Can anyone help me choose a laptop purely for adventures. Needs to run all the later games, ie, Amnesia Dark Descent, The Next Big Thing, Black Mirror 3, Machinarium, Gray Matter, Runaway series, Overclocked. I have all these running on my desktop, but it's hard to know what laptop to buy that would run them well. My budget is up to £200, and I'm currently looking at a second hand £160 HP 6910p with Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.00GHz, 4GB ram and I think it has Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics. Here's the system requirements for 2 games, and these requirements are probably the upper limit for point and clicks aren't they? I presume if I can run amnesia and next big thing, I can probably run all adventures, or would that be false? Do you think the HP6910p and it's GMA X3100 would cut it? Or do I need a more powerful laptop?


Next Big Thing
Pentium D 2.8GHz
Athlon LE-1600
GeForce 7800 GT
Radeon X800 XT
RAM (Memory)2 GB
Hard Disk Space 8 GB
Direct X9

Amnesia
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: 2.0Ghz (?)
Memory: 2048MB
Disc Space: 3GB
Video Card: Radeon X1000/GF 6 (?

[Fantasysci5]

All I can suggest is to avoid buying one of the small netbooks. They won't run any kind of games at all...grr.

Oh and Roman5, I love your icon, and I've always wanted to tell you that. Is that from Moment of Silence?

[zane]

you'll have better compatibility if you get somthing with a video card that isnt integrated graphics. In my experience its a coin toss when it comes to whether an integrated card will run anything.

Fantasysci5, thanks, and you're correct, it's from Moment of Silence.
I made the gif myself. I'll make you something similar if you have a game you'd like as an icon.

zane, thanks. I think you're right and unfortunately will no doubt bust my budget. Would you be able to suggest a laptop with a good GFX that would run everything? It would give me an idea how much I need to spend. As far as cpu, the next big thing suggests Pentium D 2.8GHz, but is a core 2 duo at 2GHz as or more powerful than that, by virtue of it's dual cores?

[gray pierce]

Originally Posted by Roman5

As far as cpu, the next big thing suggests Pentium D 2.8GHz, but is a core 2 duo at 2GHz as or more powerful than that, by virtue of it's dual cores?

I have an Intell(R) CPU of 1.60 GHz an I was able to run The Next Big Thing just fine. I had trouble running A New Beginning but I kinda get the idea that had nothing to do with my processor.

Originally Posted by gray pierce

I have an Intell(R) CPU of 1.60 GHz an I was able to run The Next Big Thing just fine. I had trouble running A New Beginning but I kinda get the idea that had nothing to do with my processor.

Interesting. No frame rate slowdown on Next Big Thing? Have you tried Amnesia and does it run, and if so, does it run without lagging badly?
What graphics card in yours?

[gray pierce]

Originally Posted by Roman5

Interesting. No frame rate slowdown on Next Big Thing? Have you tried Amnesia and does it run, and if so, does it run without lagging badly?
What graphics card in yours?

I'm not quite sure what you mean with frame rate slowdown. Movements and animations were just peachy if that's what you mean. I don't intend on playing Amnesia as it's not my kind of game. I have an nVIDIA GEFORCE GO 7300 graphics card

Originally Posted by gray pierce

I'm not quite sure what you mean with frame rate slowdown. Movements and animations were just peachy if that's what you mean. I don't intend on playing Amnesia as it's not my kind of game. I have an nVIDIA GEFORCE GO 7300 graphics card

From what I've read, that seems like a decent card, at least, for our type of games. Yes, I was referring to smoothness of the game, without it stuttering or occassionally looking like a slide show. Amnesia seems as though it's more graphics intensive since it's more like FPS. That's why I wanted to find out what kind of graphics card would run it as smooth as yours plays Next Big Thing. Amnesia runs easy on my desktop, but then that's only because I have an AMD HD 5850.

[skeeter_93]

Originally Posted by Fantasysci5

All I can suggest is to avoid buying one of the small netbooks. They won't run any kind of games at all...grr.

