Is an i5 540/HD5650 enough?

[DavidG]

I am looking to replace my current laptop with something bigger and faster, but can’t justify the £1500+ that the top end machines cost. I’ve found one within my price range that has an i5 540 and a 1GB HD5650, but am concerned that the GPU may not be up to my needs. Is there anyone out there using a similarly configured system who can tell me what sort of detail settings they are able to use with the Strike Fighters 2 games and whether it can manage the likes of Black Shark and Rise of Flight on reasonable detail levels? Could anyone give me an idea of what the prospects of being able to run Jet Thunder or Storm of War might be?

 

Nearly all of the other lower cost gaming machines I’ve looked at have an i7 720QM. This has a relatively slow clock speed, even on full turbo boost it barely surpasses the 2.4GHz of my current T8300, and I’m concerned that I wouldn't see any significant performance increase when playing older games on a machine with one of these. Does anyone know if this is true, or would its more advanced design offset the lack of extra clock speed?

 

Thanks

[+pcpilot]

I have a desktop system with the 5650 and 1gb DDR. It works great on SF2, CODworld at War, and Unreal Tournament 3.I have everything maxed. I also have 4 gbg RAM which helps too.

[DavidG]

Hi pcpilot. Thanks for responding. Not sure how the desktop card compares to its laptop brother though. Anyone out there able to shed light on this? When you say ‘everything maxed’, does that mean that you’re managing to run SF2 on its ‘unlimited’ graphics setting? What sort of res do you run in? The machine I’m looking at has also got 4Gb RAM.