I want to purchase a laptop for normal web browsing purposes, instant messaging.. College work, but every now and then I would like to play full screen games (FarCry, CounterStrike.. The Sims).. Can the 1GB memory and other specs of this laptop fit the bill? Or do you think I should save up and get a superior one with higher specs. You be the judge.

Bear in mind that I'm on a bit of a budget.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd/stor…

Answer:
Games like FarCry can be downscaled. I have a laptop with Integrated GMA950 and it plays FarCry, but it doesn't PLAY FarCry. Basically low to medium settings the game run smooth on a dual core with 2gb and onboard. Anything above that and you are in the crapper.

So for a basic laptop like that, you’ll be able to play the game, but the question becomes will you still want to at lower resolution, lower detail, less antialiasing and so forth. If eye candy is your thing, save up. If you play the game for the game part only, then you will be fine on low settings.

There are laptops with dedicated video cards that usually sell as “desktop replacements” or even “gaming laptops” that will work much superior. Unfortuneatly you cant upgrade a laptop to a dedicated GPU unless there is a model available with it. So if you get a laptop that has the option for integrated or dedicated, you can get the integrated, purchase the video card and install it yourself because the fan, heatsink and routing of the internals of the laptop will already be built to accomodate a large heat producing video card. Be fore-warned that such a card will drain your battery like none other.

Good luck.

Answer:
Doubt it'd run Far Cry or Counter-Strike amazingly well. I assume it'll be onboard graphics, so expect a fair bit of hardware lag.

For the web and whatnot, it should be fine though.

Answer:
I play counter strike, I don't think the graphics quality would be very good without a half decent graphics card in it.

Proccessor and memory will be fine for playing games though IMO.

Answer:
no chance for gaming looking around £700 for one that plays games on everything else is fine