Gaming - Laptop or desktop?

[JK Ferret]

i only thort you meant for short journeys in a car or something sorry

1) it would be immensely useful to have easy portability (I have no car, and I would like to use it for LANs and the like).

Missed that bit did you?

You need to take a desktop (including monitor, keyboard, mouse, games and stuff I presume) on a train journey? You'll need quite a few rather large padded bags for all that stuff matey .

Yes I does. When I go LANning, it all needs to get takened up to Staffordshire (from Bristol!), which is a fair ole journey for me. That's why I said portability is immensely useful. Still, with CoD4 at the top of my games list, I won't be needing anything massively super. Another reason for laptop is that I use it all round the house, which is impossible with a desktop.

[kalniel]

Which is precisely why I recommended a laptop, and some nice ones to boot But fine, go with the herd.. see if I care

[Gerrard]

I made this list up quickly from E-Buyer (Scan don't seem to stock Shuttles?). I haven't done any research into the system really, just picked stuff that looked right : -

Shuttle SN68SG2 Black Barebone System - AM2 With NVIDIA GeForce 7025 Chipset £148.37
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Socket AM2 2.7GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Retail Boxed Processor £49.44
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC £21.99
Seagate 320GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM £42.14
PowerColor HD 4830 512MB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card £89.99
Acer V193WB 19" TFT Monitor widescreen 1440x900 300cd/m2 2000:1 (dynamic) 5ms VGA Black £87.52
Cart total inc vat: £439.45

Just need to add a keyboard and mouse and you're away. PSU can be a problem in Shuttle's, so not sure what CPU/GPU combinations you can get away with. I'm sure people could advise you how to fine tune the components for better performance/price. As for mobility, you could get one of these for the Shuttle. For the montior, I modded/bodged one of these to carry my Dell 24" (as I brought to the last LAN).

[kalniel]

I made this list up quickly from E-Buyer (Scan don't seem to stock Shuttles?). I haven't done any research into the system really, just picked stuff that looked right : -

Shuttle SN68SG2 Black Barebone System - AM2 With NVIDIA GeForce 7025 Chipset £148.37
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Socket AM2 2.7GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB) Retail Boxed Processor £49.44
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC £21.99
Seagate 320GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM £42.14
PowerColor HD 4830 512MB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card £89.99
Acer V193WB 19" TFT Monitor widescreen 1440x900 300cd/m2 2000:1 (dynamic) 5ms VGA Black £87.52
Cart total inc vat: £439.45

Just need to add a keyboard and mouse and you're away. PSU can be a problem in Shuttle's, so not sure what CPU/GPU combinations you can get away with. I'm sure people could advise you how to fine tune the components for better performance/price. As for mobility, you could get one of these for the Shuttle. For the montior, I modded/bodged one of these to carry my Dell 24" (as I brought to the last LAN).

OS? or does COD4 run on linux these days?

With Vista + Bag+ keyboard+mouse you're not far off the laptops like the samsung. Performance of the desktop will be better for games, worse for other things. The additional portability of the laptop would be a bonus though.

[Infinite]

Laptop is fine for some easy gaming.

I have a 15" C2D 2.0ghz, 2gb, and 8400m gs (1 and a half years old with one of the faulty batches of nvidia cards) and it can play any source game (css) with settings to high (no AA) with 60fps. I also had no problem playing COD4 at low and WoW set at high/medium IIRC.

[Stringent]

Have shuttles got any better? I mean I have had a few and though neat, they just seem to under perform compared to carefully chosen components.

[neonplanet40]

http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/mojave_overview.php

i have one of them. Every bit as good as my desktop for gaming! Yet to find a game it can't play!

It will cost you but when it comes to laptops and gaming you have to pay.

Good luck lugging a desktop pc about... lol

[JK Ferret]

http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/mojave_overview.php

i have one of them. Every bit as good as my desktop for gaming! Yet to find a game it can't play!

It will cost you but when it comes to laptops and gaming you have to pay.

Good luck lugging a desktop pc about... lol

£1440 inc VAT!

I can has xmas present from a rich Hexite pls? Kthxbai

Which is precisely why I recommended a laptop, and some nice ones to boot But fine, go with the herd.. see if I care

Any particular laptops you'd recommend?

[kalniel]

Any particular laptops you'd recommend?

Example laptops include:
Dell XPS M1530
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...hs1&l=en&s=dhs
Only has a 8600GT, but that's good enough for COD4. Great quality machine, very sexy. £600-1000

Alienware Area-51 M15x
http://www.alienware.co.uk/product_d...om=DELLUK:m15x
More expensive at £1000+, but comes with the best GPU you can get in a laptop (9800GT).

Samsung R560:
Review: http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebo...ch-Notebook/p1
£650
I love samsungs, GPU is a 9600GS, which is again good enough for COD4, though maybe not with all the bells and whistles.

Budget choice - Medion Akoya S5610
Review: http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebo...Notebook-PC/p1
£500
Looks great, weakest GPU with only an ATI 3470, but again that's enough for playable gaming.

Out of those the Samsung is probably my first choice - it'll play COD4 well at medium settings. You can get it at ebuyer for £636 delivered:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148709

Larger alternative with 17" screen, £556:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148711
(looks quite good actually, if the specs are accurate)

[JK Ferret]

Ah, must've missed that post. My internet has been playing buggery all week, on forums it keeps 'reading' posts for me (and unreading others...)

