Question about laptop ram and gpu

[Peaks]

Hello all,

Just a few concerns of mine.

1_I have been looking at getting a Dell laptop (always liked them) and it seems that a popular option is to get 3GB of RAM. Obviously this is more money and i was just wondering whether it was worth the extra money? I thought that it might not perform that much better than 2GB because its always nice to have an equal number of bars. And if you were gonna have 3GB over 2GB then you might as well go for 4GB?

2_I have a similar concern with video cards. A lot of the more affordable laptops come with integrated video cards. I know this is terrible, but is it really worth paying the extra money for a slightly better dedicated unit? Will it really make that much difference? Gaming would be nice, but i already have a desktop that is perfect for that, so its not essential.

Similarly, if your not getting a dedicated card and may not be gaming that much, isn't 4GB a bit over the top, surely 2GB would do?

Many thanks,

Peaks

EDIT: just seen Zoostorm laptops on www.pcnextday.co.uk Think they might be just what i am looking for. Anyone heard of them?

 

[lostandwandering]

1. Right now for Vista and XP, I find the 2gb is enough. I have 2gb of RAM on my XP laptop and it runs great and I have 2gb on my Vista desktop and it flies.

2. If all you are planning on doing with the laptop is movie watching, office apps (word, excel and ppt) and web surfing, an integrated solution will do fine. It will generally save you a bit on battery life as well as dedicated cards tend to run at higher clocks speed and use more power.

3. Looking at the laptops for sale on that website, I can not say that I recognize ANY of those systems and thus can not recommend any of them from a quality stand point. IMO it is better to go with a name brand like Asus, Dell or HP and at least know what you are getting.

 

[dwellman]

Zoostorm a new chassis manufacturer or are they rebadging ECS or Compal or something similar?

 

[Peaks]

That's a good point about the battery time, didn't really think about that.

What i really want to know tho is, will buying a laptop with a dedicated card (which will either be the 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450, or the 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT) be worth it. If i game it will probably be only a few games of Dawn of War online, something like that. Are these GPU's gonna make much difference over an integrated one? They certainly make a difference to the price, haha!!

To answer your question dwellman, I think Zoostorm are a new chassis manufacturer, altho they don't have their own website, which i find highly confusing.

 

[lostandwandering]

The 8600M GT will make a huge difference in games over an integrated solution. The 3450 is a low-end card and won't make a huge difference, but there probably will still be one.

I can't say for certain how well and integrated card like Intel's X3100 will be able to handle Dawn of War.

 

[Peaks]

Thanks for the advice. Annoyingly though, this has made my decision a lot more complicated. Was hoping you would say DoW would run fine, haha!!