My Evolution To PC Gaming

[Riding on Thermals]

So recently, my laptop decided to be a dick and stop working and since my warranty is up I just ordered my new one (yay!). In any case, I have no experience with PC gaming (outside of RTSs and a few select classics that my laptop could easily handle). My question: what kind of quality of games can I expect to run with these specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo (2.66 GHz)
6 GB DDR2-SDRAM
ATI Radeon HD4650 1GB dedicated

On the scale of Crysis at full-specs to 8-bit graphics, where do I fall on the list of current PC gaming standards?

Also: feel free to drop suggestions for sweet PC games. The first two on my list are System Shock 2 and Deus Ex.

 

[eatenbyagrue]

I'm not sure about processor power (I use the System Requirements Lab for that), but Fallout 3 and Company of Heroes.

Fallout 3 has many on-site love letters, so I'll leave it at that, but I will say this: it does alignments closer to Dungeons and Dragons better than most games. That is awesome.

Company of Heroes will kick your ass. A lot. You will learn to tech up fast, then you will learn to rely on support troops, then you will learn about supporting tanks and setting up ambushes and flanking attacks. But you will enjoy the ass kicking, and then you will get good. So good, you will escalate to the next level, to which more ass-kicking awaits.

 

[Riding on Thermals]

Shameless self-bump.

Thanks for the suggestions eaten, anyone got some info on the hardware?

 

[Odude]

This sounds like bragging to me. Let me say this, if you spent $1500+ on your computer, it's gonna run everything on max setting for the next year. So ya, you can play anything.

 

[AbuFace]

You'll be able to play anything - though the 4650 isn't exactly a powerhouse of a card, so don't expect to be able to crank out high details on the latest titles. In fact, I would say your graphics card is the weakest point in the system as of right now. The RAM is fine and so is the CPU. You can get even more gains out of the CPU by overclocking, but I would not recommend you trying that until you're either more familiar with hardware. I wouldn't exactly call this bragging as it's a rather modest system.

Edit: Yeah, I missed the part where you said laptop. Forget about overclocking.

 

[megalomania]

Overclocking a laptop is rarely a good idea because they don't have the ability to dissipate the heat rapidly enough. DONT DO IT!

Your RAM is complete overkill so at least that is not the limiting factor.

Your CPU may struggle if you have to many threads running while you game, otherwise it should be ok, otherwise as stated your G-Card is weakest (I wasn't aware the HD4650 had a 1Gb option!) the onboard GRAM ain't the problem, I'm not sure the render quality is high enough to support the higher anisotropic settings that makes the best games look good...

EDIT: Crysis you may get to run on some low end settings, apart from that in terms of games I can't be of much help. L4D you should be able to run at medium settings I think (Graphics Card limited here)

 

[lostclause]

You have good tastes in you op. I think you should check out serious sam the first encounter for some mindless blasting. It's a wee bit more demanding than those two but it should work.

 

[megalomania]

Uh,id take a Nvidia Geforce card if i were you,its more gaming oriented than ATI,also get rid of that much ram you dont need it,try to get DDR3. Your processor is cool tho,id reckon you should be ok in a while but the bad thing about PC is you always have to update. Me,im geting a 9800 GTX to replace my GT,so id recommend a 9800gt from Geforce if you wanna be smooth

ATI vs Nvidia fanboy wars commence....

flaming optional.

 

[AbuFace]

Nvidia only performs better in some games. Check out this review from anandtech for an example of how nvidia and ati cards stack up against each other.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539&p=16

When it comes down to performance per dollar, the two companies are actually very competitive.

 

[Riding on Thermals]

::snip::

Yeah, I know not to overclock a laptop. Thanks for the reminder tho

The RAM got upgraded from 4GB for free so I wasn't gonna pass it up. As for the ATI, I had the choice between 512 and 1gb but I had to get the 1gb for blu-ray playback.

Thanks for the assessment, like I said my experience with PC gaming is limited so this whole nonsense with the graphics card is gibberish to me. I understood 1gb > 512mb and that's about where I got lost.

