School gave me a laptop; can it game?

CIT1Z3N KAN3 · **Posted:** August 23rd, 2010, 4:50 pm

i get a free dell d630 from my high school to use for the school year. does anybody have this laptop and use it for casual gaming (not super hardcore world of warcraft)? i know this isnt a very high end laptop, but id like to know what this thing can handle before school starts

Adbot · **Posted:** August 23rd, 2010, 4:50 pm

Pfkninenines · Global Moderator 12/4/08

I created a new topic for you since the last topic wasn't related to your question...

At any rate, your processor is alright, and your graphics card has information here. Looks like it's not terrible, but it's not great either. It'll run a decent amount of 2007-ish era games (source based games come to mind), but past that I wouldn't expect marvelous things.

One thing I'd look into is A) A new HDD if what you've got is 80GB , and for gaming B) at least 2GB of RAM.

Earth · **Posted:** August 24th, 2010, 7:48 pm

Is it yours like forever or just for the school year?

Duke Juker · RSBandB Donor since 07/01/2010

Posting the specs would help, unless it isn't modified. If this will last you a while, I'd suggest upgrading the RAM and Graphics card, although I hear laptops can be pretty time consuming to upgrade depending on the part. But putting some cash into it to upgrade it for gaming wouldn't hurt. Hope it supports most of your gaming aspirations.

CIT1Z3N KAN3 · **Posted:** September 9th, 2010, 4:59 pm

i get this laptop only for the school year, so i wont be upgrading anything. i just got it today, and it plays runescape on high setting with some lag, but not much. ill be playing mostly Halo CE, gta3, counter strike, and some older games similar to those

1 Stone Pwn · **Posted:** September 9th, 2010, 5:41 pm

CIT1Z3N KAN3 wrote:

it plays runescape on high setting with some lag, but not much. ill be playing mostly Halo CE, gta3, counter strike, and some older games similar to those

Sounds about as good as my laptop

, an old Studio 1535
I hope your school doesn't take it away if you game on it

Adbot · **Posted:** September 9th, 2010, 5:41 pm

Evelyn · **Posted:** September 9th, 2010, 7:20 pm

Don't forget to cover up the little webcam unless you're using it

dafin0 · **Posted:** September 9th, 2010, 11:13 pm

Duke Juker wrote:

Posting the specs would help, unless it isn't modified. If this will last you a while, I'd suggest upgrading the RAM and Graphics card, although I hear laptops can be pretty time consuming to upgrade depending on the part. But putting some cash into it to upgrade it for gaming wouldn't hurt. Hope it supports most of your gaming aspirations.

If you go to this website: http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/, it will analyze your computer according to what game you put in the search box. Or you can scroll through the list to find it. Once you have typed in your game of choice, click "can you run it". Your computer will then be analyzed, and the results will load. It will have a list of all the major components necessary to run the game (hard drive, graphics card...etc)

Heres a picture of what it will look like once the site has analyzed your computer (since i play modern warfare, i analyzed my own computer) :

Uploaded with ImageShack.us.

Run it as many times for the games that you have. Then post a pic like i did on the forums (crop the picture so it's not as big like mine :oops:

)

Cheers, dafin0 :lol:

CIT1Z3N KAN3 · **Posted:** September 12th, 2010, 4:46 pm

1 Stone Pwn wrote:

CIT1Z3N KAN3 wrote:

it plays runescape on high setting with some lag, but not much. ill be playing mostly Halo CE, gta3, counter strike, and some older games similar to those

Sounds about as good as my laptop

, an old Studio 1535
I hope your school doesn't take it away if you game on it

they will, but i just run the games off a flash drive. i dont play at school either so im safe

dafin0 · **Posted:** September 13th, 2010, 12:37 am

CIT1Z3N KAN3 wrote:

1 Stone Pwn wrote:

CIT1Z3N KAN3 wrote:

it plays runescape on high setting with some lag, but not much. ill be playing mostly Halo CE, gta3, counter strike, and some older games similar to those

Sounds about as good as my laptop

, an old Studio 1535
I hope your school doesn't take it away if you game on it

they will, but i just run the games off a flash drive. i dont play at school either so im safe

If they check the event viewer when you return it, your not. But i highly doubt they will. Also, i am assuming your'e playing counterstrike (hence pfk's mentioning of source games). With that being said, is it even possible to run a steam game off of a flashdfrive? And your flashdrive would have to be well over 4Gb to do it (because of all the updates, custom sound files and extra map files you'd download if you didn't already have the map you want to play on installed already).

Cheers, dafin0 :lol:

Pfkninenines · Global Moderator 12/4/08

You can run Steam off of any drive (woot) and it seems to be fairly portable. So supposing the external hdd or flash drive is large enough, you should be able to play whatever you want wherever you want. Supposing the computer can run the game in the first place, anyway.

CIT1Z3N KAN3 · **Posted:** September 13th, 2010, 7:22 pm

I have a 16 gig flash drive with cs, halo ce, gta 3, and a bunch of portable flash games on it with 4 gigs to spare. all the games run smoothly enough. and they definitely dont check the event viewer, everyone at school plays games on their laptops and nothing has ever happened. we even occasionally play lan games during classes like video/ film where we dont do anything

1 Stone Pwn · **Posted:** September 14th, 2010, 11:54 am

Last year we played huge games of Warcraft 3 on the computers in the computer lab. Too bad the new computer teacher they hired won't let us