What To Look For In a Good Gaming Laptop

[FOXECHO]

As laptop gamers we are in a peculiar set of circumstances when out shopping or browsing the internet for a decent gaming laptop. We not only have to consider hardware capabilities, but also longevity. When I'm laptop hunting my rule of thumb is that I buy the machine that allows me to reasonably assume I will be able to play at least 2 series releases of any given game. At the going game development life cycle that's about 2 years.

How smooth your gaming experience is all boils down to the ever important frame rate. If you want to enjoy camera angles rolling across lush environments in your Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game without video glitching and pixelation, your frame rate has to be high and it has to hold. Myself being an First Person Shooter (FPS) game player where lightning fast movements and reactions are key, it's even more important. If your opponent is not there one second then right on top of you the next it's kind of hard to react and your performance will suffer. But you won't find any manufacturers listing the expected frame rate you can get while playing any given game because there are just too many variables that can affect it.

So What Should You Look For When Buying a Good Gaming Laptop?

VIDEO CARD

Though they need a solid CPU and system memory platform to work off of, the video card is where a lot of the heavy lifting will be done to give you the superior graphics you crave and make your game play smooth and realistic. Explosions, landscapes, dynamic lighting etc. are all processed within the chip and RAM of the video card. I don't plan on getting into specific brands in this article so you'll need to research reviews of laptops with certain video cards but a key feature to look out for in your video card is of course the amount of on board RAM it has. Be sure to check the system requirements of the games you are currently playing and or plan to purchase to ensure your video card RAM meets the minimum requirements.

Also, I need to point out 2 points of confusion for most new laptop buyers due to recent technology developments. At E3 this year NVIDIA announced the release of its SLI technology. Basically it allows for the simultaneous use of 2 video cards to maximize performance. A question I had and that I've seen posted on a few internet forums is that if the card is advertised as say for example a NVIDIA® SLI™ Dual GeForce® 8700M GT 512MB card, does that mean each card has 512MB of RAM and that you actually have 1024MB of video RAM? Unfortunately the answer is no. The advertised RAM is usually the max RAM the dual card configuration is capable of. Same goes for the similar technology also announced at E3 by Alienware called Video Array technology.

Next there is Vista's decision to share system RAM with your video card and have it turned on by default. It's an odd "feature" to me because, well, that's what dedicated RAM on your video card is for. Besides that, you are draining system memory from other processes unnecessarily. People have different opinions on this topic and my advice would be to simply try playing your games with it on and off and see what you think. But I bring it up for the purpose of this article because you don't want to go out there and get a low end graphics card thinking that because your machine has Vista and 4 GB of system memory you'll be ok. It doesn't work that way. If you buy a game that requires 512MB of graphics RAM and you get a card with 256MB the game won't even install on your machine. No matter how much system memory you have.

PROCESSOR

You'll want a system with at least a dual core processor at 2.4GHZ or better. Newer laptop gaming systems are now slowly progressing to even quad core processors. Most FPS games from 2007 up until now need a dual core processor just to run smoothly. Up until recently, overclocking in the laptop community was considered a no-no due to heat and fan speed issues. Not to mention it was a bit technical and you could easily brick your rig accidentally. Today high end gaming laptops are being shipped with overclocking capability tools built in! So I'd recommend you keep that in mind while looking for a new system as well.

DISPLAY

Size does matter! (insert "that's what she said" comment here). A 17 inch display is about as big as you want to go if you want to maintain any resemblance to laptop style portability. 20 inch displays are available but I've seen people try and fit them in to bags and backpacks. It's not a pretty sight. Also consider HD displays if you plan on watching movies on your laptop as well. And remember that display size plays a big role in resolution settings/capability and screen viewing space.

HARD DRIVE

You are going to want to use your $x,xxx investment for things other than just your favorite game aren't you? Well if you are, anything less than 250GB in hard disk space is just not big enough. The high-end performance conscious gamer might want to consider solid state drives but a regular drive with 7900RPM is plenty fast enough for most gamers needs.

WARRANTY

Even if you're a cheapo and just go with the manufacturer 1 year warranty, be sure to take a look at the extended warranty to see if it includes crucial services that may be left out of the default warranty. Like remote assistance and in-home service for the lazy, procrastinating gamer in us all. Did I say lazy and procrastinating? I meant for the real gamer who is too busy gaming to leave the house and take the machine in for repairs or surf the internet for answers.

ACCESSORIES

Nothing much to say about accessories other than that I highly recommend that you NOT use wireless devices like a mouse or keyboard or even headset. The last thing you want to do is have your game play affected by a dying battery in your mouse.

Finally, be sure to thoroughly research individual models once you've narrowed it down to a couple manufacturers within your budget and performance needs range. Look for reviews from owners who've played the specific game you want to play. All that I've described above can be gotten for less than $1,500 minus shipping and taxes with the exception of whether or not you go with solid state hard drives which are still quite expensive.

Happy hunting!

[the3vilgenius]

Nice post youve got here. Looks like i came to the right forum

[Ralph]

I hope you didn't lift the article from other site & if you have lifted it I suggest you put link to the original article.

Incase you have written the entire article, You are a GENIUS.

[Tyleh]

I wanted a solid state hard drive but those things are just too expensive.

[the3vilgenius]

we should make a topic for that because its the BIG thing in the computerindustry @ the moment and everyone wants to know what or when to buy or what the downsides could be.

[Gooby]

Nice article 5* XD

[Blade]

Good informative article! You nailed everything right on. Helped me out for what to look for when this HP I have dies... but that shouldn't be anytime soon.

[FOXECHO]

I hope you didn't lift the article from other site & if you have lifted it I suggest you put link to the original article.

Incase you have written the entire article, You are a GENIUS.

lol, I can assure you all my articles are unique.

I research and write them on my own. Looks like my English teachers and professors were right when they said I'd need what they were teaching me one day

[Dragon]

Awesome, very informative.

[lordvader]

So wht do we look for in 2010