It's time for a new laptop again and it's been a while since I've gotten a new one so couldn't remember whether to put it here or in mixed bag.....

I play adventure games only with Bigfish games added in. No FPS or new-age RPG's etc.

The only thing that concerns me is the graphics card. I've never had an ATI, I've always had NVIDIA.

Here are the specs, the price $549Can


Operating system installed Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Processor AMD Athlon II Dual-Core Processor for Notebook PCs P320 VISION Technology from AMD
• 2.1 GHz, Level 2 cache 1 MB, Up to 3.2 GT/s system bus running at AC/DC mode 25 W


Memory 3 GB DDR3 (1 x 1024 MB + 1 x 2048 MB)

Maximum memory Supports up to 8 GB DDR3 memory

Memory slots 2 user accessible memory slots

Internal drive 320 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 5400 rpm

Optical drive LightScribe SuperMulti DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support

Display size 39.6 cm (15.6") diagonal High-Definition LED HP BrightView Display

Display resolution 1366 x 768

Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 Graphics, up to 1405MB total graphics memory

Pointing device Touch Pad with integrated On/Off button and 2-way scoll pad support

Keyboard 101-key compatible keyboard with One touch launch keys

Network interface Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN

Wireless 802.11 b/g/n

Product weight 2.5 kg
Weight will vary by configuration

Dimensions (W x D x H) 37.4 cm (W) x 24.6 cm (D) x 3.18 cm (min H) / 3.68 cm (max H)

power supply type 65 W AC Power Adapter

Battery Type 6-cell Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) battery

The HD 425 is a Class 3 IGP (using the rating system at NotebookCheck.net). It supports DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.0.

The only drawback is that it has no discrete memory, all video memory is shared system ram. This may cause issues with some games, but considering that you only play Adventures you should be just fine.

Here are the specs for the video processor -

NotebookCheck - ATI Radeon HD 4250

Thanks InlandAZ, I hadn't realized that it was shared. I guess as the link told me, it's not really all that much better than the Intel GMA which is not something I would ever consider buying. I just thought the price seemed right.

Doesn't your current laptop have a Geforce 8600M GT?
The Radeon HD 4250 in the laptop you're looking at is a step backward from that. The 8600M GT is faster.

GPUReview doesn't even list the HD 4250, but they do list the 4350 (which is faster than the 4250) and you can compare the 8600M with the HD 4350 ***here***.

Yes Jenny my present does have the 8600M GT which is a great card. Unfortunately I only have a single processor so was hoping to get a dual core AMD with a good graphics card cheaper than I thought it should be...LOL

The video card is especially important in a laptop because it can't be upgraded.

Are you sure you only have a single processor? I thought you had a Vostro 1500. According to the ***specs*** the Vostro 1500 has a Core 2 Duo.

If you're only seeing one processor, is it possible you disabled one of the processors in the BIOS in order to play an older game that doesn't work with dual processors?

No, it's a single. My dxdiag says Intel Celeron CPU 540@1.86GHZ. I think what I did was downgrade the processor to get the better graphics card. If I knew then what I know now.........

That's too bad. With a better processor that laptop could probably have lasted you another year or two, or even more. Although the processor is upgradable, you pretty much have to ***take the whole laptop apart*** to get to it. So it's not something the average user could do.

Yikes! Is a new processor expensive? I wouldn't have the most basic idea of what to search for... I may have a line on a guy that would be able to do it if I were to get the procesor. That's pretty much all that's wrong with the one I have.

Not too many games exploit multi threading, so I doubt you'd see much improvement with a slightly faster processor.

Check ***This thread at Dell***. Some people suggest a few types of Core 2 Duo processors to replace a Celeron CPU 540.

There seem to be some of the T5750 and T5800 at eBay for not too much (some for $40 or $50). The T9300 and T9500 are a lot more expensive (starting around $150 and the auctions aren't over). The less expensive ones may be used or refurbished, so check the auction listings.

Both the T5750 and T5800 are 2GHz and there are two processors instead of one, so either would be faster than what you have. Make sure you have a tech who knows what they're doing though. Laptops are a lot harder to service than desktops. A working laptop with a slow processor is better than a defunct laptop with static damage or misplaced parts.

Inland is right that not many adventures make use of both cores at present. Does your laptop seem sluggish?

Yes Jenny it does seem sluggish to me. I downloaded Legend of Crystal Valley and while the game runs fine it takes about 2 minutes to get to the main menu screen. It's like that with a number of games, even with the virus program off. That's kind of why I thought I needed a faster processor. My hard drive is 88% full but most of that is Bigfish games so I can't really store them on a external hard drive....

When your hard drive is that full, the computer will be slowed down. You can always re-download your Big Fish games. As far as I know, Big Fish still allows unlimited activations. So you might consider removing the ones you don't intend to replay anytime soon.

I have a hard drive that is roughly that full, jldcat, and it is pretty slow even running on my Core 2 Duo processor.

Have you done a good cleaning lately? Temp files, compress old files, disk defrag? Sometimes that helps. I've been able to move my Big Fish Games over to my exterior drive and then restore them to my desktop without redownloading.

Just a thought - I store all my Big Fish games on my external hard drive.
I tell the game manager where to download the game and from then on it downloads and plays from the external.

I didn't know you could put them on an external drive. So, seeing as I'm not all that computer savvy, will I have to delete all the bigfish stuff off my laptop hardrive and then re-download to my external? Is there any slowdowns in the games themselves off the external? I'm not sure of the exact process, is there a tutorial or something on bigfish itself?

Here is what I did. I can simply go to the game file, drag and drop it to my external drive. To check this out for someone on another forum, I then uninstalled the game from my C:/ drive and ran CCleaner on both Windows and the registry to get rid of any traces of the game. Then I dragged and dropped the BFG file back to my C:/ drive and launched as usual. No issues at all.

I did not try playing directly from the external hard drive.

OK, so I just leave the game manager on my computer and copy the game folders onto my external drive. Then delete the games from my computer which should drop my usage to about 20% and then copy the folders back onto my computer when I want to play them? I know I'm probably paraphrasing what you said but I want to make sure I understand. Will the game automatically show up in the game manager if I do it that way?

I did it with one of my games exactly as you say just to see what would happen. I did the "trial" with one of the smaller downloads so if I would have to redownload, it wouldn't be a huge one. But when I dragged and dropped the file from the exterior drive back into the Program Files (x86) file (which is where Windows 7 puts them), I double clicked on the execution file and the game opened right up. After I played for a bit, I closed the game and the game manager appeared as usual.

Try it first with one of your smaller games and see how it goes.

You may be able to play them right from the exterior drive too, like MaG does. I don't know if the game manager needs to know where it is. I don't use the game manager, but rather shortcut icons to play my BF games.

Thanks everyone! I think I'm going to try Draclvr's idea of transferring my bigfish games to my external drive. Perhaps that will help the sluggishness and then I won't have to invest in another laptop or processor right away!