Like I said, I don't know what specs mean, what's good, bad or average. But if you think it's good, you more the expert

[kalniel]

Oh ok, I'll break it down for you then:

R560:
Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology P7350 (2.0GHz, 1066fsb, 3mb L2 cache) - this is basically core 2 duo, 2.0ghz. Fast CPU.
2 x 2GB DDR3 1066MHz - DDR3 ram is overkill really, but means lower power requirements. The operating system will only see 3gb, but that's already more than enough.
250GB SATA 5400RPM - big hard drive, fast for a laptop.
Dual Layer DVD Super Multi Writer with light scribe - doesn't read/write blu-ray or HD DVD, but reads/writes everything else under the sun
15.4 WXGA (1280 x 800) Superbright Gloss LCD TFT - Screen is normal laptop size and resolution
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS 256MB DDR3 Dedicated - As mentioned, ok for roughly medium settings on COD4 at that resolution. 256 dedicated DDR3 is good.
Wireless: Intel Wifi (5100) 802.11a.b.g/n - fast wifi over all possible bands
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) - bluetooth too

R700:
Intel Core 2 Duo (T5750) 2.0GHz, 677fsb 2mb L2 Cache - still fast, but not as much cache and slower system bus - makes small difference in real world
3 GB (installed) - DDR2 SDRAM - 667 MHz - PC2-5300 ( 1 x 1 GB + 1 x 2 GB ) - 3gb of slower RAM, also not in dual channel, so less bandwidth. Again, little difference in real world.
320 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 5400 rpm - bigger hard drive
DVD±RW (+R double layer) / DVD-RAM with LightScribe Technology - Can write almost as many types of DVD
17" TFT 1440 x 900 ( WXGA+ ) - Bigger screen, higher resolution
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT - 256 MB dedicated- minutely slower graphics card, but as it's driving a higher resolution (if you play at native res, which you will want to) it'll be slower.
Wifi - a/b/g - not n, but then most people don't have n routers anyway.

In other words - both have very fast CPUs and more RAM than you will ever know what to do with. Both have large hard drives. Both have mid-range (for a laptop) graphics cards which are WAY better than the usual Intel integrated job, though they are only equivalent to mid to low-end desktop cards. Because of the smaller resolution the R560 will perform slightly faster, but you may prefer a larger screen, though with that comes a bigger laptop (17" feels very large for a laptop - more of a desktop replacement), less battery life etc. But it's also nearly £100 cheaper.

[neonplanet40]

Im sorry but this is for gaming no? A mobile 9600 or 8600 is pants, end of story to be honest. A gaming laptop is going to cost you alot. Thats unfortunatly just the way it is. you want an 8800m gtx for good gaming on a laptop and a somewhat future proof purchase.

The 9600 and 8600 cards are pants now. Imagine what they will be like in 6 months?

If £600 or so is really your budget i'd try and build a small desktop pc as your not going to get a good gaming laptop with that. and unfortunatly them low range graphics cards mentioned above are not powerful enough to be future proof in any way.

As you can't really upgrade graphics cards on laptops due to different cooling and dimensions etc it pays to get the best you can buy at the time so that it last's for as long as possible.

[JK Ferret]

Ok, here's another angle...

I won't be using it massively much, I'm much more a console gamer. The only game I regularly play on my current one is RuneScpae (Java-based MMORPG), and even that's not too often.

As for proper games, I really have only played at LANs so far, and most of the games played are older ones (Unreal Tournament:Game Of The Year, C&C Gens etc), only CoD4 is the main new one. I don't expect to suddenly burst into a full-on PC gamer, and much less expect to be getting any newer PC games anytime soon (like in the next few years).

Perhaps, in the future, I'll manage to get enough money to learn to drive, get a whole desktop, get a good gaming laptop etc., but for now the ones like kalniel is mentioning seem good enough

[Hicks12]

Im not an expert on laptops (i recommend desktop) but maybe this MSI one is good? http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...&_s_icmp=ho015

Looks well nice, me wants .

[BlackDwarf]

I recently got a Toshiba Qosmio F50 from Curry's (twas buy now, pay nowt for 12 months) as a gaming/desktop replacement for my aging iMac. Tis brill, I can take it back home easy on the train (and use it on the way home too), and can take it to LAN's no hassle. Most LAN games aren't too strenuous on a system, and this little thing fits the bill nicely. Came with a Core 2 Duo 2.26Ghz, 4Gb RAM and a 9600M GT, don't expect it to seamlessly run Crysis, but for the odd game I still play on the PC (RA3, SupCom, Steam stuff) its pretty awesome. Gonna eventually get me a 19" monitor and kb/m so i can still use it on my desk as a desktop

[kalniel]

Im sorry but this is for gaming no? A mobile 9600 or 8600 is pants, end of story to be honest. A gaming laptop is going to cost you alot. Thats unfortunatly just the way it is. you want an 8800m gtx for good gaming on a laptop and a somewhat future proof purchase.

You're ignoring the requirements.

There's no point future proofing a laptop: if a laptop that meets today's requirements costs £550, while the slightly future proof one costs £1600, then you can buy 3x the cheaper one - so buy one now, and replace it as and when you have to. Then you're still £500 better off, and have an old laptop you can sell/use for other things.