Upgrade for laptop?

[arizonachris]

The CPU is adequate, as is 4Gb of RAM. But, it has onboard Intel graphics, which you cannot change. That's gonna be the weak link. You can, however, change the hard drive to a 7,200 RPM drive, which will help with stuttering.

[arizonachris]

Unfortunately, it's not that easy to upgrade the "meat" of this laptop. You really need one that has discrete graphics, like ATI or Nvidia. It's not possible to change the entire mainboard, they are model specific. And you cannot add a discrete graphics card to this model. You could add 4Gb of RAM (actually swap out the 2x2Gb modules for 2x4Gb modules) and allocate as much RAM as you can to the onboard graphics. But it's still not going to be enough to max out the graphics. Really not a whole lot you can do.

I have an older Alienware Area 51 that has an ATI 9300 graphics card and a Pentium 4 CPU 3.2Ghz, 4Gb RAM, and RW chugs along, basically won't run. A desktop is the best way to go, but some folks don't have the space.

[steve_the_slim]

You can't really get custom-made latops. Laptops use a lot of proprietary parts that are model-specific, which is also why you can't do much in the way of upgrading. Your best bet is to look around online for gaming laptops and look at the specs to see which one suits you best.

[EliteMarksman]

If you want gaming and you want a laptop, decide if you need a gaming laptop. If the answer is no, get a good gaming desktop (2/3 or so the price of a comparable laptop), and then get an inexpensive laptop.

You then have the portability of a laptop for productivity/sufing/whatever, and the power for gaming. The total cost here will be about the same, but you have two distinct advantages.

1) You have a backup machine. If you need to get something done for work/school, and one machine is out of commission, you can do it on the other.
2) Desktops are easy to upgrade, especially if you build it yourself in the first place.

[arizonachris]

OK, then, let's see. First off, I'm an AMD CPU guy, so I know squat about Intel CPU's. But what I read is the i7 is the bomb. Go at least 3Ghz. Then, go with a high end Nvidia mobile graphics card. 8Gb of RAM? That means a 64 bit Windows. If all your current music programs work on Win 7, get at least Pro 64 bit. I have Ultimate 64 bit and I love it. Next, 2x500Gb hard drives, one as a boot drive, one for storage. 7200 RPM is best. DVD burner, or if you want to go all out, a Blu Ray drive. 15" screen is OK, but a 17" would be better. This is gonna be a heavy beast. Get a cooling pad. My Alienware ran so hot, it burnt up that Radeon card. I got a Cool Pad, it powers from a USB port.

I see ads all the time in Maximum PC for companies that make gaming laptops. I'll see if I can dig up some more specs.

[simer4]

Don't forget though, that just because the CPU is 3Ghz, means it will be high end. I own an AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0Ghz CPU. Now look at the Intel Core i7 2600k. It has only .4 more Ghz, but why the huge price jump? Well, look at the technologies it comes with. It has 1MB of L2 Cache, and 8MB of L3, while the AMD has 256kb of L1 and 2MB of L2 Cache. Cache is used to reduce the amount of time it takes to access the memory, therefore the more cache you have, the faster the CPU is. Now take a look at how many threads it can do. The higher the amount of threads it can run, the faster your computer. The highest end i7, the 990x, can handle 12 threads, or executions at once. Another thing to look at if future proofing. Technically, there is no such thing as future proofing, because the computer marketplace is always changing and improving. Look at the Socket LGA 1366 for example. Just last year, it was the top of the line socket, and still is. However, now we have Socket LGA 1055. It may not be as good as the LGA 1366, but it is newer and still open to upgrades. LGA 1366 is old and is about done it's life cycle when it come to new equipment for it. Now, you can still upgrade it, like with newer graphics cards, but no new technology will be added to the 1366 interface. But now, just you wait, once PCI-e 3.0, DDR4 Ram, LGA 2011, and nVidia Kepler flagship graphics cards come out, who knows what will happen...

[WhiteKnight77]

You could build your own laptop if you really want, but a better bet is to buy an ASUS G series gaming laptop if you really want a prebuilt one. Failing that, Voodoo, Sager and Falcon Northwest will let you configure laptops for gaming.