[Tomas McA]

Hi! I was hoping i could get some help about buying a notebook. I've been searching for an Alienware notebooks and would like advice on which of these two processors are better for gaming purposes.

1. Intel Duo core processors (2mb cache, 667MHz FSB)

or

2. AMD Turion processor (800MHz FSB, 1mb L2 cache)

[alex]

they're both, mhz for mhz, pretty much of a muchness to be frank.

Pretty much the same power requirements as well.

If I was forced to choose, I'd have to go for the Intel by a close margin.

[Tomas McA]

Yea i probably would myself...... but I heard from someone that an AMD processor is better for gaming purposes. Well would you recommend Alienware notebook or is this laptop of good quality?
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/343932.../Product.html#

[alex]

Alienware are now owned by Dell, need I say more?

Well, I will anyway. Where else do you have to pay (£30 odd quid!!) for restore discs??

If you want a gaming laptop, go to Rock .

But for gaming on a laptop you're going to need to spend between £1000 - £1500 for a decent gaming laptop. If that's the case, you may as well get a desktop unless you go to LAN parties or travel a lot.

The laptop you quote on Play.com is a very well built, superb-screen'd laptop. I should know, I have the 14" screen variety. But it is in no way a gaming laptop. The 7150 gpu is an integrated unit, granted for such a unit it's very well spec'd, but you won't really be able to game on it.

As an example I've just run fraps (it counts fps in live games) and I'm getting 18 fps in Halo with low detail at 1280x800. The same native resolution of the laptop you've quoted. It has a slightly higher spec'd gpu in the 7200 but it's still an integrated unit.

18 fps is frankly unplayable, and thats the peak. I'm seeing 3fps in places.

AMD cpu's used to be the cpu's of choice for gamers due to their short pipelines. But this was in comparison to Intel's P4 cpu's. Intel's new Core2 cpu's (Mobile and otherwise) have less pipeline stages than any AMD cpu, mix this with larger cache's (doesn't make any difference when gaming) and you have the best all-round architecture on the market today for standard home users.

Regarding your statement about AMD being the brand for gaming chips, this was measured using AMD's Athlon cpu's, not the Turions, which are dedicated mobile cpu's, pretty much the same architecture as the Athlon's but they do lack the sheer grunt of those cpu's.