Replacement laptop, with a touch of gaming

Hi Everyone,

I'm once again looking for a bit of advice from the good people on these boards; the topic this time, a replacement laptop.

My old laptop was about a year and a half old, a core 2 duo, 2gb type affair, and did quite nicely all in all.

It was able to play 2d games fine, of course, and I was suprised at how well it was able to manage WoW and even Lord of the Rings Online, with hideously shared intel graphics. Admittedly it looked like I was playing Doom, but still, it was, suprisingly, playable.

So, the old laptop is going back to its true owner, and I'm after a replacement for it, somewhere in the realm of £400-600, ideally nearer the lower end of the scale.

I have a fully-fledged desktop gaming system, which I've just upgraded, so I'm not looking to replace that in any way. For the most part the laptop will be used on the living room tv (so svideo output is needed) for movies etc, work in libraries etc, and the occassional bit of gaming when away from home - eg at partner's house, visiting the parents etc.

Basically them I'm looking for a c2d type system (or quivalent), with a touch of integrated graphics, so I can go through the motions away from home.

Options so far:

(1) Acer Aspire 5735 Gemstone £489
http://www.cclonline.com/product-i [...] .aua0x.051

(AMD Turion x2 Dual Core RM-70 (2.0GHz, 2x 512 KB L2 Cache) / 2x 2048MB Memory of RAM / 320GB 5400rpm Hard Disk Drive / 15.6 inch WXGA Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD / ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics)

Main concern here, how does the Turion x2 compare to a c2d?

(2) Acer Aspire 5920G £479
http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/Acer_A [...] =adfroogle

(Intel Core 2 Duo T5750 / 2 GHz/ 4 GB/ 15.4 in TFT active matrix, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470)

Is the graphics upgrade significant here over the 3200?

(3) Acer Aspire 6930 Gemstone £519
http://www.cclonline.com/product-i [...] turer_id=0

(Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 (2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache) / 1x 2048MB and 1x 1024MB of Memory RAM / 250GB 5400rpm Hard Disk Drive / 16 inch WXGA Acer CineBrite TFT LCD / NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS - 256MB VRAM)

Again, thoughts on how the gfx card scales here, v cost, would be great.

finally..

(4) Acer Aspire Gemstone Blue 6920G £667
http://www.cclonline.com/product-i [...] turer_id=0

(Intel Core 2 Duo TP7500 / 3GB RAM / 250GB HDD / NVIDIA GeForce 9600MGS 512MB / Blu-Ray / 16" WXGA Screen)

I'd only really want to go for this one, which is significantly more expensive, if you really felt that the performance upgrade would be worth the price increase, in terms of value for money.

Any other suggestions would equally be rgeat - oh and final point, I'm from the UK.

Thanks in advance everyone!

ive been looking for the same thing, the best advice i can give you is 3 or 4 gig of ram is a must and the 9600GT graphics card with 512mb of ram if you can find it in a machine you can afford, failing that the 9600GS or the 9500, or the ati 4650

you can see a how good all the cards in if you follow this >>link<<