Is this a good Graphics Card for my needs?

H

Hosick

New Member
Sorry, i have deleted my last post.
I started to realise that PCworld is incredibly over-priced, and for some reason doesn't offer anything other than Vista or 7, which are both quite bad for gaming.

I have found this from Curry's:
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pavilion-dv7-4045ea-refurbished-laptop-07586187-pdt.html

The graphics card is better than most i have seen, but the CPU seems to be quite weak in comparison. So my question is; would the graphics card actually work to it's maximum with the CPU?

Also, it seems inevitable that i will get Windows 7, because that seems to be the only thing on sale now. How easy will it be to change to xp? would i be able to, if i picked the laptop up in store, get the assistant to change it there and then? - for a price?
 
Russ88765

Russ88765

Active Member
Why would you downgrade win 7 to xp which is slower? Hp/Acer are not the best brands, heard one too many horror stories about them. Asus/Clevo designs are pretty solid though. If I ever got a laptop it would be from one of their lines.
 
CardboardSword

CardboardSword

New Member
You don't want XP. Trust me. 7 is leaps and bounds better and XP is a serious downgrade, especially if you're paying for it. You may not like it at first, but there's a reason they don't sell XP anymore. Its a ten year old OS, its starting to show its age bud.

The laptop itself is ok. Has a dedicated GPU, decent amount of ram etc. There are only two concerns. One is that it's a refurbished model, which is fine, so long as you get a good warranty on it. The second is that the clock speed on the CPU is pretty low at only 1.6Ghz. Granted, it is a quad core, but if you're trying to play games that don't utilize multiple cores very well then you might find yourself being bogged down. It will however show gains in performance in programs that DO properly utilize more than 2 cores. Either way, it seems relatively solid, and since you aren't looking for a speed demon, I'd say its probably your best bet (Assuming the warranty is reasonable.).
 
H

Hosick

New Member
Yeah, the CPU was my worry too, because it sort of defeats the purpose of getting the laptop if the CPU isn't much better than the one i already have.

I think it has a 12-month warranty, and Curry's is a good, well-known shop.

I just checked, my current CPU is also only 1.60GHz, so this is no improvement at all.
It may be a quad-core, but that's really only because it makes the laptop sound better, the majority of people don't understand (i used to be like them) - they see a mere 1.6... but it's a quad core! which means it's good! That basically ruins it. I have plenty of time to keep looking though.

And i don't really want Windows 7 because it's new, and good! This means that it will generally only play newer games, but this is a contradiction to the rest of the stats, the CPU mainly; the rest of the laptop isn't physically capable of playing the type of games designed for Windows 7.
And i have had XP on my laptop since i got it in the summer, and i don't see anything wrong with it.

And i know i'm paying for 7, but i assume it's pretty hard to find a laptop of this quality that runs on XP.
 
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CardboardSword

CardboardSword

New Member
You have to look at more than just clock speed. I mean the old pentium 4s were clocked pretty high, but they were still horrendously slow and thoroughly beaten by AMDs CPUs that used much slower clockspeeds. Depending on what your old CPU is, then the Phenom II could be a huge upgrade. Windows 7 has played pretty much all the games I could have ever dug up from my childhood. It has compatibility modes for previous versions of windows and is in general, better in every way. :p

I'd also say that in general, quad cores>dual cores. Again, this tends to only be excepted when the program in question is poorly designed for multiple cores. It is a cause for concern, but it isn't a terrible CPU.
 
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