Counter Strike on a budget laptop. Anyone playing?

Not Source, I'm talking about the original one (last time i played, it was 1.6 and running off steam).

I want to get a laptop, and after aiming considerably high, I've realised the only real 3D game I will be playing long-term would be CS. The rest would be emulated stuff, Lucasarts point-click, maybe some Grim Fandango chucked in for good measuer

So, how would a Celeron M 1.3-1.5GHz handle CS? I can only seem to find Celeron M machines with onboard graphics. Surely even a Geforce4 Go or similar would suffice?
Or what about an Athlon XP-M? What are they like?

btw resolution wouldn't be more than 1024x768 (i used to play in 800x600)

seeing as I'm not after a 'gaming' laptop, games would take up around 1-10% of the laptop's total usage, the remaining time spent on the internet, and doing stuff like that, so heat and noise are paramount. as for battery life i'd only need around 2 hours or so. I know Celeron M's don't do deep sleep, btw

 

My 600 mhz laptop with 8 MB graphics memory could handle Unreal Tournament, I'm sure what you will get should handle CS.

 

don't forget rats! lol it gets quite choppy playing those ones

ok i've decided against a budget one, thus rendering this thread pretty much void unless it's of interest to other users. I've decided to go with a Dell Inspiron 6000:

P-M 1.5@400fsb (or 1.6@533fsb, I haven't decided - only £47 difference between the two mind you)
256MB DDR2 (small, i know)
40GB 5400rpm HDD (the Acer I was gonna get only had 4200)
Radeon X300 64mb
DVD writer, etc
£704 (or £751 with the P-M 1.6)
1-year C&R

the ram is naff, but they're charging £164 for a single stick of 512mb ddr2, which I can get on eBay for around £60 or so. I'll also just upgrade the hard drive on my own (they charge £57 for a 60gb 5400rpm)

 

to put this in perspective for you.

An AMD athlon 800MHZ with a riva tnt2 16 MB video card and 128 mb system memory can run counterstrike at an "acceptable" framerate at 800 x 600. Noticably choppy tho when playing on servers with more than 16 players.

 

You might want to go with the 1.6 ghz processor. If its not that much more, it would probably be worth it.

 

decided against the dell as i found out the x300 is just a low-end radeon buton the pci-express (whereas the x600 is the 9700-equivalent)

tbh, i'm having a really hard time picking the right laptop, as i've never made such a big purchase before. and the more i think about it, the more i realise i don't really need a dedicated gfx card...

HL2 is coming out on the xbox soon, and i wouldn't lose any sleep if i didn't play it anyway.

i probably will just buy a low-poered laptop (most likely a celeron-m 1.3), stick lots of ram in it and just get a decent desktop when the time is right.

thanks for the replies, you guys are ace

 

very true, but see, i know what i'm like - i'll play HL2, probably won't finish it, and it'll just sit there after a while if (or when) i get fed up of the loading times, as i have done with doom3, far cry and painkiller before it.
well my new favourite is the Acer Aspire 1362WLMi (2800+ sempron, 512mb, geforce fx 5200 w/64mb dedicated) seeing as it's a) cheap (£560 inc), b) able to run counter strike 1.6, and c) it's cheap

 

although HL2 is coming out on the Xbox soon it, just like HL and CS it won't be anywhere near as good as on a PC. The game was pretty much designed for the faster turn rate and aim of a PC, that you just can't get with a controller.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

My Inspiron 4000 8mb Rage mobility 700 MHz could play Counter Strike at 5-15 FPS. The original Radeon Mobility M8 16mb Graphics Pentium 3 1.2 GHz would run Counter Strike at around 30-60 fps which is just fine.

_____________________
IBM Thinkpad T42
Dell Inspiron 4000
Dell Latitude C610
Sony Vaio S
AST Ascentia A Series
Toshiba Tecra

 

i used to play CS on my old win98 600mhz processor, 8MB graphics card, and 300MB of ram. I think you should be fine with just about anything. Half-Life's graphics engine is probably the most efficent ive ever seen.

Compaq Presario R3000z
AMD Athlon 64 3400 - 2.2gHz
1 Gig DDR
15.4BrightVew (1280x800)
100 Gig 4200Rpm
nVedia GeForce 4 440 - 64MB
8x Super Multi w/Multi-layer
802.11b/g, Bluetooth

Compaq h4155 Pocket PC

 

When I try and play CS 1.6 on my laptop, although it tears up the FPS, every few steps my character stutters for a second then continues.

Perhaps a reinstall of Steam would resolve this problem, but considering the incompetence of VALVe, I don't know if I can dedicate myself to such an act.

Anyone got any better ideas?

:: Pentium 4 3Ghz :: 15.1" SXGA :: 512 DDR RAM :: 80gig HD :: Mobility Radeon M11 :: t3h pWnz0r ::

 

steam drove me nuts when i first used it (had to, the CS update was steam-only) - the damn thing thought it best to download the ENTIRE game without telling me, and my pings were skyrocketing. I got kicked and kicked. Only when I quit out I realised steam was downloading 800mb of CS files!

seeing as it downloaded the whole game, i was wondering - i've lost my actual CS cd, so what i did was put the installed CS folder from my hard drive onto a CD, along with the 1.5 update. then, whenever i used CS on a new pc (or on a fresh windows installation), i'd just copy the folder to the hdd and run the update, pointing it to the folder. it would then add the necessary registry entries, etc, and I could play CS (i had retrieved the license from the registry). When I first used steam with CS, i received an email with a sort of invoice for my purchase, so from now on, can i just install steam on my new laptop and it'll download the whole game, seeing as it acknowledged that i'd bought it?

 

yes, you can just be logged on to steam once though. So you can install it multiple places just only log in on one.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

that's fantastic. now, i just need to find that damn serial(or invoice)!

 

Not to be a troll or anything,
but the "engine" in the CS games is just a heavily modified version of quake II, a game by ID software.

Valve gearheads had nothing to do with its framerate

 

i assume you're talking about crumbs' comment? if so, i think he's referring to an assumed effect steam is having on CS, as opposed to the programming behind the game or it's engine