Question:
hi there to all wise advicenators... i want your help in this topic here.. i live in india and i am going to order a laptop from canada most probably from futureshop. now what i need is a quite fast laptop which can support almost all the pc games and should be good enough for internet browsing too. now i dont want to end up bying a laptop worth like 2000 or so dollars. something aroung a 1000 dollars plus or minus 200 or so dollars and the main thing is that i don't want to have an intel processor. i want it to have an amd processor. any sugessions regarding what should i search for and are there any other shops too from where i can buy a laptop at reasonably fair price. plz help .
p.s. my first prefference is hp.

My Answer:
Hmm . . . usually for gaming, a desktop is preferred, because with the same amount of money, you can get a more powerful desktop, with larger monitor, compare to a laptop. Most desktop offer you a better price-to-performance ratio. Why don't you go for a desktop instead of a laptop? Laptops' only advantage over desktop is that they are portable (easier to carry around)--that's it.


Anyway, since the question is choosing a laptop, I'll just go ahead and answer that.

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First, Future Plan:
Are you planning to upgrade your laptop's hardwares in the future? If you are NOT, then what you need to look for on that new laptop is its RAM, CPU, and graphic card. If you DO planning on upgrading its hardware in the future, then there are several things to look for. I'll explain more about that at the end.


Second, Graphic Card:
To be able to "support almost all the PC games" (quoted you), you want good graphic card. As of today, I would recommend graphics cards from ATI or Nvidia (I am not sure which of these two manufactures are better, but both of them produce high-end graphics solutions--a must for a gaming laptop).

Something like a 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 would be a good standard to base your choices on. You can go dual, too, if you can afford it.

Something like a 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M would probably enough for most games. Not sure, because I am not much of a gamer. I don't really know the standard of today's computer games.



Third, CPU:
At least a dual core with 2.40GHz, and 3MB cache; more would be better.


Fourth, RAM:
4GB or more is recommended, DDR2 or above (DDR3). If you can, go for the DDR3 one.


Fifth, Your References:
The size of the screen, the color, the designs, whatever. It's just basically the look of the laptop, hahaha. Pick the one you like so that you don't regret later.


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Does it have to be AMD laptop? What don't you like about Intel?

Go to http://www.alienware.com/ and check out some Intel-based laptops. They are not half bad at all, and many of which are within your price range, too.


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Please note that RAM and CPU are NOT the only components that determine the speed of your computer. The speed of your computer is determine by its SLOWEST COMPONENT.

There are many parts in a computer, and the main factors that determine the speed of the computer include:

Processor Speed
Processor Instructions Set
Bus Width or Path
Bus Speed
Chipset
Cache Memory
System Memory Speed
System Memory Amount
Operating System
How full the Hard Drive is
Fragmented Hard Drive
The Number of Programs and Utilities that Automatically Startup

You don't have to worry about these if you are buying a new computer. But if you are planning to upgrade your old computer or if you are planning to upgrade your new computer in the future, then these are important.

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I am not a gamer so I can't really recommend anything much, sorry :-(

(The only MMORPG that I had played is Maple Story, and I had only played it for about two months before I quit, hahaha.)

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