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Laptop Gaming...Your insight

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michaelkahl

Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2001
Location
Indiana/North Dakota
Hey there everyone...I currently purchased an Inspiron 5100 that is a pretty nice system. It's not the most powerful in the world for gaming especially with its Radeon 7500 chipset, but it does well. I got this system because I'm in the Air Force and currently deployed to England. I know that most of you will tell me that I should've gotten a laptop with Radeon 9000 or GeForce 4 4200 Go chipset, but thats not my consern. The price difference was big so I went with this. My question is, what do you guys think of using laptops for gaming and LAN parties? After using this Dell Inpiron I'm thinking the days of lugging around a LAN box with my 19" monitor are done with. Even a 15" monitor was a pain in the but. One bag carries all my accessories and I'm good. The image quality may not be as good and the framerates may be lower, but I think that Laptops may become more and more popular items at LAN's. My friend has an Alienware 2.8GHz system that is just awesome. I know that if my GPU were better that I'd be gaming almost as well as I do with my desktop. I only have an 8500 AIW in her though. I'm not saying that desktops are doomed to laptops. It's alot cheaper to build a new desktop that will double the scores of a new laptop purchased from Dell or Alienware. Realistically some laptops are capable these days of playing many of today's most popular game titles.
I've been playing Warcraft 3 and Freelancer on my 5100 with no problems. The eye candy is turned off of coures, but I'm playing at resolutions of 1024x768 smoothly. I don't know what my machine scores in 3dMark2k1 so please don't ask, but I can tell you that it has enough gaming power for me. I'm sure one day it will be common to see LAN parties with nothing but laptops. What are your thoughts...
 
I've been using an Inspiron 8100, with at P3 1.13Ghz, Geforce2 Go, 256MB Ram, etc., that I acquired from work. It's twice as fast as my default P3 550 w/ Voodoo5 box that I have at home, and I have come to realize the benifits of owning a laptop.

After using this laptop for a couple of months, it's still a toss up for me on which to get, desktop or laptop. I'd say that if I had the money to spend on getting a high end laptop, then I'd get that rather than a desktop, but since I'm poor I can see that under most circumstances the desktop will win out.

And I'm inclinded to say that most people will be going with desktops rather than laptop for the simple reason you almost have to spend twice for a laptop with the same preformance level as its desktop counterpart.
 
I think one of the things it mostly depends on is you!
If you can live with lower standarts for gaming than your used to back home than I think your OK to go for a LAN with a laptop.
Most games don't mind about what settings you have anyways.
The only opstical could be your connection to the network though.
If it goes terribly slowly nobody wants to play with you as you would slow the game down.
But that is something you can find out soon enough by trying a multiplayer game with a friend on a LAN.


As for LANparties with only laptops..... I think not.
I think you 'll see it split up in 2 groups. One group that comes only for gaming and don't want to much hassel and carrieng things around, they will be the laptops.
The second group is a group of people that like modding and are realy proud off their work to make their computer look better. Those people will carry all their stuff with pride to show off their computer to the world :) Just to state the obvious again, they will be the ones with their computers.

Almost forgot a third group that don't have the $$ to have a laptop and a desktop computer. They carry what they got, be it a laptop or a "dull" looking desktop.

Just out of curiousety, do you go to drome this year?
It's in holland, one of the biggest LANparties in Europe..
Just wondering :)
 
sure the are to get you through but nothing amazing unless it's go a 9600 chipset wit h128mb of ddr ram :D and a p4 @ 3ghz :) mmm
 
i have the good ol inspiron 8200, works great when i go to LAN parties and such. in fact, the usual guys that i game with, all 6 have 8200's. so whoever's house we are at, they get to use their main rig, the rest of us just bring the laptops. its easy, fast and we have never had any trouble as far as not meeting requirements for a game.
 
i just enjoy having the fast look, of a big *** full tower

but for laptops, i think that like mini-atx small little box computers will be more than laptops, but thats just my thing
 
I game with my Inspiron 8200(G4 440 Go) laptop. Its not the fastest, but it works more than fine right now, and assuming Nvidia keeps with their plans, i can upgrade the chipset later on.
 
Good points by all. I don't think that laptops will be mainstream at LAN parties anytime soon, but I'm guessing that 5 years from now they will be common to see, and yes some will be modified I'm sure. There is a way to mod and paint anything if you have the time and energy to figure it out. I just hope that we never have to see the day when laptops have air cooling systems that are cranking out 78db. It won't be pretty, we'll all be wearing ear plugs underneath our headphones.
My laptop is great for where I am and the price was just right. I was considering an Inspiron 8500 with the GeForce 4 4200 chipset, but it was $600 more. This is because it also came with a 15.4" screen. My 15" does me just fine. My friend has an alienware system that I drool over, but I paid over $1000 less than he did. DVD playback is great and gaming is smooth on my system. With a refresh rate of 60HZ does getting more than 60fps matter?
 
my laptop has an ATI 32mb video card, and I use it for playing HL & all the HL mods (firearms, DOD, CS, FLF, Desert crisis, global warfare, TFC, NS)...It's just right for that stuff. It'll run ghost recon & WC3 just fine, but i don't play those as much.
 
Toshiba satellite with 2.4, 512 DDR ,420 GO and it can play unreal 2k3 at 1024x768 with standard detail settings and a good OC on the video card.
 
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