Friend's new laptop

[Mushroom3691]

Hey guys, need some help.
My buddy is getting a laptop, wants to play tf2 with medium to high graphic settings, his budget is under $1000, any suggestions?
I found this, is it any good?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115594

[Dominator]

That'll do pig, that'll do.

But seriously maybe a better CPU but yea that will run TF2 at high settings.

[KoiHaibane]

Accer is a good choice. One of the better companies out there. The NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT Graphics card is really good. Better than most laptop graphics cards. However, you would want to eventually replace the card, as these things become obsolete quickly. Though most of the time you're not able to replace anything in a laptop. Some laptops are customizable, but most are not. This card is ok for gaming, but it's suggested for mild gaming (med graphics). If you want to play with high graphics, using this as a crutch may not do you much good. It will work for a while, but it will slow your gaming experience down exponentially. The laptop comes with 4G of RAM. To play on high settings, you would need at least 6G to get the best experience. With all said and done, he could still pull it off if he used medium settings. You may want to get a cooling board to put under the laptop so you don't fry your laptop. Mine gets REALLY hot while playing because it's working really hard to keep up with the game.

I bought my brand new Gateway laptop in February of this year for school. I can only play TF2 with low graphics, low render, and pretty much low everything else, even still I have some video lag. I can't play on very many custom maps because there are WAY too many things for my computer to render and to compensate, it lags out. I personally wouldn't recommend getting a laptop to game. I have such bad video lag and it is the result of having only 4G of memory and a company graphics card. Your friend would get more for their money by custom building a PC. None of that company bundle crap. Custom built towers are easily put together and worth forking out the money for. Not to mention you can replace parts with latest tech without having to buy a whole new computer.

Make sure he gets a good amount of RAM (like 8G), a good processor, high end graphics card, good heatsinks, and the power supply to support it all.

In the long run, he'll save a TON of money because he can keep upgrading parts in the computer rather than having to constantly purchase a new computer JUST to get new tech.

[Combat Wombat]

If you have a 32-bit OS, you can only use about 4 gigs of RAM anyway though.

[Dominator]

actually 3.5 at most combat wombat.

and shit koi knows her stuff!

Vista 64bit is stable, I have been running it and that laptop will run fine.

[KoiHaibane]

I've been running 64bit as well. It's relatively better than 32bit OS.

Lol thanks, Dom. My mom is a computer guru as well as my boyfriend. I've learned a lot through out the years, but I still am learning a lot about the different components: what's good, what isn't good, why it's good, etc. I have that shit on my laptop and that's why I have such bad lag.

Edit from my post before: The laptop you pointed out may actually work out. The system seems to have dedicated video (it's own graphics card) which has independent processing for graphics, as opposed to integrated graphics, which pulls processing from the CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, etc.

However my suggestion to build a custom PC is still there. New and better things come out at least every season. Within a year and half, we've gone from revolutionary duel core processors to astronomical quad cores. Things upgrade really quick. I bought my laptop in February and already it's obsolete to the new gear that companies are pooping out.

But if he REALLY wants a laptop (not saying they aren't great, you can take this shit anywhere!), the computer picked out will be a pretty good choice.