Gaming Notebooks on a Budget - What Solution Should I Look At?

[ziad1985]

I'm searching for some notebooks which I can probably Play Games on.
My budget is still unknown, my real question here is, what type of Gaming solution I should be looking at.
Will the Ati X1700 do me any good for running some games ?
I'm really not interested in running games at 1280x1024 resolution, just something cheap enough that can run some decent games, BF2 or C&C 3 and maybe Bf 2142 for example.
Any suggestion ?

 

[Avid]

The best way to go about this it to look at benchmarks for that video card and maybe looking into how low you can get the graphics and look at gaming sites to see what the games require and how taxing they are. also some games are more cpu intensive while others are RAM hogs. CPU intensive games are bad about causing over heating in laptops in particular as cooling is sometimes an issue. also..in my experience with my past laptops Radeon has had really crappy driver support for certain cards as i have had a couple older laptops where the site drivers wouldn't install and i had to use some unofficial tweaked drivers (not sure about the driver issue today but i would look at the complaints section).

anyway, hope that helps...

 

[B. Elliott]

As far as recommending a specific manufacturer ie; Dell, HP, IBM ,ect. to be honest, I'm not that caught up with the current laptop market. One suggestion that I would make would be to stay away from any laptops with the combination of an AMD processor and ATI graphics. I first want to say that yes, I am more of an Intel/Nvidia fan but it has noting to do with my personal preference. The reason for this is that AMD processors, although performing very well when it comes to games, they tend to consume quite a bit of power and generate a LOT of heat. If it was a desktop system you were building, I would say go AMD because of the lower cost, but with laptops, they aren't very efficient at cooling and removing heat from the system... at least compared to a typical desktop tower setup. The same goes for the ATI graphics cards. They also tend to run hotter than their Nvidia counterparts and again adds to the heatsoaking and power consumption. The laptop fans would have a tendency to run at full speed nonstop ad still wouldn't be able to cool effectively... shortening the life of the boards/procs and adding more wear to the cooling fans.

Now, here's one suggestion if you really want to go with an AMD/ATI combination. Purchase a cooling pad for the laptop. You can usually get decent ones for around $30-$50 and that would help alleviate the heat soaking.

 

[ziad1985]

I been making some search online, and the general Idea that I get more by paying less if I go with AMD/ATI.
So my question Elliott how much does the cooling pad helps ?

 

[Avid]

I used an aluminum cooking pan I found in the kitchen for a little while as my laptop cooling method. Worked fine for this overheating acer I got off a forum from some guy who was basically giving it away (nothing actually wrong with it but there were dust wads blocking ventillation and needed a couple of mods). It is an AMD/ATI combo and It doesn't overheat in a room where the temp stays about 73 F. The aluminum pan knocked a couple degrees off of everything. I agree with Elliot though on his points.

It wasn't too bad at all on battery life if I changed around some settings with systool and my video card drivers.

 

[B. Elliott]

I been making some search online, and the general Idea that I get more by paying less if I go with AMD/ATI.
So my question Elliott how much does the cooling pad helps ?

I agree. In the end it all really just comes down to preference. I started out an Intel fan then later latched onto AMD when the K5 Kryptonite's came out... the price for performance floored me. Kinda ticked me off a little actually considering I originally jumped on the Cyrix bandwagon. After that when Intel started cranking out the Celerons, I then got hooked on Intel's dual processor setups. A dual Celeron 533 setup I had was still able to perform on par with newer computers up till just a few years ago! Sorry for going off on a tangent... yeah, AMD's are an awesome bang for the buck.

The cooling pad would help out tremendously. Even a cheap one from walmart would be sufficient... anything to help pull the heat out and create an air path so that the main fans aren't doing all the work. Something like this... (and for only $12!)

http://www.mobilephi.com/IMG/laptop/laptop_cooler_3_fan_s.jpg
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...q=laptop+cooling+pad&svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&sa=N

 

[B. Elliott]

I used an aluminum cooking pan I found in the kitchen for a little while as my laptop cooling method. Worked fine for this overheating acer I got off a forum from some guy who was basically giving it away (nothing actually wrong with it but there were dust wads blocking ventillation and needed a couple of mods). It is an AMD/ATI combo and It doesn't overheat in a room where the temp stays about 73 F. The aluminum pan knocked a couple degrees off of everything. I agree with Elliot though on his points.

It wasn't too bad at all on battery life if I changed around some settings with systool and my video card drivers.

I like the way you think.

 

[ziad1985]

hmmm, actually any piece of metal would work , but something with more heat conductivity then Aluminum would work even better ( like titanium :D ).
I'm probably going with a X1000 mobile technology from ATI, something like the X1700 or maybe the X1800.
Both gave good FPS for some of my favorite games.
Then AMD/ATI its
Thank you guys for your help

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I have the Dell XPS and I can play most new games.

 

[B. Elliott]

Just ran across this video on youtube and made me think of this thread.