Gaming on my new P151HM1

So I plan to game on my new laptop when it comes. (Imagine that... gaming on a gaming notebook.)
I haven't really been to big on PC gaming though because my family never put money into a good enough desktop to handle anything intense and my current laptop only has a geforce 210m and centrino2 (not a powerhouse). So I am very very unversed on what current PC games are capable of.
I used to play WC3 and WC3 frozen throne, SC + SC brood war, and Diablo 2. I played all of them on my desktop with the disk in the optical drive.

My main point:
I was wondering if current games (I'm thinking og getting SC2 and eventually Skyrim) have been allowing you to load the entire game onto the HDD of the computer in stead of playing it on the OD. And would this increase the load speed? (I know when you do a Live CD of linux it is slower than the same thing loaded on an HDD).

 

Go to gamespy dot com and look under top pc games. That's what I did.

 

Welcome to Steam

Download Games | PC Games and Mac Game Downloads at Direct2Drive

Digital downloads FTW. I only buy new games on CD/DVD that can either 1) be activated on Steam or 2) don't need the disc to play.

Starcraft 2 can be purchased digitally directly from Blizzard, and Skyrim will certainly be offered on either of the two services linked above.

 

Awesome thanks!
And does this actually increase the loading speed of games or is it just so you don't have to keep track of a bunch of CDs?

 

It's purely for convenience. Even most games distributed on DVD will install the whole thing. The only reason you'd need the disc is for validation/copy protection. It's not like it used to be with games such as Diablo II where you were actually loading from the disc.

Speaking of D2 - if you have a valid CD key, you can register it with Blizzard and be able to download the entire game (and expansion), which would negate the need for using the CD there as well.

 

That is awesome because my expansion disk came with a small bubble in the foil but under the plastic of the CD which makes it unreadable. Maybe I'll give that a shot on my new laptop...

 

You sire are not new so basic question but yeah STEAM!!!! I hope it never reach for console cause that what make PC so great!

 

Steam is a great service. I recommend getting it and playing some of Valve's amazing games, HL2 series, Portal, TF2, CS:S, etc. They offer many of the other major titles too, and have AMAZING sales. I got BF:BC2 a few weeks ago for $5.00.

 

All games these days install completely to the harddrive. No modern games actually read anything off the DVD. The DVD is only checked once when the game starts for copy protection. Otherwise, it does nothing. It does affect load times if it has to spin up the DVD drive first to do the copy protection check. Many PC gamers just use a digital download service like Steam, Direct2Drive, Impulse, or EA Origin to buy and download games. Nobody I know uses DVDs anymore. I even removed the DVD drive from my laptop the day I got it and I haven't used it for 4 months.

If you care about load speeds, you need to get an SSD (solid state drive) and not a mechanical harddrive. I boot into Windows in 15 seconds. Starcraft maps load practically instantly. Even Crysis maps load in seconds.

 

lol i have a dvd version of bfbc2, but i use daemon tools to do a virtual drive, so it boots fast. i took all of my old cd/dvd games and made iso's for them and i use daemon tools to boot them up, its quite convenient.

 

Also, if you're still into the older Blizzard games (look like you have them), you can go to battle.net and register your CD Key. Once you do that, you can download a copy that you won't ever need a CD for ever again. Pretty sweet

 

I bought Starcraft II in a store and installed it via DVD-ROM. Once I was registered on Battle.net, I realized I didn't need to put the disc in to play. Actually, about the only modern game where I need the disc in the optical drive to play is Mass Effect 2, and if I'd bought that on Steam I wouldn't need to do that either.

 

Just download Blizz game from Battle net account and play

 

Ok thanks guys! I may bend up getting an SSD in the future. (Another reason I asked about the downloading the dvd and running from the hdd was because I am considering putting a caddy in it and just get an eternal OD at some point in the future).

 

You don't have to buy another optical drive to have one externally. Since you've already got an 8x DVD burner in yours, you can always buy an external enclosure and put your internal burner in there (it should end up being a bit cheaper that way)

 

Oh sweet! That could save me some money! I'll look into that too!

 

I just bought SC2!!! Now all I need is my laptop! (IT COMES MONDAY!!!!)

 

My name is Mitlov on Battle.net and I'm a casual player slumming around in the bronze league (though slowly working my way upward...thanks Day 9 for this: Archives :: Day[9]TV !). If you ever are up for a game, lemme know.

 

Ok. And to be honest, I have no idea what bronze league or anything means and I'll probably be awful at first. It's been forever since I played SC or brood war and I was never very good on bnet but I will definitely give it a shot! I'll let you know about playing.

 

CD's are a pain. I recently took my laptop with me on a short trip, if I had to use CD's it would have meant adding 100 or more CD's to my already bulky travel bag.

Alongside Steam, I also use Impulse, Gog and many seem to like Direct2Drive too.

 

I like having the physical copy for the installation but after that, I don't like to have to depend on the OD.

 

Steam allows you to make a backup of the installation. So you could actually use that as your physical copy.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-YPHV-2033

 

Steam's backup system is awful. It's slow and in my experience doesn't always work. The easiest way to back up Steam stuff is to copy the entire "steamapps" folder to an external hard drive.

 

There are five or six leagues of varying ability. Bronze league is the lowest league. "The little leagues," if you will.

When you join Battle.net, it'll give you five ranking matches to see which league is appropriate for you. Don't get discouraged if you lose all five. They're just trying to figure out, in baseball terms, if you're meant to belong in MLB or inter-company softball tournaments. I'm the latter.