6021GZ Gateway Laptop

I want to play Far Cry and Black and White 2 but it B&W won;t work at all (pixel shader) and Far Cry looks messed up and runs at around 12 fps. I think I have "Intel (R) Extreme Graphics 2 for Mobile". I wanna upgrade so I can play these games but I don;t know much about computers.

Any suggestions, what to get, prices. Thanks.

 

I hate to break it to ya, but in order to have greater performance, the only option is to get a new laptop. One with a dedicated GPU. Is the notebook relatively new?
Sorry man

 

Just a few months old. Whats a dedicated GPU? So theres absolutely no options for me?

 

Sadly, no. But there is one good thing about laptops, they have a fairly high resale price. So to upgrade isn't as too exspensive, considering its a whole new comp your getting. Unless your paying it off like me, then your stuffed

 

What kind of laptop do you suggest. I wanna play these types of games and watch movies.

 

you should choose a laptop with dedicated gpu if you wanna play today's game like farcry or BW2. Look for GeForce6600Go 128 or Mobility Radeon X700 128MB.
there are so many laptops with that cards to name a few,Toshiba M40 series,Acer Tracelmate/ferarri,Asus Z70 series,Dell Inspiron with 6800Go

 

Would any alienware laptop be good?

http://www.alienware.com/product_de...sCode=PC-LT-AREA51-M-5700&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT

http://www.alienware.com/product_de...sCode=PC-LT-AREA51-M-5500&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT

 

with all AW hating going on, im not sure about them.. Dell did just buy them, so they may make their support better. otherwise, you are better off finding the ODM, and buying it from a retailer..you will often get the same computer for a few hundred less...or buy the computer with better specs, for the same price as the lower specced AW.

i have an Asus Z70VA, and couldnt be happier with the way it is performing.

hope this helps

pb,out.

 

You really should fill out the template in the "what should I buy" forum.

Get an idea of what your options are for replacements and the costs. After that, try and figure out how much you can get for your current laptop, and decide if the difference is an acceptable expense.

 

No! Go here: www.pctorque.com and you can get the same systems without all the ugly alien stuff on it. Also, you might want to consider some really nice Asus systems from www.geared2play.com as well. Just make sure they have dedicated GPU's like the X600, X700, X800, X1600, X1700, X1800, Geforce 6600, 6800, 7600, and 7800.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

Before deciding to buy a laptop I decided I would visit the support website for gateway. support.gateway.com and I spoke with someone. He told me that all I had to do was buy 2 1GB DDR SODIMM 333MHz 200-pin ($118.95) and that I would be able to run graphic intensive programs and high end games such as battlefield 2 and call of duty.

Whats the deal guys, this is probably correct?

 

No, that is not correct. No amount of RAM can make the Intel Extreme 2 not suck, quite frankly. It is an integrated GPU, meaning it has none of its own memory, probably only 2 pixel pipelines (meaning a very low fill rate), and a very slow GPU that uses the processor for extra calculations. Worse still, it's on an 8x AGP bus rather than a PCI-E bus, making its memory interface (already abysmal) even slower. The IE2 also doesn't support Shader Model 2 (probably the B&W error message you're getting), which is OK because it wouldn't be able to handle the needed calculations anyways. There's no way you can run Battlefield 2 on an Intel Extreme 2 (both do to its incredible slowness and lack of proper shader support), and whoever told you you could is an idiot.

A dedicated graphics card (what you need) has its own video memory (hence the term "dedicated"), a more powerful GPU that doesn't leech processor power, and msot likely at least 4 picel pipelines. And most newer dedicated GPUs run on a 16x PCI-E bus and feature full Shader Model 2.0 (or even 3.0) support.

And if an Alienware is in your budget, I'd definately check out something like the Sager NP5720 or Dell Inspiron e1705 (with Go7800; the Intel GMA 950 is another rather poor integrated graphics card).

 

Lowlymarine is right. I just want to add that Gateway also wants to rip you off. You can buy the ram from Newegg and get the same price for both sticks of ram that Gateway would charge for for just one.