Laptops and Gaming. Does It Work?

[jonnosferatu]

True, but as long as you're not exceptionally picky and are willing to shop around, you can get a pretty good laptop for $950 (what mine cost). I can run Oblivion on all high settings (1440x900) and so forth.

If I played much besides Starcraft, I'd be more enthusiastic about getting a desktop, though.

 

[dirte]

i play DDO on laptop thats saying something.works for me.

 

[brainfreeze215]

If keyboard and mouse and monitor are the primary issues, you can get a docking station for your computer. Just plug the laptop into the desktop station and it works like a desktop, you can use a real keyboard, a real mouse, a real monitor, it's pretty cool.

 

[painfull2006]

if your looking for a gaming laptop, stay away from mac books for a start, in simple they suck, you should look into alien ware laptops, they are top of the range gaming laptops if you can afford it

You would also need a decent mouse, especially for FPS games and things that need quick actions, decent mice don't set you back too much though

 

[Syndron]

The gateway fx series are pretty good and not too bad on the wallet. only cost me $900 and it runs CoD4 and Oblivion very well.

 

[searanox]

They really aren't up to it. Heavy, poorer performance for twice the money you pay for a desktop, low-quality displays, downright atrocious battery life, need to tote around a proper mouse with you... it's just a hassle. Sure, there are laptops that can play games, but they won't play them that comfortably, they'll burn a hole in your wallet and the experience will never come close to a desktop. It's kind of like, why fly coach when you can fly first class? They both get the job done, but you're not going to be nearly as comfortable with the gaming laptop. Go with a cheap netbook or smaller notebook for your office work stuff and use your desktop for gaming and workstation tasks.

 

[szaleniec1000]

The gaming laptops I've had have been quite prone to overheating as well. It was losing a second one that way that made me say fuck it and go back to a desktop for gaming and a laptop for browsing the internet and using MS Office on the move, as searanox suggested in post 46. They played contemporary games as well as most ordinary desktops, but it wasn't worth it in the end.

Plus, I have a 22" widescreen monitor. A laptop with a display like that would weigh a ton and be so bulky there's almost no point having a laptop at all.

 

[sneak_copter]

Laptop gaming works wonderfully.

It certainly does.

I've had no problems with Laptop's and Gaming.

 

[gustcq]

Personally i bought a gaming laptop and its not worth it, id rather use my desktop. Imo if youre using it like to check your game mail, AH and stuff its good, but pretty uncomfortable to play, but thats just me

 

[beddo]

I'm thinking of perhaps getting a laptop for personal use (ie schoolwork) and the obvious gaming. However, as for the latter I fear that laptops may be a bad choice when it comes to games (Only high end laptops being able to play GOOD games, smaller screen, no mouse [can be fixed] etc.) (smaller keyboard [I have abnormally large hands] etc).

What are your opinions on this?

I'd say it depends what you want. Laptops are heavy, I've got a dell M1330 Nvidia 8400GS and it still weight quite a bit. Runs L4D at 1200*800 on low at about 20-25 fps.

So small screens are out, in which case you're looking at 15-18" where carting them around is annoying. You get much more value from Desktops but If you want to use a laptop in front of the telly or take it to your gf's parents for a weekend I'd recommend a laptop.

Mousepad and keyboard are AWFUL. Though you can plug in a 360 Controller which is useful for some games, not great for FPS.

 

[MrSnugglesworth]

I have a laptop that was around 500 dollars that can play WoW and TF2 with little to no lag. I say just buy a mouse with a not extremely bad laptop.

 

[mikecoulter]

I currently use my laptop for gaming, and it's immense. Got an amazing deal on it, cost me £330. Now the stock of this type has run out at pcworld and the replacements aren't half as good specwise. But yes, laptops these days(with the addition of a mouse) are fine for normal and high intensity games

 

[Airhead]

Only high end laptops being able to play GOOD games

Well, if by `good` you mean `recent and hardware-intensive` then obviously a laptop is a poor choice. If you care about the price that is.

