Gaming Laptop Performance Considerations
What makes a laptop appropriate for gaming? Its quite simple actually. Laptops that have hardware associated towards performance basically ensure that games produce the best results, is a general way to put it. But what components do laptops rely on that produce such results? Similar to a gaming desktop, laptops use hardware based off of performance but, must sacrifice space to provided portability and who ever thought gaming hardware could be fit into such a small space? Well I don’t know, but I can tell you that there are select hardware components that justify exactly what gaming enthusiasts are after. Portability with a touh of performance. With that being said, i’ll explain to you what performance factors you should consider when purchasing or researching a gaming laptop.
Below are various categories that emphasis on hardware meant for gaming laptops.
The Video Card
Looking at how gaming laptops rely on processing loads of data to produce the best possible graphics, we can begin our selection of mobile gaming components with the video card. You will need a video card that will produce the best frame rates for games such as Call of duty 5: World at War or Far Cry 2. This can be done by choosing a card that has a fast GPU, an adequate amount of dedicated memory, can utilize SLI or CrossFire technology, and operates at a cool temperature, to extend battery life. Nvidia offers its 200 series and ATI supplies its 4000 mobile series. Choose a card that best suites your preferences based off of the games you intend on playing.
Processor
To run games that are graphically intensive and have many complex scenes or levels, investing in a processor that can tackle such a struggle isn’t that difficult. Just like a video card, processors must be fast and efficient when the games start to get rough. As the cpu is constantly processing data, it also use 3 levels of cache to re-access data to perform quicker calculations when necessary. Plus, to really help with rendering graphics, Intel offers cpu the feature multiple processor on one chip. AMD have their equivalent series for the exact same purposes. I highly recommend investing into a dual or quad core processor from either company.
Secondary Storage Device
A gaming laptop also needs a place to store and access games when requested, so a fast hard drive or solid state drive is recommended. Investing in a drive with a large capacity is worth while, not only short term, but long term as well. The performance factor that applies to hard drives would be the drives RPM or revolutions per minute. A suitable drive will have a speed of 7200 RPM, but consider a faster one for better performance. Solid state drives are new to the market, which cause their price to be significantly higher. If you have the money, then I would recommend an SSD because they surpass HDD’s in measured performance. Overall, an HDD would be the way to go, for value and performance.
Display
Gaming laptops have superior screens to display sharp images compared to the typical laptop. There are a few key characteristics to consider. The resolution, size, and choosing between a standard screen size and widescreen size is up to you, though I recommend widescreen. Various advanced gaming laptop have screen sizes of 17” inches and 18” inches in dimension and a common resolution would be 1920 x 1200 ( 16 : 10). I recommend those exact specifications, as you will notice similar qualities if you browse variety of niche manufactures. Overall, look for a display that is big and can effectively produce prestigious images on the screen.
Those would be the base features to begin selecting a laptop, but there are other qualities to consider.