A little debate with my Friend

I'm having a debate with my Friend. He has trouble playing anything, even something as old as Vietcong2 on his new laptop (800x600). It plays fine on his desktop though. Vietcong2 plays perfectly fine on my sons notebook 91280x800)and it is VERY similar in specs as his HP notebook, although my son is running XP.

My sons notebook: ACER 5102
AMD Turion64 x2 TL-50, 1 GB memory, ATI Radeon xPress 1100 integrated graphics card

Idk all of his specs, just the basics.

His desktop is NOT a dual core CPU, P4 3.0 w/ ATI x300

His notebook and vista, HP 15.4, dualcore2 1.8, gig of ram, 120gig hd, Go6150 video

I can get some more specs if need be, but getting the info is like pulling teeth. Im just looking for a second opinion here. I believe the dual core notebook should play games alot better than it does. And forget telling him to tweak vista a bit....

 

well, yes the Dual Core is better than single ones like Pentium 4, AMD Athlon,etc.

 

Yeah, ok, but what about the video. I checked out the list, but i really cant use that to compare a desktop x300 and go6150, though the notebook x300 would be a bit better if it was a mobile comparison, but not by all that much.

 

The thing is, gaming is limited by the GPU, not the CPU. The desktop has an x300, which isn't a great card but can be a decent entry level card for older games. Those two laptops both have integrated graphics, which are really unsuitable for 3d gaming. The x1100 on your sons notebook is a little better than the Go6150 on your friend's notebook, and it's possible that the game your playing runs better on ATI cards (like the x300 and x1100). I'd recommend upgrading the drivers on the Go6150. Also, gaming in Vista is known to be problematic with low end cards, and your friend will need another gig of RAM anyway if he want's to game on Vista with that card.

 

Your friend needs more RAM!

 

i would say that the video on the Dual processor is better. and about it being mobile..... for me it dosent really have a BIG diference, i look in there components. hmmmm the go6150 (i think) is better than the x300(mobile vs. mobile, mobile vs. desktop, whatever)

hope this helps

 

and yeah.. more RAM (forgot to mention )

 

Nope, desktop x300 is definitely better (how much depends on what version and what clocks), and mobile still beats out the Go6150 by a decent amount.

 

Thanks for the replies, and i totaly understand! He didnt get the notebook for gaming. Infact, we hardly play games. Just once in a while we get into some coop fun with older games. He comes over and we play lan and i listen to him cry about shoppyness LMAO

I think it will run alot better if he just tweaked the OS. He removed a bunch of bloatware, but thats not gonna help vistas extreme services from tormenting him in the background.

He said he went and updated video drivers! I said what, over at HP? He said yep !!!!!!!! LMAO

 

"He removed a bunch of bloatware, but thats not gonna help vistas extreme services from tormenting him in the background."

This will help a great deal. Another thing you can do is to open the msconfig window, which is done by hitting Start>Run> type "msconfig". Go to the start up programs tab and uncheck any programs that you don't want. There are plenty of tweaks out there for XP... not so sure about Vista though. Good luck!

 

Tell him to look at our Vista Tweaks thread for more help:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3945