::snip::

Well, I already placed the order so I'm kinda locked into this system at this point. The RAM was free so why not, as for ATI vs. Nvidia my only choice was ATI. In any case, since it's a laptop can I replace the graphics card in the future? Would I need to send it out or could I do it myself? Once again, my n00b is showing...

 

[AbuFace]

Replacing graphics cards in a laptop is not really an option, you'd need a whole new system.

 

[megalomania]

::snip::

Yeah, I know not to overclock a laptop. Thanks for the reminder tho

The RAM got upgraded from 4GB for free so I wasn't gonna pass it up. As for the ATI, I had the choice between 512 and 1gb but I had to get the 1gb for blu-ray playback.

Thanks for the assessment, like I said my experience with PC gaming is limited so this whole nonsense with the graphics card is gibberish to me. I understood 1gb > 512mb and that's about where I got lost.

::snip::

Well, I already placed the order so I'm kinda locked into this system at this point. The RAM was free so why not, as for ATI vs. Nvidia my only choice was ATI. In any case, since it's a laptop can I replace the graphics card in the future? Would I need to send it out or could I do it myself? Once again, my n00b is showing...

For some reason I thought your graphics card was a generation older than it actually is, which I was I was confused by the 1gig of GRAM (its late.) So I would like to revise my opinion; you should be able to run L4D on highest settings and Crysis on medium settings (your CPU probably limiting factor for Crysis). Your card should be capable of the highest level of anisotropic filtering.

Should be a tasty lil laptop you got there.

Oh yeah, and if you are running windows make sure you get a 64Bit OS otherwise half of your RAM will be wasted because Windows 32bit can't address that much RAM. If you run linux etc it doesn't matter!

 

[AbuFace]

For some reason I thought your graphics card was a generation older than it actually is, which I was I was confused by the 1gig of GRAM (its late.) So I would like to revise my opinion; you should be able to run L4D on highest settings and Crysis on medium settings (your CPU probably limiting factor for Crysis). Your card should be capable of the highest level of anisotropic filtering.

I slightly disagree with your assessment of Crysis - I believe the GPU will be the limiting factor. As you can see from this anandtech review [http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3405&p=5] the 4670 starts to lose performance when Crysis is run with medium settings at a resolution higher than 1024x768. I do not know the laptop's resolution, but I'm sure it's greater than 1024x768, and the 4650 is a slightly weaker card than the 4670, so the drop-off will be even greater. As anecdotal testimony, I also have a core 2 duo, one that is clocked at 3.4 ghz. With just GRAPHIC settings set to low, my framerate is in the triple digits, so I'm sure his CPU will have no problems pushing as many frames as the 4650 can handle.

Regardless, it should still run reasonably well at medium settings no matter what the case is. I just like discussing gaming tech >.>

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Anything? You made it pretty vague on what kind of games you wanted, so I'll say so out and get whatever you want. Just for the hell of it, though, go out and buy Left 4 Dead. Possibly the greatest games ever made. Or Fallout 3 because I've heard it's a ***** to run on your PC and you need to take advantage of what you have.

 

[Riding on Thermals]

::snip::
My advice,dont get lap tops for gaming,least not high end gaming

I'm not really in it for the high end gaming, I'm just curious what my limitations are right now. I do have the far off plan of putting together a desktop capable of enslaving the human race, or playing Crysis, but that's in the future. I'm gonna try and take this as an opportunity to explore PC gaming a bit and if it's as awe-inspiring as PC elitists say it is than I'll be converted.

Comparatively speaking, this is space -age tech for me. My old comp only had a chipset.... it routinely couldn't handle my N64 emulator.

::snip::

I'm actually considering partitioning my hard drive so I could have Linux... haven't tried that before. Besides, I loathe Vista. Once again tho, this is beyond my expertise so a little research must be done first.

In any case, I'm definitely going to run 64bit. And L4D is currently my #3 spot on my queue of games, I've heard such good things but never picked it up for 360.

Thanks for the help, I've got a much better idea of what I can expect now!

 

[megalomania]

For some reason I thought your graphics card was a generation older than it actually is, which I was I was confused by the 1gig of GRAM (its late.) So I would like to revise my opinion; you should be able to run L4D on highest settings and Crysis on medium settings (your CPU probably limiting factor for Crysis). Your card should be capable of the highest level of anisotropic filtering.

