08-24-2009, 09:49 PM
Personal opinion:
Don't get a gaming-class laptop. And don't go thinking about "upgrading" it once you get one (unless you seriously know what you're doing).
- Desktop and Laptop gaming feel real different, the screen and sound quality for one thing is almost immediately felt if you're used to units that are made to handle the heavier games.
- Compact units are prone to having cooling problems. 'nuff said. I burned my laptop's motherboard with F.E.A.R. to learn that lesson.
- Laptops are ideal for media viewing and lighter games (Warcraft and the like, as well as older console emulation) if anything. And imo having a laptop can still be handy, as you can prolly research or do any suddenly needed browsing as long as you have an access point.
Anyway, if you insist...
I would reccomend an effing huge HDD, HUGE RAM, and for gaming purposes, a dual video card. But please be merciful to your laptop and buy it a cooling pad if you intend to use it for stuff like that.
These days the benchmark specs float at around...
Quad Core Processor - at least 2.6 GHz (Or Corei7, I heard it was really good)
160+ GB HDD
At least 4 GB RAM DDR3
512 MB ~ 1 GB Vid Card (most games run pretty well on a the GeForce 9800 series)
Fair example: Sony VAIO NW180J/S
If you don't like thinking about it and price isn't an object: Alienware, Area 51 models I heard were considerably cheaper.
Don't get a gaming-class laptop. And don't go thinking about "upgrading" it once you get one (unless you seriously know what you're doing).
- Desktop and Laptop gaming feel real different, the screen and sound quality for one thing is almost immediately felt if you're used to units that are made to handle the heavier games.
- Compact units are prone to having cooling problems. 'nuff said. I burned my laptop's motherboard with F.E.A.R. to learn that lesson.
- Laptops are ideal for media viewing and lighter games (Warcraft and the like, as well as older console emulation) if anything. And imo having a laptop can still be handy, as you can prolly research or do any suddenly needed browsing as long as you have an access point.
Anyway, if you insist...
I would reccomend an effing huge HDD, HUGE RAM, and for gaming purposes, a dual video card. But please be merciful to your laptop and buy it a cooling pad if you intend to use it for stuff like that.
These days the benchmark specs float at around...
Quad Core Processor - at least 2.6 GHz (Or Corei7, I heard it was really good)
160+ GB HDD
At least 4 GB RAM DDR3
512 MB ~ 1 GB Vid Card (most games run pretty well on a the GeForce 9800 series)
Fair example: Sony VAIO NW180J/S
If you don't like thinking about it and price isn't an object: Alienware, Area 51 models I heard were considerably cheaper.