As for myself, last year I bought a moderately priced laptop with a 17" screen, which can run games with hardware requirements like Oblivion or Bioshock smoothly. I'm not planning to buy a new PC anytime soon considering I haven`t yet played the latter, or KOTOR 1, KOTOR 2, Orange Box, The Witcher, Heroes of the Might and Magic V, the Total War series since Shogun, Fallout 3, Mass Effect... do I need to go on?

Problems? Crysis wouldn't run. Not that I cared about Crysis.

 

[JCambria]

From my experiences, it's a mixed bag on whether laptops and gaming really correspond with one another. If you have a tablet, that makes it easier for those of us who prefer using a mouse as opposed to a touchpad, and then it's a matter of if your laptop plays the game or not.

Case in point: recently, I picked up Fable: The Lost Chapters, and Painkiller: Triple Dose. I installed them with ease and when I went to play them, problems popped up all over the place. Most of them involved my chipset (from what I can tell).

When I tried running Painkiller, it gave me a message about DirectX, and when I tried to figure out what the hell it was on about (since I do believe I have the most recent DirectX update for my system) through the amazing resource that is Google, I found that the people who had the same problem often had a video card that didn't support the game. As you can imagine, I was pissed. This wasn't the first time it's happened to me, either. You'd think I'd get the point and stop buying PC games that were made after 2005, but I didn't.

A similar occurrence came about when I tried installing and playing Oblivion some time ago. I finally caved and bought the 360 version.

Fable installed without any real problem, as well. It started up, and I actually got in about 20 minutes of play before the game slowed down, and then stopped altogether. I'd be left staring at the same screen for the better part of two minutes (maybe more) before it moved another frame.

On the other hand, I have a friend who has a more modern computer (which is a rather weird way of putting it, she only got it a year after I bought mine, and got it through connections), and it runs Oblivion flawlessly, as well as Fable. So for her, gaming and laptops mix pretty well, but for me, this $700 turd is only good for surfing the web and listening to music. Oh, and any Blizzard game from earlier this decade, and the late 90s.

Guess that's what I get for going with the relatively inexpensive model, right?

 

[Aunel]

I have only got a laptop, and I use it for schoolwork mostly, it is not a true gaming PC but it gets the job done for me.

 

[nixubaby]

without having read the previous posts i´ll say that if you want a laptop for gaming, you have to be ready to put a lot of money into it. i bought a laptop last summer, turned out it couldn´t run modern games. since then I´ve barely used it.

 

[fedpayne]

I don't want to spend more than £700. Christ just looked £1 is less than $1.5. That's terrible.

Reckon I can get a laptop than can play reasonably modern games for that?

 

[Gitsnik]

you'd think, but that's not what the power pack is or what it does

When I unplug my Xbox, the light stays on for near 5 seconds... how is that not holding a charge? Bizarre.

I don't know the inner workings of the XBox power pack but there is a sane reason for this: Resistors to stop an overload of power blowing up your machine, Capacitors to stop an underflow of power screwing up your machine. You see the same things in car-stereo systems (those big tubes near subwoofers). It prevents any overdraw from fluctuating your power system to hell (or some such).

Point is, the capacitor doesn't hold charge for more than a few seconds, it's just enough for the system to hopefully deal with short "brown outs" in your electrical system (i.e. drops) - not full power cuts.

It is probably too small to deal with most brownouts anyway (the ones you notice), but I couldn't comment either way on that. I run my playstation off a small home-office UPS for the same reasons I run everything off of them - if the power dies, I want time to save and turn off my stuff.

Edit: Grammar and a note: My girlfriend games on a laptop with no issue whatsoever - it is actually good because I can watch some TV while she plays and we get to spend some time next to each other. We might not be talking but hey, time together is time together.

 

[NeutralDrow]

My laptop works pretty well for the games I play (typically MMOs, haven't tried FPSs on it). My biggest problem is the lack of memory. I'm still 7 GB short of being able to play WoW...

Incidentally, a computer question, for those willing and able to answer. My laptop nominally has 67 GB of space on it, yet all I can actually see on my hard drive adds up only to almost 30. Why is that?

 

[Iori Branford]

If you're smart and stick with low-spec mouse-less games, it works out beautifully.