Seconded! (Unfortunately from experience). I also wanted to say to be wary of an integrated chip graphics card. I've been able to run a few games on my netbook with integrated, but several wouldn't. I even had trouble with a few casual games! I thjink the only way to be sure would be to try each game as I did, but then I had a stack of games I had to wait to play til I got access to a desk top computer...

[Fantasysci5]

Originally Posted by Roman5

I'll make you something similar if you have a game you'd like as an icon.

Don't go out of your way or anything. How did you make it? If it's not too complicated, I might try one myself. Have you played The Lost Crown? Having the main characters as a gif would be cool...

Anyway, yes, I learned my bad netbook from experience too. I thought I could bring my laptop home from college and still play Steam, or the games on my external harddrive...but no. I went without gaming for a whole month.

I tell ya, this laptop business is a headache! But I've done a lot of research and am close to getting what I need, althought my budget is pretty much doubling I'm looking at getting something with an HD5650 in it, like one of the acer aspire notebooks. That card will play heavy duty games like crysis, so it will eat up adventure games no problem.

Originally Posted by Fantasysci5

Don't go out of your way or anything. How did you make it? If it's not too complicated, I might try one myself. Have you played The Lost Crown? Having the main characters as a gif would be cool...

Anyway, yes, I learned my bad netbook from experience too. I thought I could bring my laptop home from college and still play Steam, or the games on my external harddrive...but no. I went without gaming for a whole month.

Fantasysci, I never played lost crown, but I found some screenshots and put something together with 'Gif Movie Gear' a little program I downloaded ages ago. This gif may not be any good. Couldn't find much on the main characters. Because the colours in the game aren't that vibrant, it's hard to see what the little frames are showing, but see what you think. It's sized ready as your avatar if you thnk you can make use of it, I won't be offended if you don't. If you have 5 screenshots you prefer to use, post them here and I'll redo the gif, same size. Doesn't take five minutes to do, I'll just resize each screenshot to 80x80 first.

[Fantasysci5]

Thanks so much! *squee* I'm definitely going to use it as an icon; I've had my Union Jack one for a long time now. I might check out the free trial of that program sometime and make one myself, but till then...thanks for the new icon!

Glad you like it, looks pretty nice now that it's your avatar! As I say, if you do find 5 screenshots you'd prefer, it's not a problem for me to redo the gif. Otherwise, enjoy your new gif. Here's the program btw. 30 day free trial http://www.gamani.com/

[Sandman]

I have Toshiba Satellite A660 with NVIDIA graphics card. Next Big Thing & Amnesia both run fine on it.

[Idrisguitar]

firstly dual cores at 2.0ghz are only better than one core @2.8 if the game is designed to take advantage of the cores, and i imagine a lot of adventure games dont. (considering only up until a few years ago did major AAA games only start to use multi-cores properly)

Cant specifically rule out multi-core support on the two games you mentioned though, as they are pretty modern and high profile releases, so maybe they were programmed with true performance in mind.

[Mikekelly]

I played adventure games on laptops for over ten years. The best compatibility was with a laptop with a true video card in it. The Intergarated Graphics chip laptops will run very few games and will have major compatibility problems.

You want a true graphics card with at least 256 MB of dedicated video ram.

The Toshiba Satellite A660 with an NVIDIA graphics card is your best bet period. Before I went Nintendo Dsi XL for adventure games that is what I used.

Of course a top of the line Alienware gaming laptop is the best way to go - but that is well out of your budget range.

Hey, I forgot to update. I ended up with a really nice laptop a few weeks ago from ebay. Barely used, bought for £415 plus postage. Like brand new really, with several months warranty still. Dell Vostro 3550 i5 2410m sandybridge with both integrated HD3000 and dedicated 1MB AMD 6630m graphics and 4MB ram. And a cool backlit keyboard. Runs everything, even heavyduty games like metro 2033 and crysis (on low/medium and medium/high settings).

It's kind of overpowered for me tbh considering I'll only ever play point 'n clicks on it. Having said that, even point 'n clicks are getting more graphically advanced, so I'm taking the view that what I bought is futureproofed for when adventures may introduce tessellation if they haven't already, and massive landscape areas to explore such as in the brand new game on everyone's lips right now, skyrim.

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