Choose the Best Gaming Laptop

Let's discuss the features of a gamers most look for and what is most important for the best gaming experience:

1) The GPU
GPUs in notebooks used for gaming are going to either be made by ATI or NVidia and have dedicated memory. Many notebooks have shared video which uses the notebooks resources to produce the video (CPU, RAM) and it can not produce framerates to run most of today's high end games. They often even are unable to correctly render 3D effects that games require.

More expensive isn't always a better notebook GPU. For example NVidia has a line out called the Quadro FX. It is more expensive than their own Geforce series. The price difference isn't because it performs better in gaming, it's because it's designed for professionals in applications like CAD work. You have to make sure you're informed or you can end up spending extra money on less performance.

2) The LCD
(Liquid Crystal Display) or flat panel display

There is a lot of confusion with LCDs and which is the best choice not only in gaming notebooks, but any notebook purchase. A lot of the reason for confusion is that some LCDs are better for different uses and personal choice can be a big factor also. For gaming notebooks, there are mainly 6 different specs that play a role in how good your LCD is. These specs are : Rise/Fall time, Brightness, Angle view, Contrast, Resolution, and Size.

SPEED
You need the fastest computer money can buy. Period!

In order to get the maximum performance from your ultimate gaming computer you must have the fastest speed you can get or afford. Your ultimate PC must be able to process and handle the latest 3D video games with ease. There is nothing as annoying as your PC freezing up in the middle of some major gaming action!

Therefore, your Processor’s speed is very important.

CPU or Central Processing Unit, you probably know it as the processor! It’s the heart or rather the brain of your notebook or computer. It does all your computer’s data processing and applications. Since it does most of the work, it’s usually the most expensive part of your notebook computer.

Go with SATA!

SATA is a type of hard drive and stands for Serial Advanced Technology Architecture. It was developed by a whole group of companies including Seagate, Intel, Maxtor, Dell and others. SATA transmit data in a serially (in a single stream) as opposed to PATA or Parallel ATA which is commonly referred to as an IDE hard drive.

Serial ATA hard drives uses less power and are ideal for notebook computers, they are also more advanced than PATA hard drives which uses multiple streams of data - go figure! But Serial Technology carries data in a single stream and unlike PATA is not limited to a particular clock speed, Serial transfers data packets almost 30 times faster than parallel.

If top performance in your notebook is one of your goals, go with a SATA hard drive.

Intel Pentium M processors are commonly found in a lot of notebooks and laptops. When in doubt also go with a Pentium!

The speed of microprocessors is measured in MHz.

MHz is short for megahertz. One MHz equals one million cycles per second. The speed of processors, usually known as clock speed, is measured in megahertz (MHz) or these days in gigahertz (GHz).

The higher the clock speed, the faster the computer will process applications and data. It determines how powerful your notebook computer will be. Processor speeds for notebooks or laptops are steadily increasing, not quite the same as a desktop but the gap is narrowing quickly. Speeds of 3.4GHz or more.

Don’t forget to ask or check the hard drive speed! A 7,200rpm hard drive is faster than a 4,200rpm or 5,400rpm and usually gives better performance.