I slightly disagree with your assessment of Crysis - I believe the GPU will be the limiting factor. As you can see from this anandtech review [http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3405&p=5] the 4670 starts to lose performance when Crysis is run with medium settings at a resolution higher than 1024x768. I do not know the laptop's resolution, but I'm sure it's greater than 1024x768, and the 4650 is a slightly weaker card than the 4670, so the drop-off will be even greater. As anecdotal testimony, I also have a core 2 duo, one that is clocked at 3.4 ghz. With just GRAPHIC settings set to low, my framerate is in the triple digits, so I'm sure his CPU will have no problems pushing as many frames as the 4650 can handle.

Regardless, it should still run reasonably well at medium settings no matter what the case is. I just like discussing gaming tech >.>

Although thats all valid stuff I'm still not sure I agree with you; you might want to think about the data for Crysis shown there a little. The data shows a 5-8 frames per second drop in speed when going from 1024x768 to 1280x1024, you are adding 66% more pixels to the display in going up by that resolution. I would say thats pretty respectable really. I would expect the 4650 to behave similarly in the Crysis benchmark.

The other games much more support your view point; if you look and Oblivion, going from min. settings to 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering (max for both at present) there is an across the board drop of about 15 fps at all resolutions (in context that is a 12% drop in frame rate at 800x600 and 33% at 1680x1050), suggesting the G-Card is slowing under the increased work load even at 800x600.

That bit much more supports your side of the argument, I also think its probably more significant than the Crysis bit, so you may be onto a winner...

*Swift Position Reversal*

 

[Shock and Awe]

Your laptop out preforms my desktop, you little........

Well anyway The Company of Hereoes its very good, so is any of the Total War games, except the new one, it wont work on that.

 

[megalomania]

Yes mate you can have too much ram,4gm is more than enough,im not saying its bad,just that its excessive and not necessary,which you should already know ,as it wont help you that much. Also im not a fanboy but i used to have ATI but i heard from several stores and mates that Nvidia is better suited for gaming so i bought a 9800gt,also most of games have the "nvidia meant to be played" hehe ,but im not saying ATI is bad,the new series are really good too,just not "as good" IMO
And yeah if you have 4gb of DDR2 and 10gb of DDR2 if you dont have a space rig you wont feel the difference,unless youre one of those "oh i got 3 more frames out of it" peeps. DDR3 is more pricy but as i hear its worth it,so im getting some.

Yeah, try using spell check and maybe I will believe you just that little bit more. I can see that you are wrapped up in your own little beliefs and so I'm not going to even try to stop you. Fanboys are relentless.

Although I am ATI to my core I actually have to agree with him.

Also you can't have too much RAM per say, but you can have more than you need so that it is useless. For example the 32bit Windows Operating Systems can't address more than 3.3Gb of RAM or something, so even having 4Gb of RAM is pointless. Even the 64bit Windows OSs wont fully use 6Gb of RAM, so in terms of performance per pound(dollar) spent its probably better to get 4Gb of DDR3 than 6Gb of DDR2 because the higher frequency RAM allows for faster operations: DDR2 max rate is 3200MB/s, DRR3 lowest end is 6400MB/s

 

[AbuFace]

Although I am ATI to my core I actually have to agree with him.

I would disagree with him. The only thing nvidia really wins in is the raw performance category, when you consider value for your dollar, ATI actually pulls out ahead at certain price points. Take a look at this review on mid/high end cards from both companies [http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539&p=16] and compare the results. Then keep in mind the prices of these components:

(prices from newegg.com)
GTX 285 - $315
GTX 275 - $205
4890 - $190
GTX 260 c216 - $160
4870 1GB - $150

You'll see a $190 GPU from ATI trading blows with and sometimes handily beating the more expensive nvidia cards. The 4870 1GB ($150) also puts up some impressive numbers. If someone was in the market for a new GPU right now, I'd more than likely suggest an ATI card. This is coming from a guy who's using 8800 GT SLI right now.

 

[Xjin]

Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines, the elder scrolls 3 Morrowind, and Knights of the old republic. Granted it?s late and I don?t know if your notebook can handle them, but there good games that are older.