ASUS F3Ka vs. My current slightly crappy desktop

Hi, NBR-people.

I need to switch from a desktop to a laptop for various reasons. I'd like to know how the laptop I've been looking at compares to my current desktop, especially on the CPU front.

In a nutshell, my current computer's base specs are as follows:

CPU: AMD Athlon64 3000+ (1.8Ghz, venice core)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 8600GT OC Edition (512Mb GDDR3, memory running at 1600Mhz, core at 620Mhz)
RAM: 1Gb (2x512Mb Dual-Channel DDR)
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

The laptop I'm looking at (and slightly fallen in love with due to the price and specs) is the ASUS F3Ka, the configuration specifics of importance would consist of:

CPU: AMD Turion64 X2 TL-60 (2.0Ghz)
RAM: 2Gb (2x1Gb Dual-Channel DDR2)
And as on all F3Ka's, a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 graphics card.

I understand that the graphics card will be a downgrade (how big, I don't know) but I'm hoping that the rest of the specs are upgrades from what I have right now (the RAM I assume is an obvious upgrade even if this is a laptop, but I'm uncertain on where mobile CPU's are at these days).

The reason I'm asking is because I want to play Counter-Strike: Source (it's the only somewhat "demanding" game I play, I don't play anything else really, nothing worth mentioning at least) and I wonder how it would run on this laptop compared to how it runs on my current PC. CS:S is pretty forgiving on GPU's, but not so much on CPU's, especially if you tweak your settings and configure it properly (I don't care much about the graphics, if that was the case I'd play something newer than CS:S wouldn't I? ^,^). Until recently I had a much slower graphics card (ATI X550, 1693 points in the 3DMark05 demo version) and the game ran pretty much the same with that, so it's definitely the CPU and RAM that's capping my FPS right now, with the settings and resolution I use.

Also, how are these laptops in terms of heat? Will, say an hour or two of Counter-Strike: Source fry the computer or anything like that? If longer gaming sessions are borderline to doing so, is there anything one can do? Like, put on some sort of external laptop cooler?

I've been searching through the forums to figure out an answer to this question myself but I haven't really been able to find anything that gave me a clear answer, I hope I'm not reproducing some sort of common question to everyones annoyance here. And I couldn't really find a forum that seemed more suited for this than the ASUS forum, sorry if this belongs elsewhere. :/

 

It will run CS:S at medium fine, but you should also look at the Sager NP2092.

 

Well it seems like Sager makes good notebooks, but I don't think I'm able to (without too much problem) get one here in Sweden though.

But would you say that the Turion64 X2 TL-60 (or comparable intel mobile cpu's) is noticiably faster than my old Athlon64 3000+ (desktop cpu) though?

 

Those specs will handle CS:S at max settings (perhaps not max AA) without a problem. Your bottleneck is the Athlon 64, which the Turion 64 x2 will fix. The GPU is more than capable handling the game.

 

Alright, thanks.