Until a couple of years ago, I would never recommend gaming on a laptop. The costs for a top-of-the-line laptop were very high and even then, the performance was nowhere near that of a gaming PC. But times have changed, hardware engineers have managed to miniaturize the latest technologies, and costs have plummeted. So if I had to put together the gaming laptop of my dreams, what would I put on it?
Processor: You should be looking at one of Intel’s multiprocessor chips. At the moment, the most powerful is the Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor. It has 12 MB total L2 cache and a 1600 MHz front side bus.
screen: Laptop screens range from 14 to 17 inches. For a gaming laptop, you want a 17-inch display with around 12,000 high-definition pixels.
Graphic card: NVidia makes the best gaming graphics cards for laptops. You can check the NVidia site to see what’s out there. Currently, their best card is the GeForce 9800M GT in a dual GPU SLI configuration. It has 1 GB of dedicated memory and is DirectX 10 compatible.
Memory: 4 gigs of DDR2 memory. It doesn’t make sense to have more memory than that, right now.
gaming mouse: Touchpads are horrible to play on. I recommend a gaming mouse like my favorite, the Razer Lachesis, or a gamepad if you prefer one of those.
DVD/Blu-ray Disc Player: You will be able to enjoy high-definition Blu-ray discs with this equipment, so you should get a player that can handle them. Also get one that can read dual layer DVDs. Dual Layer DVDs contain twice as much data as previous DVDs.
The hard drive: I would go with a 7200RPM 250GB SATA with NCQ. If you need more disk space, I would add another 250 GB drive. Now I know some would say, go with the 1TB drive, while others will recommend a solid state drive. The problem with larger drives is that you can’t get the same RPM, which makes them slower. Solid state drives are more stable, but I don’t think the technology is as fast as conventional drives just yet.
OS: You must have Windows Vista.
With this build, you’ll be able to easily handle games that bring even the best gaming PCs to their knees.