In the past fans of computer games have not been able to play their favorites on their notebook. Why? Because notebooks were simply not sufficiently powerful to keep up with the hardware requirements of 3D games. A lot has changed since that time, as more and more notebooks become strong enough for the latest in 3D gaming. The major issues facing gamers is picking the right notebook that can offer both amazing gaming performance and is still light enough to carry around when traveling.

While processors and other electronics get smaller and smaller, graphic cards require ever more space to operate smoothly. With some of the latest cards demanding extra power and room for their cooling unit. There is very little space inside a notebook so there will be a difference between the latest graphic card you have in your PC and the one you can get in your notebook. While performance differences on both are becoming less obvious, there is still a gap. Hardware eating beasts like Crysis and Bioshock may not play as smoothly on the latest notebook as on the latest desktop PC. Yet, you can still play these games with slightly less details but with acceptable frame rates on today's notebooks. This wasn't the case before, when gamers were forced to rely on their desktop machines.

Manufacturers like Asus have seen the light. They are now producing notebooks designed for the demanding gamer. Gamers are an interesting and profitable group of consumers. They take their hardware very seriously and are not happy with cheap garbage that some "family" computers are equipped with. They want the best for their budget, all in a quest for the best quality-performance ratio.

Let's take a look at some of the true gamer's notebooks out there:

Asus G2 Gaming Notebook Series
The Asus G2 comes with a Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, a ATI Mobility Radeon X1700 graphics core with 512 MB of RAM (dedicated), a 17" Wide Screen, 2048 MB of DDR2-667 SDRAM (both memory slots are occupied, maximum amount of RAM possible on this notebook), and a Hitachi 160 GIG 5400 rpm HD.

Comments from a reviewer:

"The ASUS G2P not only competes with desktop gaming stations, it wins the competition! It’s hard to name all the things the G2P can do. It’s simpler to name those few it cannot. On a second thought, is there anything at all this notebook wouldn't’t cope with?"

Click here to load the review.


Gateway's 2008 Gaming Notebook
If you've got a few thousand to spend on a gaming notebook then you surely want to check out Gateway's latest offer.
It comes with (what might be the highest-performance notebook processor currently available) a 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme processor, 3 GB of RAM, 2 x 200 GB hard drives and a GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card. We can assure you that this system can beat some of the best desktop systems out there.

Comments from a reviewer:

"Specs are meaningless if the machine can't put up, and the P-series puts its money where its mouth is. I got my mitts on the first machine off the production line in order to put it through its paces, and on my Doom 3 benchmark test, the P-series pumped out frame rates of just over 200 frames per second."

Click here to check out the full article.


This page was last updated on 28 January 2008.

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