Got some laptop picks, on a budget. Which is best?

[Lou337]

Hey guys I have a quick question. My uncle is going to buy my mom a new laptop and I have been looking for one that I can play Rome and/or Medieval on. But I'd settle more for Rome if M II is not possible with these laptops.

The budget is exactly around 350-380 and it needs to be a laptop.

Which is the best one for running Rome and/or Medieval?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834114805

or

http://www.officedepot.com/a/product...5-6/#reviewTab

or any of these first 4?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstemplatemapper.jsp?id=pcat17080&type=page&qp=crootcategoryid%23%23-1%23%23-1~~q70726f63657373696e6774696d653a3e313930302d30312d3031~~cabcat0500000%23%230%23%2311a~~cabcat0502000%23%230%23%23o~~nf518||4c657373207468616e2024363030&list=y&nrp=15&sc=abComputerSP&sp=%2Bcurrentprice+skuid&usc=abcat0500000


BTW, so you have some background knowledge of the laptops I've used..

I have 2 laptops which I have used to play RTW/Med II

The first, a Toshiba Satellite had the following specs:

60 GB Hard drive
Mobility Radeon 9100 IGP 128 MB
Mobile Intel Pentium 4
CPU 3.06 GHz
1.37 GB RAM

^^^^^^ This one ran RTW on low/med settings at around 3-5 fps. It ran Med II at extremely low settings (low grass or no grass) & Huge unit size on 1-3 fps. Interestingly enough, RTW intro videos lagged on this laptop.


The second, a Gateway laptop

VIA S3G Unichrome Pro IGP 64 MB
Intel Celeron Processor
CPU 1.40 GHz
960 MB RAM
40GB memory

This laptop was not capable of installing Med II. It ran RTW at around 3-5 fps on huge unit settings and medium settings (low or no grass). Intro videos for RTW ran super fast.

Thanks for any replies. I checked out the laptop buying guide thread but was wondering if anyone had close to any of the setups listed from the stores I linked to and the performance they've had if they had anything close to these machines.

[karamazovmm]

seriously? neither

they are a waste of money, old, heavy, old, expensive, old, underpowered, old, bad processors, old.

If you can come up with something more, lets say 200, it would double the power of your laptop, even more I think.

and don't be afraid you can post at the thread, no one will hurt you I promise, ok?

big boy big boy

[Capt. Fozdike]

Neither of them are very good but I'd go with the Toshy if I had to choose. Around the same specs as the Compaq but Compaq are crap.

You may be able to run M2 on low settings

[karamazovmm]

yes I would also go for the toshiba, since it has a not so quality but better than any intel board, but the problem here are the processors, they are all crap

[Lou337]

I know the problem is I'm not the one who will be buying it.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

The toshiba is the best bet but don't expect much if anything.

[Lou337]

What do you guys think my frames per second will be with the Toshiba if I have grass and effects turned off, with everything else on medium...Huge unit settings and one full stack fighting another full stack in Rome?

[heimdhal]

Hey Lou. I have nothing to add, Im just saying "Hi".

[Lou337]

LOL yo heimy

[Top-Tier-Tech]

Hey Lou. I have nothing to add, Im just saying "Hi".

LOL yo heimy

What just happened

[The Dutch Devil]

http://cgi.ebay.com/DELL-INSPIRON-11...ht_3336wt_1165

^ This one has a dual core and with a bit of luck you can cut $30 of the price by bidding smart (being lucky actually).

[karamazovmm]

^and this one sucks ass in the processor market, better to be with those semprom.

and the toshiba we're talking about is the one from newegg

[Lou337]

Thanks TheDutchDevil,

however since the laptop is primarily for my mom it needs to have a screen bigger than 10.6" because she is around 60 years old and her glasses are almost useless. I am just looking for a good laptop which can also run RTW smoothly or at least at 15fps or so. She will only be using it for internet and word documents so I figure I might as well pick the one closest to my needs as well while staying on the budget my uncle is willing to pay for.

[Lou337]

I got the laptop around 3 days ago.

Actually, my uncle bought one for himself as well. We went with the Toshiba.

They both work great and Windows 7 is pretty interesting.

I can run RTW at highest settings, with no anti-aliasing, with huge unit settings, and 4 full stacks without lag really.
Thank you for the help everyone I am very happy to at least be able to play RTW the way it should be played after about 4 years
playing at 1-5 fps.

[Armenum]

If you play any games with those laptops, you won't want to game ever again. Gaming has to be done in high quality in order to get the full experience otherwise it's waste of time.

[Lou337]

Sure, but remember this laptop isn't for me per se. It's for my mom to use.
It doesn't need to run Crysis or anything like that. I was looking for one around the budget given
which could coincidentially run RTW since I have only ever been able to play it at around 3-5 fps.

I don't know how many fps it's running it at on this laptop, but it runs it well and without lag so I'm happy with it.

Now if I was going to buy it myself, I would have gotten a newer one with a better processor, gpu, and more ram, but since it was not my money and was under a specific
budget for the laptop, this is the best I could find and still be able to play RTW decently as well as the older games from 2006 and below
and perhaps a very small amount of the new ones. : )

[blonkers1234]

Found this http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ht_2192wt_1166

[Roman_Man#3]

He already has the laptop.