How To Choose The Best Gaming Laptop

The gaming laptop is coming of age! It is steadily

increasing in popularity as performance quality goes

up. Gamers now regularly consider laptops or notebooks

when searching for that perfect gaming machine.

With each new generation of notebooks we are seeing some

novel breakthroughs: dual core notebooks, PCI Express,

Sonoma chipset, increased storage, increased RAM, faster

CPUs, better battery life and better wireless connections

including a Cellular modem. All good news for gamers
Portable ventilators and others.

In general, players are a very demanding, they know
equipment and know what they want in their
computers. Most players like to order their gaming laptop
with their own specifications and configurations. In this perspective,
if you look closely at the players of the main points to consider
in shaping or building their Dream Machine – that
have a good plan for the best gamesmachine.

Since notebook technology changes every two years or so,

it’s probably wise to purchase a laptop that can be easily

upgraded as new products come on line. So consider the

upgradable factor in any notebook that you plan to buy.

Now, lets look at some of these key gaming factors:

GRAPHICS

You must have the best/latest/fastest Graphics on the market. DUH!

Serious gamers are concerned with graphics, obsessed would probably

be a better word. And rightly so! Graphics or the quality of the

graphic chipset in your notebook computer will be your first area

of consideration and it will greatly determine the gaming performance

of your PC.

Go with the latest Graphic Chipset and also check to see if you

can upgrade your Graphics Card on the particular machine

you’re thinking about buying. Many machines allow this.

Here are some Graphic Chipsets that are highly rated: ATi Mobility

Radeon 9700, ATI’s Mobility FireGL V3200 or Intel’s Graphics Media

Accelerator 900.

ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 is a high quality Graphics Card or visual

processing unit (VPU) present in many next generation notebooks. It

will give you higher performance at a lower power level, saving

battery power.

It makes your notebook computer capable of many functions: 3D games,

wide-screen HDTV, dynamic presentations, mobile video editing studio

and graphic processor.

Many notebooks now come with integrated graphics, where components

interact and are sometimes shared, especially memory. If you want

a notebook computer for 3D games — check the amount of video RAM –

this is memory that’s dedicated to graphic or video applications.

Other common graphic chipsets are: STMicro, NVIDIA, 3D Labs, Matrox,

Trident S3 and SIS.

RAM

Get the largest amount of RAM possible. DUDE!

RAM or random-access memory will determine how much graphics

your notebook computer will be able to handle. It’s best to

get the largest amount possible on your machine or what you

can afford.

It’s generally agreed that you need at least 256MB for

Windows XP and Mac OS X. You will only need 128MB for other

operating systems in Windows or Mac.

RAM or the amount of RAM on your notebook computer is extremely

important if you want to handle heavy graphic files or want to play

games on your notebook. The more RAM you have, the more applications

you will be able to handle. Some notebook now come with up to 2GB

of DDR2 533MHz RAM!

DDR2 SDRAM – is a new standard that can boost conventional SDRAM

memory up to speeds well over 200MHz and beyond. For example, the

IBM ThinkPad T43, thanks to the Sonoma Chipset or platform has

533MHz DDR 2 SDRAM.

This is much better than standard SDRAM which tops out around 150-

166MHz and DDR SDRAM which starts at 200MHz and goes up to around

400MHz.

Video RAM or VRAM is special memory that’s used by video adapters on

your notebook. This is RAM that is dedicated to handling the visuals and

graphics on your notebook computer. This is helpful if you want to play

a lot of the latest 3D video games on your notebook.

It is somewhat different from ordinary RAM because it can be

accessed by two different devices at once — enabling screen updates

while the video processor processes new data. VRAM provides better

graphics but is more expensive than ordinary RAM.

SPEED

You need the fastest computer money can buy. Period!

In order to get the maximum performance from your ultimate

gaming computer you must have the fastest speed you can get

or afford. Your ultimate PC must be able to process and handle

the latest 3D video games with ease. There is nothing as annoying

as your PC freezing up in the middle of some major gaming action!

Therefore, your Processor’s speed is very important.

CPU or Central Processing Unit, you probably know it as

the processor! It’s the heart or rather the brain of your

notebook or computer. It does all your computer’s data processing and applications. Since it does most of the work, it’s usually the most expensive part of your notebook computer.

Go with SATA!

SATA is a type of hard drive and stands for Serial Advanced Technology

Architecture. It was developed by a whole group of companies including

Seagate, Intel, Maxtor, Dell and others. SATA transmit data in a serially

(in a single stream) as opposed to PATA or Parallel ATA which is commonly

referred to as an IDE hard drive.

Serial ATA hard drives uses less power and are ideal for notebook

computers, they are also more advanced than PATA hard drives which

uses multipe streams of data — go figure! But Serial Technology carries

data in a single stream and unlike PATA is not limited to a particular

clock speed, Serial transfers data packets almost 30 times faster than

parallel.

If top performance in your notebook is one of your goals, go with a SATA

hard drive.

Intel Pentium M processors are commonly found in a lot of

notebooks and laptops. When in doubt also go with a Pentium!

The speed of microprocessors is measured in MHz.

MHz is short for megahertz. One MHz equivalent to one million cycles
per second. The speed of processors, usually known as clock speed,
is measured in megahertz (MHz) or these days in gigahertz (GHz).

The higher the clock speed, the computer will process more
applications and data. It determines the power of your laptop
team will be. Processor speeds for notebooks or laptops are
increase, not exactly the same as a PC, but the gap
is shrinking rapidly. Speeds of 3.4 GHz ormore.

Don’t forget to ask or check the hard drive speed! A 7,200rpm hard

drive is faster than a 4,200rpm or 5,400rpm and usually gives better

performance.

DISPLAY

You need the sharpest, brightest display screen or all the above

points are moot!

Display quality is also extremely important to your gaming

experience. Make sure the resolution and display quality of

your notebook computer can handle the graphics for 3D Gaming.

What to keep in mind…

SVGA Resolution. Put simply, computer images are made up of

dots, the more dots you have — the better the image.

SVGA Resolution is made up of 800 x 600 dots.

Many notebook computer have XGA (1024 by 768 dots) or

SXGA (1280 x 1024 dots), these resolutions will give

a higher quality image. WXGA stands for widescreen XGA.

TFT Active Matrix Display. TFT stands for thin-film

transistors and many high-end notebook computers use

(TFT) active matrix liquid crystal displays.

If display quality is your main reason for buying

a notebook, it’s best to give it the ‘old eye test’

and check out the image quality first-hand and decide

for yourself. Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, and others

are known for their high quality monitors — this

quality is also present in their notebook display

screens.

So when buying your perfect Gaming Notebook Remember This:

Graphics + Ram + Speed + Display = Perfect Gaming Notebook

Consider all of the above factors before you buy or config

your perfect gaming machine. Chances are high that you

will get a top-notch quality Gaming Notebook that will

give you hours and hours of pure gaming bliss!

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