Toshiba Laptop - What games can I play?

[ColemontHD]

Ok, I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with the following specs:

A105-S1712
Celeron M 380 1.6ghz 1mb cache
80gb 5400 RPM
512MB ddr2 pc2-4200
ATI Radeon Express 200M series(right now with 64MB, but can have up to 128mb shared)
15.4" widescreen

I am in the process of upgrading to 1GB ram which will allow me more RAM and also allow me to allocate 128mb to video. I am also in the works of getting a 60gb 7200rpm HD. My question is this - what are the kinda games I can play on this machine? I used to be a very avid gamer, had a dual screen setup, played BF2 and Quake 4 and what not. What can I do with the machine I have now?

 

[Evilhomer99]

Half Life 2 should run well enough to play,it's very forgiving. But I wouldnt expect to be playing too many graphics intensive FPS. I used to play BF2 on my alienware laptop, which had a 3.4 p4, 80gig had, 2gig of ram and a 128mb video. I had to turn everything way down

 

[ColemontHD]

What about WOW?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: ColemontHD
What about WOW?

After you get the extra 1gb, it should run, at low details.

 

[ColemontHD]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: ColemontHD
What about WOW?

After you get the extra 1gb, it should run, at low details.

What about at 2gb RAM?

 

[ColemontHD]

Anyone?

 

[acole1]

2GB would be great for WoW... your video would then become the largest bottleneck.

But I wouldn't spend an arm and a leg for anything over 1GB though... you won't see a lot of improvement IMO. (Since CPU and Video would bottleneck)

 

[ColemontHD]

Will I see a huge difference in going from 5400rpm to 7200rpm?

 

[acole1]

Originally posted by: ColemontHD
Will I see a huge difference in going from 5400rpm to 7200rpm?

A small difference in load times... a large difference battery life comparatively.

As long as you have enough ram to keep you from paging, you really won't need the faster drive IMO.

 

[ColemontHD]

paging?

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: ColemontHD
paging?

He means that the application will have to access the hard drive to retrieve files from it constantly after it has run out of RAM, thus failing to load everything at once into memory. This usually results in a lot of stuttering in games.

 

[ColemontHD]

Got it. Do you guys recommend me going with the faster HD, it will have 20gb LESS space. Let me know!

 

[Nab]

we all know that even if you're getting 5 fps you're still going to play WoW

i'd do it....

 

[ColemontHD]

Will upgrading from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm HD make much of a difference?

Will going from 512mb(448mb after video) to 1GB(allocating 128mb then for video) be ALOT better, or am I better off going with 1.5-2gb ram?

 

[potato28]

Originally posted by: ColemontHD
Will upgrading from a 5400rpm to a 7200rpm HD make much of a difference? NO, only kills batteries quicker

Will going from 512mb(448mb after video) to 1GB(allocating 128mb then for video) be ALOT better, or am I better off going with 1.5-2gb ram? You are better with 2 gigs of RAM, but 1 gig is good.

Answers in the quote

 

[dexvx]

It should play WoW fine at around 1280x800-WS low settings.

You will *need* 1GB memory minimum. Upgrading to a 7200 rpm drive wont do you much good gaming wise.

 

[cr2250]

Big mistake buying a celeron for games in imo.

 

[ColemontHD]

Originally posted by: cr2250
Big mistake buying a celeron for games in imo.

Well I didnt buy it for games. I now want to play a few games, but im not expecting to play anything too recent.