Getting the right laptop for CM?

[markshot]

I am thinking about purchasing a laptop soon. Although playing CM will not be the sole driving factor for what I buy, I would still like to get something that runs CM well. By the way, I have no experience with laptops (but lots with desktops and CRTs and LCDs).

As I understand it an Nvidia based video subsystem will be best for CM. This will avoid problems with no fog and dissappearing text using FSAA.

If I have to go ATI, then will CM look acceptible with no FSAA? (On my Nvidia desktop, I would say no.)

I've done a quick survey of the market place and it seems that, for the most part, everyone is either offering on-board video (I understand this should avoided for gaming) or ATI. Who makes laptops with Nvidia subsystems other than Alienware these days?

Also, my desktop has 128Mb of VRAM, but can I run CMBB/CMAK with mods with 64Mb VRAM and get decent performance?

What about resolutions for games? I know CRTs do every resolution decently and that LCDs have a crisp native resolution and can interpolate lower resolutions. What about laptops are they locked at one resolution or do they offer a range resolutions below native?

The resolutions I think I need are 800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024. Can I get all those resolutions? If you get a wide screen display will all of those be available or do I need get a standard dimensions display?

I am sorry if these questions seem very basic, but I appreciate any help.

Thanks.

[GreenAsJade]

If you are buying a modern reasonably high-end laptop, you won't have to worry about FSAA. CM looks fantastic on my Dell Inspiron 8600 with ATI Radeon 9600. I can't tell the difference when I turn on FSAA.

I don't really care about the fog thing, because I usually turn off fog anyhow... the LOS tool tells you whether you're going to see things or not ... fog is just eye candy.

My native resolution is 1920x1200 - wide screen. When I play CM it is automatically displayed at the correct aspect ratio using 1600x1200 ... DirectX knows how to step down.

Can't tell you whether 64MB of VRAM will do it - I have 128. (I can tell you that if you are going to play FPS like Unreal etc, you need 1GB of DRAM.

I have 512MB ... Unreal plays OK, but 1GB in the same machine is noticeably better. I wish I had got it! That is not an issue for CM though.)

Also, fast disks are good. I declined the Dell option of fast disks, thinking I cared more about battery life, but game load time is noticeably slower, and that is something that make you wish you spent the extra money every darn time you load a game!

GaJ.

[markshot]

I am thinking about Inspiron 5150 which would be a Nvidia 5600 FX Go (64Mb) and a 15" at 1024x768.

For me, I think 1024x768 is good for most of the games I play. This will give me a sharp display with native resolution and reasonably large text as my eye sight isn't the best.