Good system?

i was wondering would this be a good system for a lot of gaming, such as the following:

TES: Oblivion
Age Of Empires
Blakc or white
world in comflict
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
guild wars
Battlefield 2142
Halo 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
Unreal Anthology
Half-life 1 & 2
football manager 2007
crysis

start with this:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...at0502003&type=product&tab=3&id=1195599780039

upgrade the CPU to this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819111316

add this aditional HD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136123

or would it be better to wait for:
http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529667906.php which would cost about £1,400 with TAX

while the the first laptop would cost about £1,200

how much better is the resolution is it alot?

 

Base model P-6831FX can play all the games above at max settings except Crysis. I have half of those games installed and narsnail have a FX benchmark thread which he tested almost all those games listed.

If you upgrade the CPU/HDD etc, FX will run better.

If you go with P-171X FX, it will run at higher res, but slower because of high res. Unless you scale it down to lower res, but quality dimmishes. In USD$, P-171X FX can be had as low as US$1599. There is a thread in here somewhere with Gateway sale rep contact info.

 

with it being slower couldunt upgrading the CPU counter act that?

 

Not really, since most of the limitations are imposed by the GPU, not the CPU. Assuming that I understand your question correctly.

Additionally, I'm pretty sure bestbuy and newegg both don't ship to the UK.

And warranty issues after upgrades is another problem.

 

great it goes from bad to worse for getting the laptop.
may have to look somewhere else

 

Phantom,

You can run all of those games at max settings except Crysis (you just need to bump down the settings a little). The one you linked that has 1920x1200 is basically identical except the higher res screen of course and the faster processor. Just get the 6831FX and upgrade the processor to a T9300 or T7500. The only difference will be the screen resolution. Unless you care about actually having 1920x1200 on your laptop display then there isn't much point in paying the higher cost. I personally prefer to run my 6831FX on a 24in Gateway screen in 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 and when its not hooked up to the monitor I just use 1440x900. The GPU isn't any faster on either machine so it doesn't really matter. Yes, the faster cpu will help "some" but not a lot when it comes to the graphics. Most of the limitations with games on this system are gpu related. But if it's any consolation no system in the world (seriously) will run Crysis at max settings & max resolution. Even desktop systems with triple SLI and quad core processors have been brought to their knees by that game.

 

So far I run all my games with stock components at max except crysis. Crysis CAN run the game at very high but it's not exactly enjoyably smooth, but if you're the kind of person who put up with bad framerates in the past, this is totally doable for you. When I heard that this laptop was going to be on sale for 1199 plus a free game, I instantly tossed my old laptop (which had a 7800gtx) for sale. It's a truly great deal. Most if not all other laptops charge more and offer the "cutting edge 8600gt". And yes, cpu is just fine, you only need to upgrade the cpu if you want bragging rights in 3dmark06 or if you do rendering/video editing, etc.

 

Upgrading the CPU more then just adds bragging rights. It allows the 8800 to OC quite well. With stock CPU I had 3dMarks of about 7k and if you OC the GPU you might get an additional 300 Marks. With my new 7500 that I bought off EBay for just 167.50 USD, I now get base 3DMarks of 8100, and if I OC the GPU to 600/900 I get over 9300 3DMarks. So the better CPU allows the GPU to breath more and bump up frame rates quite substantially.

 

Oh, and from what I hear, the newer cpus use less power than the stock cpu, I could be wrong on that.

As for the higher 3dmark score, yes I am aware you can probably hit 10k with the t9300 and some overclocking, but in terms of real life improvement, I wouldn't really expect more than 5 frames per second increase. But that's based off my assumption, hopefully I'm wrong and non-benchmarking programs will gain a big performance boost.

 

ok, have any one tried STALKER on this laptop !? How it runs ?!

 

yeah i want to know how well it runs as well

 

It runs perfectly. I'll say it again: you could practically throw a piece of junk cpu in any laptop that has an 8800GTS/GTX card (within reason of course) and it would *still* run fine. Seriously, tons of the problem with a laptop not running smoothly or a desktop for that matter is an inferior graphics unit. Yes, the cpu will help. And, yes, it will help a good deal in certain situations but mostly it is the graphics unit that will give you smooth framerates.

Just to give a very hypothetical example you might see these kind of results in an upgrade from cpu versus gpu:

GPU upgrade from integrated gpu ---> 8800GT: literally 10-20 times or more the difference in speed. As an example you might expect an integrated gpu to run a 2-3 yr old game in 1024x768 in the 20-25fps with low/med settings. Same cpu with the upgraded gpu would skyrocket those numbers to unbelievable levels. You could pump the resolution up at least another couple notches, set most games to max settings, and still never drop below 60fps.

CPU upgrade from 1.6ghz -----> 2.6ghz: as far as graphics go you might see a 5%-10% gain in framerates. The gpu really is *that* important for modern gaming or any gaming in the last 10 years for that matter.

 

The only Game that I have seen where the CPU is important is Sony's Everquest 2. This game uses a ton of CPU compared to the GPU. The game looks awesome, but you need a good system to run it.

 

Check the first thread that is sticky in there look for narsail, he has benchmark mark that should give you an idea. IMHO all those games will run fine.