Anyone else have any racing sims?

Hello everyone, this is my first post here appropriately on my first day after ordering my first notebook ever. I was wondering if anyone here plays any racing sims like GTR2, GT Legends, or rFactor? That's the majority of what I play on my computer now and I was curious to know what specs other sim racers have on their laptops and how the games run.

Also, how much of an improvement can I expect between my desktop and my laptop in relatively older games like those mentioned above? My specs are
For the homebuilt ancient desktop-
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2 ghz, 1.5 gigs of RAM, Geforce 6600 video card, 5400 rpm HDs.
The new laptop is a Gateway NX860XL with-
Core 2 duo T7200 2.0 ghz, 100 gig 7200 rpm HD, 2 gigs of RAM, Geforce 7900GS video card

I'm hoping the new laptop will be a big step up from my desktop, somelike like 20 frames per second more in most of the games I play with equivalent detail/resolution settings...

A final question- I saw a long thread about overclocking the 7900GS to get 10-20% better performance, but every post in that thread was from a Dell owner with that card. Has anyone figured out how to overclock this card in the Gateway?
Thanks for the help!

 

Welcome. hmmm i mostly play like Sims 2, battlefield kinda games, but might buy NFS: most wanted. I really dont play car games.

 

I (used to) play GTR and GTR2. Hopefully next week I will be able to play again for the first time in about a year.

My computer is Acer Aspire 1520 with AMD Turion ML-28 1.6 GHz and a Radeon X700 Mobile. GTR2 is playable around 40-50 fps in low resolutions, but something feels wrong in a multiplayer game with 12 cars or so, probably because the framerate dips at certain places during a lap.

I asked a similar question about GTR2 a couple of months ago, but received no answers. So I am also curious about the fps in native resolution for your card. I think it will play beautifully in native...

 

I hope so, GTR2 doesn't seem to be that intensive of a game (except when racing at night or in the rain) because my current desktop as listed above gets 35 fps or more with 34 cars on track and most details set to medium or high at 1280X1024 and AA X2, so it should run well. I hope to have the laptop by next friday and I'll post here when I know how it runs these games!

 

I just sold my Alienware m9700 with an amd turion processor with dual 7900gs. I mostly played Flatout2 and NFS:Carbon and was pulling 50-60fps on both games in sli, 45-55fps on single 7900gs. With your faster processor I would suspect you will max out any racing sim out today with no lag.

 

Really? I can play GTR2 at 1440x900 with mostly high settings at 30-40 FPS with over two dozen cars racing on track. Odd. But it DID play like crap when I only had 512 MB RAM. During practice sessions though wherein I'm the only car on track, the FPS is also around 30-40+. Since I upgraded to 1.5 GB there hasn't been a problem even with tons of cars on the track. Playing at 1680x1050 makes the FPS dip below 30 sometimes, so I play at 1440x900. The graphical difference is small anyway. I'm just making comparisons because you have an X700 and I have a Geforce Go 6600. BTW, how much RAM do you have?

@ Dan333SP

Try Test Drive Unlimited. Nice graphics and hot cars. It simulates more casual driving than real racing though. Just make sure you've got over 1 GB of RAM. This game is a RAM hog.

 

Test Drive Unlimited has really good visuals, but the physics engine is really bad. It is impossible to play with the keyboard, I know racing games aren't suppose to be played with keyboards, that is why I used a Driving Force Pro. Even with that , the handling of the games are nothing like how a car would behave in the real world. Just cruising around the city is fine, but flat out racing is just scary. Not scary because of the speed or thrill of swifting through traffic, but scary because its just HARD to control the car.

After all this, I personally don't play racing games on computers anymore. For that I resort back to my good old slim ps2. GT4 + DFP = true driving feeling

 

I must correct myself. I did get one good answer from fadi299 (thank you, how could I miss it?).

"i play it maxed out on my dell inspiron equipped with a 7900gs( all settings max and 1440x900 resolution), and it runs great, i exprience some slowdown during the night races when the rain is set to 50%, but only at beginning of the race, it actually depends on the number of cars on the track"

My old computer is not so relevant, but I have 1.25 GB RAM. I also got the advice from IIIM3 to wait for the 8700M or even 8800M. I will probably wait for the 8700M in a computer I like before buying. The ones with 8700M right now seem to have quality issues with their screens.

 

I used to play Papyrus nascar series (since nascar3) sim until a couple years ago. The last one was season 2003. I got my first laptop less than a year ago and fired it up.

I never knew season 2003 could look so good. Ive played pretty maxed out on this system and it runs like a dream! I have an ASUS notebook with 1.6dualcore2, a gig of ram and a ATI Radeon x1600

The game is out of production so i threw my cd on ebay though i have a copy to toy with.

I havent really been into it for a couple years but recently been toying around with rfactor. The mods are crazy for this game. The gokarts are my favorite but im having a hard time finding working links for the track packs. The pits nascar mod is really nice so far.

The only problem im having is, my o'll wheel wasnt working right (twichy) and the pot was a digital one (so it couldnt be cleaned out). I tossed it and am in the process of begging the wife for permission to get a new one. Im looking at the MOMO's.