IBM T43 and Doom 3?

I had a Dell 6000d (1.6 Ghz P-M, 512mb Ram) with 123mb ATI graphics but I'm returning it to buy an IBM T43 from my college for their free damage warranty. I'm wondering, will the IBM will be able to handle a game like Doom 3 or other graphic intense games with these specs?....

IBM T43
2.0 Ghz Pentium M
512 MB RAM
64MB ATI x300
14.1" sxga+

 

whats wrong with the dell?

Ibm and games.............ha ha ha

I admit that I dont know much about ibm, exept its whole, safety/security first, safety/security second, and safety/security third approach to laptops, making it the Volvo of laptops. So to think of a volvo as being a fast and fun car, would be along the lines of thinking of an ibm for gaming. These features dont really go hand in hand.

:dell:

 

I don't know, it should be possible but not at high quality.


And thats true, IBM is more professional in the likes of business, ThinkPads + Games makes me think of a huge LANParty at businesses, everyone behind a cubicle fragging each other

 

ACP2NV,
the dell is perfect from a tech standpoint, albeit way way too heavy and bulky for a college student. it's just that the IBM comes with a 3yr comprehensive damage coverage through the university and it's coming for less than $1500. the only reasoning i'm getting the ibm is because its easier and accidents happen. anyways, i just wanted to know if I could play games on low settings...i'm not a man of discriminating tastes, i just like doom.

 

lol coriolis its funny cause its true, i saw three guys on a plane all sitting next to each other, in suits, lookin all professional, whip out thier think pads and fire up a game of age of empires 2, and as far as i could tell they were playing against each other.

well the dell may be a bit bigger indeed but dell does offer accidental coverage protection, but with the 64, it be half as good as the 128 from dell, so consider how well off the the dell was, and turn everything down halfway for a fair coparison. BTW the processor wont make much of a difference for gaming, just to let you know.

 

ACP2NV,
I'm sorry to keep shooting back at you, but I'm still just looking for a straight answer... will the T43 with its x300 64mb decently play Doom 3 on its lowest setting? Will it be able to handle most lesser games, like those star wars games for example?
And again, I agree the Dell blows the IBM away for my purposes, it's a better consumer company and a better computer. But if the IBM screen cracks or the hard drive fails a week before a project, I walk into the tech office at my college and they either fix it then or hand me a new computer. Better than dealing with Dell on my cell phone out of my dorm, as great as dell's service is.

 

I have personally never laid my hands on an ibm, casue they dont do what i want a laptop to do, the fingerprint is cheesy for a college student in my opinion, and i would never want to be seen in public with a machine that is so dam bland. (i major in industrial design, so design is very important.) Therefore i have absoletuley no idea on weather or not its possible ffor you to enjoy the game at playable framerates. Yes you can install the game, yes you can get it to run, but you may not enjoy the slow as hell framerates. To used some figures according to Laptop Magazine, the ibm has a weak 3d mark 2001 score of 2,909, and the dell ups the ante with a score of 9,545. Within the article in laptop magazine there is no mention of Doom 3 or any other game for that matter, but with a little bit of reading in thier other reviews, i found that other laptops with 3d scores similar to the imb, can't play Far cry smoothly, and results in jerky gameplay. all i can say, not from my own experience, but from a research standpoint, you wont like Doom 3 ever again if you play it on the ibm. It would be far too frustrating to try and shoot something when the computer dosent deliver smooth gameplay.
sorry for the bad news, but to verify the gaming capabilities look in the ibm forum and read the reviews. After quickly scanning through i didnt see anything in terms of gaming, but if you really want a definitive answer just look there and a bit more indepth. This is all the info i have, hopefully it can help.

 

Perhaps you might want to consider a T43 or T42 with the firegl graphics cards. These gpu will probably provide good/decent gameplay, though like all of ibm's stuff they are designed for professionals. Thus that means they will give longer floating points thus they will be more accurate, but slightly slower than their consumer counterparts. They will also cost more than the x300 so perhaps you can give up a bit of the cpu to even out the cost.

 

well i just spent a half hour checking out the ibm forum, one thing i did notice, and could be a significant downside is the screen, for it been said to have slow refresh rates, and will contibute to a ghosting effect while playing a game with a lot of action and movement. Not realy a big deal, but i just wanted to point it out. Also if you are set on getting an ibm if you get the 42, it has a radeon 9000 or something like that, a bit better of a card.

 

Unfortunately with an X300 video card you're not going to be able to play Doom 3. You might have a shot at playing HL2 on a low setting and other games not so high-end are playable.

 

Is it the same story with the Fujitsu Lifebook n3510? It also has a x300 video card but I've heard good things about its performance with games like half life 2. Am I mistaken?

 

Saying the X300 won't run Doom 3 is a load of crap.

A 64MB X300 will run Doom 3 at its lowest settings.

If Doom 3 runs on a freaking desktop 8500, it will run on an X300.

You don't have to trick out all of a game's video settings to quantify it as "playable."

 

HL2 is optimised for the Radeon cards, so it will run fine. The X300 is an X600 chip (4 pixel pipes, 2 vertex) at lower clock speed (and possibly low-bandwidth VRAM to cripple it further).
Doom3 favours nVidia hardware (better OpenGL driver), and is very demanding, so expect X300 to run it, but at low settings, An X700 (8 pixel pipes, 6 vertex) minimum to run at High Detail 1024x768.

 

Is it possible to later upgrade the x600 gfx card on the asus w3v?

 

Yeah I have to say that the x300 will be able to play doom 3, but everything will be set at low. Many people have said that Doom 3 still looks pretty good on low settings and I'm sure it should still be quite playable.

The thing you want to remember is that if you are going to want to play new games, this card will not be supported in the soon future. Main reason for this is that it is a 64mb card and textures are becoming a bigger issue.

Also like someone mentioned how much weaker it is compared to the x600 and x700 cards.

 

thanks for the feedback...so the x300 will be sufficient for most games...another question then: can I upgrade to a better video card in the future, or is that not possible in notebooks?