New gaming laptop - Help!!!

[Boonie256]

Hi all,

Apologies for my newbie blabbering in advance. It's been a while since I worried about hardware and PC gaming. I am after any advice anyone is willing to give. I currently have an Acer Aspire 1714Smi notebook which I use for gaming but some games are starting to get a bit slow (and the fact is it weighs 8Kg), so I am looking to get a new gaming laptop. Spec of the Acer is:

3.4Ghz P4, 1Gb RAM, 120Gb HDD, nVidia GeForce Go 5700 128Mb, 533mhz motherboard.

In my searches to see if there were any better machines out there I came across the following link.

http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/home_notebook.asp

My problem is this, I don't understand the difference in all the processors anymore. In the past all clock speeds were relative and it was a simple choice of manufacturer and how fast you wanted it to go. Now I am confronted with Pentium M's, centrino, celeron or P4's, and do I want hyperthreading or dual core? Frankly my head is starting to spin.

So, my question is this.... If I go from a the current spec above to a Pentium M 760 (2.0Ghz) with a MXM 16X PCI-Express NVIDIA Geforce Go 6600, am I going to notice a drop in performance, or will the new graphics card counter it and more? Are the laptops in the link worth the money? I don't want to spend a fortune on a new laptop only to find that it's rubbish.

Sorry this is so long winded.

Ian

 

[jammydodger]

The pentium M (not the pentium 4m which is just a mobile pentium 4) is actually based on the pentium 3, although it is slower than the pentium4 in clock speeds it has a much higher IPC (instructions per clock).
It this respect it is very similar to Athlon processors and as a result is very fast when it comes to programs which favour high IPC over high clock speeds (like most games). I think the 2.0Ghz Pentium will perform on par (if not better) than the 3.4Ghz P4 in games.

The 6600 is definatly a better card than the FX5700, have a look at toms GPU comparrison to see exactly how much better. Bare in mind that Nvidia has already realease the 7xxx series of cards so the 6600 will be outdated by this time next year.

 

[Atolsammeek]

Well if your not moving around a desktop replacement is a good choice. I have one Intel 3.4 EE L3 2mb cache (Desktop chip in a laptop) Dual 80 gb hard drives dvd rw/cdrw. Radeon 9700 256. 17 inch widescreen. It great when you want to play games in the living room or next to your desktop.

The only major problem I see is limited battery life 1 1/2 battery life. The laptop like a Mustang or a big SUV in a laptop. But the computer great even when power was out. I even Use a 12 volt jump starting kit with a cig lighter plug in it to run the laptop. Then a Generator the next day.

My Next setup will be the New chips that come out. That will offer dual core.

But My suggestion Stay away from Celeron limited cache

Centreno a good choice and Pentium M are a good choice

 

[jammydodger]

Centrino is not a type of CPU, it is the name intel adopts for a collection of mobile technologies.