Project Reality Forums

Hey, I'm looking to get a laptop for under $400, I'm not necessarily looking for a gaming computer, but if I could play some decent games on it that would be amazing! I'm going to be using the computer mainly for DJing, but I'll be using a portable HD for all my music so having a lot of disk space isn't a huge deal, also I won't be doing an kind of music mixing or anything, I will just be making play lists and such because DJing on this laptop will only be until I get enough vinyl to start DJing that way. I'll also be using it for graphic work, so it'll need to run the latest photoshop (though I'll be doing a majority of photoshop stuff on my main computer) and maybe illustrator. Ideally I'd like to be able to run Company of Heroes, BF2, L4D, or TF2. If not I would be happy if I could run games like DoD:S.

If you are an incredible gentlemen (or lady) and you suggest some laptops, let me know 2 or 3 games that could run on the laptop to give me an idea because I'll probably end up buying some games on steam for it as well. Thanks in advance!

Unfortunately for around that price I doubt you will find anything with a discrete graphics card, which in turn means game playing will not be very efficient if possible at all.. The only possibility being that you have a good integrated GPU on the laptop (i.e look out for the i3/i5 -2xxx processors)

These three laptops are on sale at newegg for what looks like a great deal. How do these stack up?

Newegg.com - Recertified: HP G72-259WM NoteBook Intel Pentium dual-core T4500(2.30GHz) 17.3" 4GB Memory 320GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi Intel GMA 4500M

Newegg.com - lenovo G560 (0679-ALU) NoteBook Intel Pentium P6200(2.13GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory DDR3 1066 320GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW Intel HD Graphics

Newegg.com - HP 625 (XT960UT#ABA) Notebook AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P340(2.20GHz) 15.6" 3GB Memory DDR3 1066 320GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Radeon HD 4200

All three within $20 of my $400 range.

well if its graphics your looking for:

HP:

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD (GMA X4500MHD) - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Lenovo:

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD - Notebookcheck.net Tech

HP 625:

ATI Radeon HD 4200 - Notebookcheck.net Tech

So on a GPU scale, the Lenovo wins(if I am correct on the GPU, as it does not actually say the chip number, so it could be a lot worse...) However on a CPU scale, the HP at the top has top dog. However again, these chips are OLD. Pentium processors are a few generations behind at the very least, and AMD are still not at chipzilla's standard.

Try checking Ebay for re-distributors, not sure how successful that will be, as I only have experience here in the UK, and well ecomputers has been great for me buying PCS and laptops for all the family(Dell reseller, and seller or re-furb laptops). But remember when buying off ebay to generally stick to the top rated sellers, a bit of common sense is needed here.

Hey riki i happen to have a very similiar setup compared to the three laptops. I paid 530$ for my laptop about last summer.

My specs are a dell 2.1 dual core amd processor and ati radeon hd4250 graphics card
and 4gbs of memory windows 7 x64 and i can say you can run bf2 and pr on my computer i play it all the time but, you will have to be in in low setting to get it to work on a 720p monitor. currrently my setting are every thing low and off except geomentry and texture in the setting on pr wich those two are on medium.

I somtimes run 1280x768 to make it work better on maps with lots grass. i also found that the compatability modes in windows 7 make a big diff as well and starting task manager and setting priority for bf2 to high makes it run faster aswell.

and of course update .net and drivers of graphics card i just did to ati 11.5 and it was not an improvement i will roll it back to 11.2

I basically bought my computer aswell for music creation and some games..
I have abelton and enjoy making some stuff as well. Btw the laptop works great with abelton...

oh yeah i also tried bf: bad company 2 from amazon and i can't get it to run fast enough for online play so i have abandoned it for awhile till i get a desktop. gonna work on a severe budget build here soon.