My laptop, Need advice

I bought this labtop today:

Gateway - 518 Notebook with HT Technology

Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 518 with Hyper-Threading Technology, 533MHz frontside bus, 1MB L2 cache and 2.8GHz processor speed

512MB PC2700 DDR memory for multitasking power, expandable to 1.25GB

60.0GB hard drive

Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 with 32MB shared video memory; built-in stereo speakers


Anyway, the labtop was only like 900 bucks. The worst part is obviously the graphics card though.

I am going to use this labtop for 3 purposes, watch DVDs, burn CDS, and play games. So I am going to have like 50 gb to fill up with games to install.

What are the best games I can isntall that will work for this labtop? The video card has 32 megabytes shared video and it actually meets requirements for Morrowind, do you think it would be possible to play that game on the labtop? I want you guys to throw out names of games that will work on this cpu that I should install. I want to put all the games I can on it that work and then if there are still more games, ill burn them to cds and still be able to play them from there.

So make a quick game list for games I should install on my labtop for me.

So far here is my list: (Some of them may not work but they all have min sys requirements of 32 mb video memory so I dont know?)

Emulators / Roms
Morrowind
Soldier Of Fortune 2
Freedom Fighters
C & C Generals
Hitman Contracts
Diablo 2

Still looking for more...

When GTA:SA comes out for PC, get that.
Half Life 2
Battlefield Vietnam

I liked Playing Battle Field 1942 it was pretty fun and a different type of FPS it relied more on strategy and aim than just speed and spraying as many bullets as you can.

Did you even read his post? I highly doubt that HL2 would be worth playing on that comp if it worked at all.

Yeah, HL2 is a bit extreme.

Gimme some ideas WW =0 I know Deus Ex but what else.

The battlefield games are cool. The new gta game might be too good but I might be able to look into vice city or just gta 3. I also want to throw on GTA 1 and 2 just because they are fun to mess around in too.

Its going to be nice having a computer just filled up with like the best games from the last couple years (Except the really graphic ones like hl2 and doom 3).

I didn't know if he was going to eventually upgrade the card or not. I guess not.

Maybe Ghost Recon as well.
Homeworld.
Age of Empires.

Stronghold 2 should work...

It's a laptop. Only the high-end ones have options to upgrade video.

If you're gonna use Dx8, you should get Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising (it seems to choke on Dx9). At $2-$5, it's quite a steal. Obviously Morrowind, Deus-Ex, Original HL.

You could find a copy of Doom95 and tell people you run Doom on your machine (of course they will assume you mean 3, but they'd be wrong), as long as you can stand it's amazing (compared to the DOS version) 640x400 resolution. Doom is still a great game for mindless killing, but Serious Sam looks much more spectacular while accomplishing the same purpose.

Hmm thats a good idea with Doom =] I want to install lots of those older games too so I have like lots of choices to play. Ill look into Hostile Waters tho, never heard of it. I was thinking about Serious Sam too, so I will probably get that.

Also will look into Stronghold 2 (Heard of it but no idea what it is) and I will probably get Ghost Recon now as well.

Well since it is your laptop you can do as you want, but i do not recomend installing too many really big games because (on my laptop atleast) it seemed to slow it down, but i had Unreal Tournament 2004, Diablo II LOD, Warcraft III and Frozen Throne, and Baldur's Gate I and II with the Expansions both I&II, along with some other games that were not as big but i ended up taking up about half of my hard drive and it seemed to slow down my laptop. It sped up once again after i deleted some of the games/videos that i had on there. I now have only 2 big games , over 1 gig, installed at a time and it seems to have helped.

Hostile Waters is a very good RTS/Action hybrid that never made good sales due to, IMO, poor marketing and poor box design.

Except for Valve games (which like to have Steam running all the time), having games installed is not going to slow your computer down unless you're a moron and

1. Didn't set aside enough disk space for the swap file or
2. Don't defrag your HD regularly

Yeah, HL2 is a bit extreme. Gimme some ideas WW =0 I know Deus Ex but what else. The battlefield games are cool. The new gta game might be too good but I might be able to look into vice city or just gta 3. I also want to throw on GTA 1 and 2 just because they are fun to mess around in too. Its going to be nice having a computer just filled up with like the best games from the last couple years (Except the really graphic ones like hl2 and doom 3).

Warlords II: Battlecry

Umm well call me a moron possibly then becasue i dont know what a Swap File is.

Halo CE.

Starcraft
CnC Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge
Civilization III

A swap file is used for virtual memory. When you need more memory than you physically have, Windows moves memory bits not currently in use onto the hard drive that you specify (or your Windows drive, if you didn't) to make room in physical memory. For this to work smoothly, you need about twice the swap space of your physical memory, and it should be as unfragmented as possible. If you let Windows manage your swap and you overload your HD, you're bound to run into trouble, because

1. By default Windows is constantly growing and shrinking your swap, letting you give it less and less room and
2. If your HD is fragmented and the swap grows into the fragments, it takes longer for Windows to work its magic

So, for best performance, defragment your HD, then go into the virtual memory settings, and set both the minimum and maximum swap size at 2 times or 2.5 times your physical memory. After doing this, you can fill and fragment your HD all you like without fear of losing system performance because the swap space will be constantly reserved in unfragmented disk space.

The original Unreal Tournament.
Maybe Quake 2. Or even 3 if it can handle it.

I used to run quake 3 on a p3 800mhz with 196mb and 16mb tnt card...So he will definitly be able to play that.