What dictates the best "Performance"

College Life
1

<p>Hey,
I'm in the process of buying a new laptop for college and am very interested in getting a laptop that has both awesome graphics(with little/no lag) and great speed(able to smoothly run multiple programs simultaneously without lag). What factors contribute to such a machine. </p>

<p>For example, how much faster is a 2.6ghz processor than a 2.2ghz processor...is it worth the extra 200 bucks?</p>

<p>How does ram play a factor?How should I select which ram I want?</p>

<p>And what type of graphics card would be the best?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

2

<p>I think the difference between 2.6 and 2.2 is not big but if you are a heavy user, you’ll notice the difference. RAM plays a big factor too. For a laptop, you should have at least 2GB of RAM. If you want to splurge and get 4GB, you can. Just make sure you get the 64-bit version of Windows or whatever operating system you are using so the computer knows to utilize the full 4GB of RAM.</p>

<p>For a graphics card, you want a dedicated one. Don’t get the shared ones.</p>

3

<p>[Conclusion</a> - Review Tom’s Hardware : Best Graphics Cards For The Money: April '09](<a href=“http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-gtx,2270-6.html]Conclusion”>GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2024 - Graphics Card Rankings | Tom's Hardware)</p>

<p>If you click previous and next around where it says “Conclusion” they suggest the best cards for different price ranges.</p>

4

<p>What dictates the best performance are the standards you have. If you know what you want your computer to be able to do then you can aim for something that will fit those needs.</p>

<p>The things you listed that you want your computer to be able to do are very generic and won’t help with finding a laptop to fulfill them. What would you be using the graphics card for? Games? and for running multiple processes it really depends on what you plan to run. If it is just Word, Internet browser, and a music program pretty much any modern processor should be able to fill your needs.</p>

5

<p>For Gaming and 3D intensive stuff: Graphics Card>CPU>RAM>everything else</p>

6

<p>Other issues on the graphics card: quality of drivers and heat output. nVidia has had a problem with heat output and longevity of their mobile cards - one could call it a debacle. Huge numbers of notebook motherboards had to be replaced in Apple, Dell and HP laptops. I’m sure that most other manufacturers had the same problems.</p>