pretty well almost 100mhz core 50mhz memory)

For any 'modern gaming' at least a Mobility R9600 or FX5600GO would be the bare minimum and I'd recommend something closer to the R9700 or X600 or GF6600 as a good minimum for any kind of gaming with current and future titles. The GF6200GO may perform OK as it tends to outperform the X300SE but is close to the plain X300.
No integrated laptop will perform well enough and the X300SE wouldn't do much better and even a full mobility x300 would struggle although still be better than an FX5200GO IMO.

As a very last resort the full X300 or GF6200GO would be the starting point IMO. The others are only good for older games DX8.1 era.

GF6200GO 3Dmk05 (03 was 3.3K ish);
<A HREF="http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3dmark052vj.jpg" target="_new">http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3dmark052vj.jpg</A>


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internët account)</i> ! - <A HREF="http://www.redgreen.com/" target="_new"><font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red></A> GA to SK

 

[HardWareBoss]

How much to you want to spend on your laptop?

 

[petebert]

i was hoping for less then $1000, other then the video card HP has some good systems, looks like they dont even offer good video cards in their systems.

 

[SNeaKyTiKi]

yeah my bad and by pretty good i mean in DX8.0 or 8.1 mode or whatever....i just had to have it on lower settings which was a jaggyo-extremo but it still played. I have a portege m200 and it runs well for a portable laptop but nothing like a desktop or gaming laptop.

<i>I'm a Sneakytiki!!!</i>

 

[HardWareBoss]

Best Buy had a good sale on Compaq laptop I bought in July. At that time it was under $900 with Turion 1.6 with the ATI Xpress 200M. But you can't swap cards with that. Plus the rebates it had. The model # V2311US. Works for me.

 

[HardWareBoss]

Just checked Best Buy's web site. They have the Compaq V2321US. $1049 Plus rebates. Check out the store also.

 

[petebert]

I configured around 6 different HP/Compaqs for $850 or less, all with Semprons of 3000+ or 3200+, 512MB ram, one even came with 2 batterys, but they offer nothing other then that 200M, dosnt look like HP offers a good card in any notebook, I configured all of those with the 128MB 200M option as compared to the default 64 most came with, so I'm guessing they come with their own memory and I think share up to 128MB more.

one other option I'm starting to run across is bare bones systems, I build my own home units, no reason to pay for a bunch of crap I dont need in a laptop

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Petebert on 09/12/05 11:08 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[HardWareBoss]

The Compaq at Best Buy has the new AMD Turion Cpu. Better than the Semprons.

 

[petebert]

looking at the benchmarks on this site it dosnt look like that much of a performance boost and I think in Tom's benchmarks he actually got more battery life playing games on the Sempron which is important to me because I dont think I'll be able to recharge while flying over the atlantic. I think the best 2 I've been looking at is the Compaq R4000 series and the HP zv6000, trying to find out if its worth the $25 to go from 128kb l2 cache to 256 option, both at 1.8 ghz

 

[davemar14]

Got a CyberPower PC laptop. Completed CS:S at 65 FPS, at 1024x768 high settings. Also, runs UT2004 around 85 FPS at 1024x768. Very smooth gameplay. Here are the specs of laptop:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+
512 MB RAM
Radeon Mobility 9700
60 GB

My System:
<A HREF="http://amdgamingrig.dyndns.org" target="_new">http://amdgamingrig.dyndns.org</A>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah Cyberpower's are inexpensive, too bad they don't ship north of the border, like so many other cheap laptop makers.

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internët account)</i> ! - <A HREF="http://www.redgreen.com/" target="_new"><font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red></A> GA to SK

 

[davemar14]

Very pleased with the laptop except hard drive performance. I specified a 7200 RPM drive, and was only given a 5400 RPM drive. I contacted CyberPower and they credited my account due to the problem. I would send the laptop in for the upgrade that I paid for, but I need the laptop for college. Plus, I would have to make a ghost image of the current drive, push the clone to my server, and then bring the clone back down when the new drive gets put in. I just opted to get my $65 back. 5400 RPM is SO SLOW compared to my desktop with 2x74GB 10,000 RPM Raptors in RAID 0. Oh well. But gaming performance is impressive. I knew the A64 would perform in games, but wasn't sure how good the Radeon 9700 would be. After running some games, I was quite impressed. Still doesn't beat my Athlon XP 3000+ and 6800GT setup, but is decent performance for a laptop.

My System:
<A HREF="http://amdgamingrig.dyndns.org" target="_new">http://amdgamingrig.dyndns.org</A>

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah I wouldn't expect it to come close to your desktop, but it sounds like a nice rig. Remember the R9700 is really just an R9600 core for the laptops so you're comparing 4 pipe to 16, I would be amazed if they were even 'close' in performance.
I'm looking at a new laptop too, and thinking X700 or GF6600 based graphics, but it's more dependant on form factor and other features, because I've learned that even for older games laptops aren't 'great' platforms for gaming, so focus on what you want them to do the rest of the time IMO. I'm even considering a 12" G4 powerbook because it fits what I need to do.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internët account)</i> ! - <A HREF="http://www.redgreen.com/" target="_new"><font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red></A> GA to SK

 

[HardWareBoss]

Not a G4 powerbook???????

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yep, $1,200 CDN and it has wicked battery life and is very dimension friendly. The only drawback, the return of the FX5200 if I get that instead of an iBook which is an R9550.

I also like slot loading players alot. The only drawback, software of course.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internët account)</i> ! - <A HREF="http://www.redgreen.com/" target="_new"><font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red></A> GA to SK

 

[HardWareBoss]

Price looks good. For the graphic work you do. Have you used Lego 3D?

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

No I haven't tried Lego 3D I wish I had time right now to do much of anything. I bought 5 games while I was out East and haven't even opened their boxes (same with KillSwitch I bought in the spring!). Hopefully I'll get some down time at the end of the month near Thanksgiving (Canadian). It's already snowed in the CrowsnestPass, so I have a feeling it'll be an early open for the hills. Tentative dates are early Nov for Sunshine, Louise, Kimberly, KickingHorse and Fernie. Gonna squeeze in alot of stuff between the end of this month and then.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internët account)</i> ! - <A HREF="http://www.redgreen.com/" target="_new"><font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red></A> GA to SK