hardware for gaming

[frankie69]

i want to buy a laptop that will run all the latest games at a fairly high frame rate and with HD capabity. can anyone suggest some decent hardware that i should be looking for in a pre made laptop?

[Azzaboi]

Laptops honestly are more expensive and suck when it comes to hardcore gaming.
Most of the time they don't have good graphics card and heat issues, be careful to look into that.

However, the best hardcore gamer laptops I have come across are Alienware.
They do custom-built high-performance gaming machines and have some laptops I would drool over to play games on!

[frankie69]

what is your opinion of these specs?

Processor & Cache Memory : Intel Core i7 Processor 720QM 1.6 GHz, Turbo up to 2.8 GHz 6MB Cache 4 Cores, 8 Thread
Operating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Main memory : 8GB DDR3 Memory
Display : 16" LED Frameless, 1366x768
Video Graphics : ATI Radeon HD 5730M with 1GB VRAM
Hard Drive : 500GB 5400 RPM
Optical Drive : Blu-Ray Combo, Read Bluray Disk / Burn DVDs & CDs
Card Reader : Multi-in-1 Card Reader
Webcam : 2.0 Mega Pixel web camera
Wired LAN : Integrated Ethernet Controller (10/100/1000)
Wireless LAN : Integrated 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth : Bluetooth V2.1+EDR
ExpressCard Slot : YES
Interface : 1 x Express card slot
1 x Microphone-in jack
1 x Headphone-out jack (S/PDIF)
1 x VGA port/Mini D-sub 15-pin for external monitor
3 x USB 2.0 ports (1x USB 3.0)
1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert
1 x HDMI
1 x WLAN On/Off Switch
1 x E-SATA
Audio : Built-in stereo speakers
Altec Lansing® speakers
SRS Premium Sound
Input Device : Numberic Keyboard
38.4mm size 
Battery : 6-Cell Lithium Ion 2200 mAh
Dimension & Weight : 38.4 x 26.5 x 2.78~3.95 cm (W x D x H)
2.9 kg (with 6 cell battery)

yes or no??

[talontromper]

That would do quite well for gaming, it depends a lot on A) what game you want to play and  B) what settings you want to play the game on. As far as laptops over heating while playing games, that can be an issue but not always. I personally use an HP dv-7 entertainment laptop for gaming and i play SC 2 along with a little bit of WOW. It serves its purpose quite well.

But back to your OP, yes that laptop would do well for gaming, computer drafting and a plethora of other GPU intensive applications

[Calum]

At that resolution, which I personally would find rather low, the mobile 5730 should suffice for most modern games on medium/low settings.

[Linux711]

There are three things I noticed (I don't know if this is pre-built or not so I don't know if you can change them but...):

8GB of RAM is a little too much even for gaming. If you want to save money go with 4 or 6GB. Also your hard drive is 5400RPM, I would reccomend 7200RPM or a Solid State Drive (SSD). Lastely, if it were my computer I would use XP. I know a lot of people are going to be giving me reasons why 7 is better and how XP is old and outdated. Windows XP may not look as good, but it is going to use far less resources and it will run a lot faster and for a gaming computer, this is an important thing.

[BC_Programmer]

Windows XP may not look as good, but it is going to use far less resources and it will run a lot faster and for a gaming computer, this is an important thing.

And Windows 98 will use less resources then Windows XP, and windows 95 even fewer, and windows 3.1 even fewer.

*censored* maybe I should install DOS 6.0 on my Quad core because it will use far less resources.


Oh wait... but it won't use the available resources as good as it can? Neither would windows 98SE, nor windows XP (XP 32-bit would not be able to see more then 3.5GB of my 8GB of RAM).

That paired with the fact that I did in fact have a dual boot set up between Vista (which I had on this originally) and XP and I found that almost all the FUD about games and Vista were completely fabricated and/or entirely biassed observations.

[JJ 3000]

8GB of RAM is a little too much even for gaming

What?
My computer has 8 gigs of ram. Would you say that's too much?
I don't understand where you're coming from there. It's like saying, you have too much money or too much freedom. Can you clarify?

[BC_Programmer]

What?
My computer has 8 gigs of ram. Would you say that's too much?

DUH! 640K should be enough for everybody!

[Hearts on Fire]

What?
My computer has 8 gigs of ram. Would you say that's too much?
I don't understand where you're coming from there.

