W500 Gaming Performance: GTA IV, Mafia 2

I was thinking on getting a W500 this year (considering it will be the last 15" 16:10 WUXGA Thinkpad ever).
But I'm wondering if the machine is equipped to play GTA IV and the new series (Episodes from Liberty City) decently with good FPS.
Also thinking on playing Mafia 2 when it comes out in August.

So, what are your recommendations, is the W500 worth for playing modern games or look somewhere else.
I could also buy a PS3 and use it to play those games.
I'm really not a hardcore gaming, but love the GTA series, Mafia & the Gran Turismo sequels (this not available on PC).

 

I'm not gaming guru, but I thought I saw GTA IV does better with the quads. The LG WSXGA+ is a better screen if that's what you're after.

I picked up an xBox360 for $60 on eBay about six months ago. It was sans the hard drive and controller, but I already had those.

 

@Zaz, i always thought of you as a serious computer professionals whom scoff at the idea of playing video games.... LOL

 

Nothing could be further from the truth at least on the serious part, though people often have trouble discerning whether I'm being serious IRL. It's a great skill to have.

 

What is a great skill to have?

 

I had always wanted a super high ress WUXGA panel, but who knows I'm right now unemployed and broke. So I really don't know

 

It could play them, but I'm not sure you'd be able to do so at native res all that well. My XPS M1730 with it's overclocked X9000 is pegged all the way up when playing GTA IV(at WUXGA res), and even with its graphics cards that blow the W500's FireGL out of the water it struggled at times. If it is playable on the W500, it'd be at lowish settings. I personally can handle low settings in a game, but I can't handle gaming on lower than a display's native resolution... I'm very picky about that kind of image quality. If you can stand the 'fuzziness' that results from playing on a lower resolution, you might be fine.

 

You need some serious horsepower to run that game at anything above 1280x1024. A Core i7, 12GB DDR3 and a GTX285 can run this game at high settings and med view distances at 1600x1200. Not many laptops will come anywhere near close to that, especially at 1920x1200.

 

Seems a PS3 is more suitable for the job.

I will stand my point here saying that this bothers me with PC gaming era:
You need a 'monster' laptop to play a new generation game. considering how cheap a PS3 is, then it is ridiculous to spend at least another 1,000 bucks on those same games on a PC platform.

I play GTA San Andreas on my T61 at the lowest resolution though.

When will be able to play games such as GTA IV using Integrated Graphics? Maybe somewhere in 2015? I can't stand the heat generated by the watt hungry GPU's.
My brothers Apple Macbook sound like a turbine when he's playing something at it, even if it's just AoE II.

 

Well, to give him a perspective i used to be able to squeeze 20-30FPS playing GTA 4 on my T61p, 1280x720, Medium everything (yes even shadows), i even had graphics mods installed, (Realizm 6.2, Ultimate Textures 2.0, i forget but some patch that got rid of the dither in trees and edges, Universal Shader 0.9b patch (got rid of near distance blur))