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Gaming laptop - Which is more important; Processor or graphics card?

post #1 of 8
10/21/08 at 11:45pm
Thread Starter 
I'm looking into getting a new laptop and I was primarily looking at the Dell XPS 1530 and 1710.

The problem is, for roughly the same price, I can either get a 1530 with 2.50 GHz intel duo processor and a 256mb NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 8600M GT or a 1710 with a 2.00 GHz intel duo processor and a 512MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce™ Go 7950 GTX.

I believe the 7950 is the superior card, but is it worth that .5 GHz? I should also note the 1710 is 100 euro more

Alternatively I could go for the 1710 with a 2.16 GHz processor and a 256MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce™ Go 7900 for a price somewhere between the 1530 and other 1710
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post #2 of 8
10/22/08 at 12:26am
If the purpose is gaming, the video card is ALWAYS the most important part of the computer. You can always upgrade the processor later if you want, but you can't upgrade the video card.
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post #3 of 8
10/22/08 at 12:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Djembe View Post
If the purpose is gaming, the video card is ALWAYS the most important part of the computer. You can always upgrade the processor later if you want, but you can't upgrade the video card.
I am not sure about the Dell 1530. The 1710 video card can be upgraded, once it is bought. A bunch of screws and connectors later.
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post #4 of 8
10/23/08 at 1:11am
x2

For gaming - video card is always king, especially when your talking about laptops.

Also keep in mind that most people that bought the older XPS dells - bought it with the top of line card already installed. The fact that it was removable / replaceable only lasted 1 generation (or +1 more generation if you didn't buy the top of the line card when you first bought it, i.e. good for one upgrade).

Most (I'd say 99%) newer laptops use "soldered onto motherboard" video cards so always try to buy the one with the best videocard within your price range and CPU's are almost always socketed anyway - so no biggie there.
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post #5 of 8
10/23/08 at 12:08pm
For a gaming laptop the order for configuration is:

1- Video card, the fastest you can get us.
2- RAM at least 2GB.
3- CPU at least a Dual Core 2.0Ghz.
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post #6 of 8
10/23/08 at 12:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by moidock View Post
For a gaming laptop the order for configuration is:

1- Video card, the fastest you can get us.
2- RAM at least 2GB.
3- CPU at least a Dual Core 2.0Ghz.
I'd agree with the first one (heck, I posted that earlier! ) but for a current gaming system, I'd recommend 3-4GB RAM and a 2.4 Ghz or higher Core 2 Duo for ideal performance. Some games (most notably Assassin's Creed) make use of a ton of memory and processing power in addition to the load on the video card.
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post #7 of 8
10/24/08 at 12:27pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for all the help guys, I really appreciate it.

Is the 512MB Go 7900GTX a significantly better card than the 256MB Go 7900? I'm guessing it is...but by significantly better I mean is it worth the .4 GHz in the processor?
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post #8 of 8
10/24/08 at 3:01pm
Absolutely better. When playing a game, going from 256mb to 512mb in a graphics card will give you a noticable increase in performance. Upgrading a CPU by even 500mhz won't really give you much (unless the CPU was just garbage, then you might notice it). The Dell GTX cards have higher clock speeds as well, so you'll get noticable performance boosts from that as well, making the upgrade to the graphics card a must. .4ghz of CPU power is negligable, you'd really only notice that if you encoded illegal movies and uploaded them onto the internet all day long.
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