I think I would probably go for the HP from ebuyer cuz the build quality is better than the acers and it's got that 1GB extra ram (even though I don't think the 32bit version of W7 I'll be installing will see all that).
My question is, aside from these 2 good deals, is there anything else that I can consider. Specifically the person has asked if there is something with roughly the same spec but good dedicated graphics (that will play GTA 4), could add around £100 to the price of that HP if such a thing was available.
Does anyone know of anything? Or other good laptop deals in general?
You will need to spend about £2000-£2500 to get a laptop that will play GTA4 properly. For this sort of money you can't play any games, let alone GTA4.
I'm probably just gonna get the HP having done a bit more research.
I wouldn't go as far as saying £2000. I find the low to medium settings on gta4 perfectly acceptable and fun (and so does the person I am buying this for) and that should be achieveable with a 9600M GT, they aren't that much. I wasn't talking about max settings or anything like that but thanks for your reply.
It will be bare minimum settings trust me, and the game will lag badly. GTA4 is an absurdly programmed game. (A 9600M GT is not as fast as a real 9600GT, nowhere near) Remember the HP from ebuyer doesn't have a graphics card in it, only Intel integrated graphics, which can barely play 5 year old games like Half Life 2.
I wouldn't say that's too bad, could tweak the settings more too and that's the gddr2.
I'm aware that the HP has integratd graphics, but apart from that I think it's a great deal. A good laptop for cheap, albeit not for gaming. I think it will still play GTA Vice City which the person I am buying it for is fond of also, she currently plays that game on an old Dell Latitude 120L, again low to medium settings so very little lag.
Was wishful thinking I know to try to get a laptop that will play GTA 4 for a £500 ish mark, was just cheking in case any one knew of any great deals. I guess that will have to wait for the next laptop.
Don't think I'd go for that though since would probably get hit with import duties and theres only a 90 day warranty and it's refurbished, but still, good price, makes you think...
Youtube videos are never a good idea to demonstrate gameplay. The low resolution of the video masks what the game really looks like, and how well it actually performs (due to video frame rate limitations)
The HP laptop is reasonably good for the money, the CPU is weaker than usual these days, but the amount of RAM and HDD size is good.
This is the cheapest laptop I would recommend for playing GTA4: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160793
Lag is all of course relative. To most people GTA vice city would be pretty much unplayable on the GMA900 that the Latitude 120L is provided with. However, living with frame rates in the mid teens to some people is completely acceptable.
As for the ebay laptop, it's refurbished, therefore very risky. Geforce mobile graphics chips of that era are very prone to reliability issues, and if it went wrong once, it probably will again.
