Upgrading MSI GT628

Hi,

I want to upgrade my laptop to play on games which are currently out,but i'm having trouble playing them because my hardware is to weak..
I don't know that much about electronics so no complicated names please .
All together,i want hardware, good but not too expensive, that i can play games now and in the future.

 

to help you out with some choices, post back with:

what's your budget?
what sort of games do you play?
portability? screen res?


i think you get the idea.

 

I don't really know how much that stuff costs..Whats the average? I just want something good,reliable and not no expensive... I play.. GTA IV,The Sims 3,TES IV,NFS,AC Brotherhood. Things like that... I also would like to play TES V,Anno 2070,GTA V,... when they come out.. I don't know what you mean by portablilty and screen res,do you mean how much it weights and how good the settings have to be,or am i wrong...I usually don't speak English..

 

If you have the Nvidia gts 160m graphics card, you may want to try some overclocking, its a very good card.

Unfortunately there isn't much better out there for that interface. You could try an ATI 4850, there are some in the marketplace for 250$. They will probably run hot and you'll have to do a few modifications to the heatsink. The interface is MXM 2.1.

Depending on your current CPU an upgrade may be in order for some of those RTS games. You can go quad core, but the problem with this notebook is the total thermal capacity. A quad core will make the graphics card hotter as well. The P series are the coolest CPUs, you can use any P series core 2 duo. There is also a wide range of T series which will work, the best options being t9900, t9800, and t9600. For the P series, the fastest is the p9700 and only as fast as the t9600, but personally I would still get the P9700 over any T series if you can afford it and its worth it to you.

I'm guessing you have something like a p8400 right now, that is definitely not a strong CPU anymore for most games.

 

What he meant by screen resolution is, if you have a WXGA screen, 1280x800, then gaming will be much smoother. If you have a WSXGA screen, 1680x1050, then you have the option of setting the resolution lower for some speed a the cost of 'ugly' pixel shading.

I think he was going to recommend a new laptop, which I'm not sure you're interested in?

As for cost of the things I recommended, the CPU is about 100$ +. Overall the t9600 is not more than 100$ and the most cost effective.

 

About the overclocking,i think there's something wrong with the button,it doesn't turn on.I also have a notebook cooler ( ::: Zalman, leading the world of Quiet Computing Solutions :::) if that helps? How long would that CPU (P9700) be working for games in the years to come,rough guess is enough... I just bought this laptop a year ago for my birthday so i'm not going to buy another one...

 

I may have misread it as him wanting to upgrade to a better laptop. Sometimes im on these forums too late at night.