Compaq Presario Laptop on sale- how it this for gaming?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I posted a version of this in GQ- here is a fuller one-

the laptop’s specifications are:

  • 2.00 GHz Mobile AMD Sempron™ Processor 3300+
  • 512MB 333MHz DDR (upgradable to 2GB)
  • ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M IGP (128MB)
  • 60GB 5400RPM Hard-Drive
  • 24X DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
  • 15.4” WXGA High-Definition BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) Display
  • Integrated 56k modem, 100mb Network Card and 54g 802.11b/g Wireless Connectivity
  • 1 ExpressCard/54 Slot (Not PCMCIA)
  • 10.2-inch (L) x 14.1-inch (W) x 1.38-inch (min H) /1.77-inch (max H)
  • 6.4 lbs

Now, I’ve been advised that I need a high quality graphics card. Would the motherboard for the system above support the kind of graphics card needed
for today’s better computer games? What else would I need for quality gaming and could it easily and reasonably be added to this?

2

In fact, please apply this to any laptop?

3

Useless for running any sort of modern 3D game - insufficient graphics accelleration.

4

With rare exceptions, laptop video cards are not an upgradeable item. In fact, the RAM and HD are about the only two items it’s ever possible to swap out.

WRT specs, with a laptop you pretty much only need to check out the video card. Any machine with the the graphics punch to run current games will almost certainly be up to the task in all other areas. In fact, with the exception of really low RAM machines (and the video card obviously), pretty much any machine on the market is sufficient.

5

A general note on Compaq, when they were bought out by HP, HP made their ‘Compaq’ line the lower end computers and kept HP as their higher end stuff. So I would’t expect a Compaq to be a high end gaming computer. Also most Compaq’s have shared ram, not seperae video ram (so that 128 is taken from the 512 mb).

6

Indeed, not well suited to gaming. You can probably play modern games, but expect to turn detail levels down and still get relatively sluggish frame rates. If it’s possible option out of the Radeon Xpress 200M and swap it for a Radeon Mobility X800 GeForce Go 6800 or better, you’d have a much better shot at semi-decent gaming on the go.

That said though, my laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9100 with a Radeon 9700 video card and it’s actually capable of playing Prey at 1280x800, albeit with a bit of a sluggish frame rate, but not so bad as to be unplayable.

7

It will play pretty much anything released up to about mid-2005 (Star Wars: Battlefront) for example.

It won’t play much beyond that.

If you want to play games, use a desktop. Lappys just aren’t well-suited.

8

Well, I talked with a HP rep- who focused on a laptop with a dual core processor,
1 Gb (1000 mb) RAM, and a 128 m graphics card. These range from $850 to over $1000.

Is it cost feasible to get a lesser laptop, and add an enhanced graphics card, or more RAM?