Well, it's not going to adversely affect your system in any way, but in order to address that much memory you're going to need a 64-bit operating system—even then, I don't think any game uses anywhere close to this much memory as the most I've seen in task manager was still under 2GB, if I recall correctly. Maybe if you kept multiple memory hogging programs in the background it'd help, but it's probably just gratuitous. Not bad, but not necessary.

It's like saying, you have too much money or too much freedom.

Looking over and seeing the Reagan avatar made me read this in his voice.

[BC_Programmer]

Well, it's not going to adversely affect your system in any way, but in order to address that much memory you're going to need a 64-bit operating system

the memory limit that is said to be a limitation of 32-bit operating systems in general is a limitation that was intentionally put in Windows for a number of reasons, mostly for device driver compatibility. This is only for consumer OS's... Windows 2003 can address up to 32GB, and older Server versions also have similarly higher limits- Windows 2000 Advanced Server can use up to 8GB of RAM.

(ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx)


Secondly, there is a lot of confusion about 64-bit Windows, and people seem to have a "it's only good for using more then ~3.5GB of memory" concept stuck in their heads. I wrote a blog post on this subject awhile ago (I think I based it on another post I wrote on this forum).

—even then, I don't think any game uses anywhere close to this much memory as the most I've seen in task manager was still under 2GB,

In 32-bit Windows NT the process address space only goes to 2GB (except in those cases where the binary has the LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag set, in which case Windows will allow it to have 4GB of address space on systems that support it (x64 windows running 32-bit LARGEADDRESSAWARE applications, for example), so 32-bit programs/games running couldn't use more memory even if they wanted too in that case. Unless of course the user had boot their system with the special boot switches to change the user-mode/kernel mode address space partition. A game will need to be compiled as a 64-bit application in order to take advantage of 64-bit to the fullest (they can also use the flag to use a bit more memory and remain 32-bit). Most of the latest games are now being released in 64-bit versions that help take advantage of 64-bit.


Linux711 said that 8GB is too much memory, and that they should use Windows XP. The thing is, 8GB is only too much memory if you are using a pre-Vista system. This includes 64-bit Windows XP. Most of the time, the memory will sit unused- as you said, it will be "gratuitous". This however will not be the case with Vista or Windows 7 with SuperFetch Enabled, since all the extra "gratuitous" memory will be used to perform read-aheads and to cache data.

[frankie69]

thanks heaps everyone for your opinion... the 8GB ram is an optional upgrade from 4GB, i would deffinately run 64 bit to utilise all the ram, but i'd rather 7 from XP because of its extra options

[frankie69]

so are well all sying 4Gb is enough to go with the rest of the system and windows 7 64bit?

[Hearts on Fire]

4GB will probably be more than enough, I think. I don't know anything about SuperFetch, but I think even with that it'd be a diminishing return in respect for performance per dollar.

[Azzaboi]

For an i7 Core, it's 8 threaded, quite a good processor, but 1.6 GHz is slow - I assume that's idle/everyday use to keep the temporary down for laptop purposes? Turbos up to 2.8GHz which is more like the speed you want (2.4GHz min I recommend for gaming). Multi-core games will greatly improve using i7 Core.

6MB Cache on the processor - performance will depend on which level cache its in: level 1 cache being the smallest, closest and fastest, moving out up to level 3 cache being slower and larger.

As for the memory. The more memory in the graphic card, the better, for larger textures and higher resolutions (but the cost also increases hugely). The more memory on the computer depends on if you do a lot of multi-tasking, etc. I recommend depending on OS - WinXP 32bit 2GB+, Vista 32bit 4GB+, Win7 32bit 3GB+, WinXP 64bit 4GB+, Vista 64bit 6GB+, Win7 64bit 4GB+.

WinXP Pro 32bit SP3 is still the best and fastest benchmarked for hardcore gaming giving a higher frame rate but only supports DirectX9c. Vista 64bit is a memory hog. Win7 Ultimate 64bit is quite like Vista without so many of the issue, still pretty good for gaming as well as applications, looking pretty, etc.

Hard Drive : 500GB 5400 RPM - This HD is quite slow, standard speed today is 7200RPM, check RPM and also cache (higher the better) for faster the transfer rates.

With that graphic card and computer specs (virtual benchmark), playing HD movies will be awesome and smooth. Playing a FPS game like "Left 4 Dead 2" on med/high specs idle 60fps+, however in action drops to get around 30fps, as the rate drops it should be pretty fine to game on so long it doesn't go below 24fps. You might have a few bottlenecks. It's more targeted at video media by the looks, but can still handle games.

I'm not the best when it comes to laptops, but a hardcore gamer, hope that will be of help.