Finding The Best Gaming Laptop That Money Can Buy

For years PC gamers were confined to desktop PCs. Laptops would have been perfect for LAN parties but they simply lacked the power to provide even adequate performance for the average gamer. Put simply they were just too slow for games to be enjoyable. This frustrated gamers no end but there was no easy solution.

That was until Nvidia and ATI began to develop customized, high performance graphic chipsets for laptop computers. The gaming laptop computer had been born and was eagerly awaited by thousands of computer enthusiasts all over the world.

Of course you still need to be careful when buying your games laptop. Just because a laptop is advertised as a gamers laptop doesn'tnecessarily make it so - slick salesmanship can lead to some very bad buying decisions so make a shopping list before you go shopping online.

Processor
Intel Centrino or AMD 64-bit Turion. These both offer high power and efficient energy usage (longer battery life). Avoid any of the lower spec Celeron laptops as they simply won't have the processing power for FPS and high end strategy games.

Memory
Don't waste your time with 256MB or 512MB. You need a laptop with at least 1GB of RAM to be an effective games machine. Ideally get 2GB - you'd be surprised at just how cheap some of the upgrade options can be.

Hard Drive
You're looking for a 100GB minimum hard drive. Don't forget that by the time you're finished installed Windows XP, Office and few other applications you'll already be shy of 10GB of space. Add with the fact that many newer games have install sizes of 1GB - 5GB, you can see how you'll quickly run out of space. The hard drive should be a 7,200rpm model with at least 2MB of cache memory.

Graphics
You're looking for Nvidia GeForce Go or ATI Mobility Radeon. Don't waste your time or money buying anything else. What you especially need to avoid are the standard integrated chipsets that come with the laptop itself as standard - a complete waste of money. Make absolutely sure your gaming laptop has a dedicated graphics chipset designed for that purpose.

Screen
The more screen area you have for gaming the better. Your gaming laptop should have a minimum screen size of 15" and ideally 17". Alienware are now supplying gamers laptops with 19" screens. The more you can afford here the better.