How good of a gaming laptop is this?

I have ordered an E1705 laptop from Dell with the specs listed below. How well off do you think I'll be with modern games?

Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5200 (2MB/1.6GHz/533MHz)
17 inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WUXGA(1900x1200)
1GB, DDR2, 533MHz 2 Dimm
256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS
120GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
SoundBlaster Advanced Audio

My one worry is that even with the 7900GS, running games at 1900x1200 would require lower settings in other places. If I run the games at a lower res than the native one, how bad will it look? 1900x1200 is really exceeding what I need. I also read that text can be really hard to read at that resolution.

I'm also sure I would have been better off with 2 gigs of RAM, but it would have added about $100 to the price tag. I'm not all that interested in Oblivion and have heard that it's coded poorly and requires more power than it should. But with modern games other than Oblivion, how well will I do? I am interested in FEAR. I was interested in Dark Messiah 'till I read the reviews on it.

 

You'll be fine with that configuration. The 7900 GS should handle games at native resolution well. It is a very powerful GPU.

I had an e1705 with WUXGA with the go 7800 and games looked pretty good at native resolution. The one thing about the screen on the e1705 though, was that it didn't scale down to other resolutions very well. This doesn't seem to be a problem on a lot of modern LCDs though, as my current LCD scales much better. But don't let that bother you--I'm sure you will like your new laptop.

The value of the e1705 is hard to beat.

 

Good.

I've never seen anything at that high of a resolution. I'm sure I will be amazed. Damnit this notebook needs to be in my hands already.

 

I recommend getting a laptop cooler, other than that happy gaming.

 

Which laptop cooler would you reccomend? I'm not looking to get anything to pricey or bulky. But if getting something thin and inexpensive would barely be worth it, just recommend what would be best.

 

I'm using the Cooler Master Notepal specially designed for 17" laptops.

It's so nice to be able to crank all the setting up to high/max without even caring what they are... a nice step from my Compaq, on which I only played Red Alert.

 

Switch the screen scaling to nVidia's instead of the display's in the control panel and I suspect it'll be much improved.

 

For cooling i would go with any of the Targus cooling pads, which you can find at most local electronics stores (i.e. Best Buy, Circuit City, Comp USA, and even Office Depot). Better yet most of them even carry a 1 year warranty or stock (aka comes with it).

 

The 7900GS is a strong card, but you won't be able to run F.E.A.R. at 1900x1200 with max settings. You'll either have to go to a lower resolution or you'll have to cut back on some settings. I would personally go for the lower res, but that's me.

 

This is quite likely. I didn't try the fixed aspect scaling ratio feature on the Dell.

 

thanks for the help, guys. I would like to get my hands on FEAR. But I don't have it now. I still have HL2, SiN Episodes and Doom 3 to max out on settings and stare in awe. Before this I was playing these games on a system with an Athlon XP 2500+, 1 GIG of slow RAM, and a GeForce 5600 Ultra.

 

ouch those are sum hurt settings, unlike me i went from an amazing desktop to a ok laptop with decent graphics, i thought the cut in visuals was going to hurt but honestly it hasn't, Man i love my new laptop.