How to tweak your laptop for gaming performance

With laptop sales continuing to rise – up by 43.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year alone, according to Gartner – it would appear that more and more of us are riding the technology wave.
Keeping up to date with the latest advances in laptop computing enables us to work longer, faster and, generally, for less. The good news for gaming is that this relentless march of technology means it's no longer necessary to own a dedicated gaming laptop to enjoy the odd game now and again.

[xtremexx]

good read

[jashwin]

Really? This is a useless article. Almost everyone I know who is serious about gaming, knows that decreasing resolution will increase performance.

This article is poorly written and the title is misinforming. The author certainly didn't give any useful tips and kept on talking about how it's far graphic cards have come, how games can still run on dx 9 etc. I wonder who even approves this crap.

[The Matrix]

I've been trying to play StarCraft II with a 3-year old laptop. Not a good idea.

[rjdofu]

Wow... and I thought they would show me how to really tweak my laptop. In the end, I get: How to change my game resolution and how to stream my game from a destop PC (LOL seriously). What a joke.

[pimpmaster]

this article blows balls. its titled "How to tweak your laptop for gaming performance" and yet theres not a single tweak in there for me to use. it talks about upgrading ram and how internal graphics cards are getting better. WTF does this have to do with me tweaking my gaming laptop for better performance!?

[Arup02]

Laptop for games isn't a good thing...

[soundslike]

It's a good thing that this article explicitly stated a similar thought!

"Of course, PC gamers who are serious about their entertainment will still benefit from pricey GPU technology – particularly if they're going to be playing cutting-edge games – but these days even netbooks are capable of keeping you amused.
"

learn to fuckin' read.

[Xfanboy]

. http://www.youtube.com/watc... http://www.youtube.com/watc...
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

down with x3100!!

[mrv321]

The biggest flaw to laptop gaming isn't the hardware, trust me.

1080p is the highest resolution screen I've seen, most of the card can run games at that resolution with ease.

I have a GT330m and a Core i5. It works like a charm.

The touchpad is the biggest limitation.

Also this article is stupid, no actual advice, I have a gaming laptop how should I tweak it, it's suggestion is to buy a new one.

[soundslike]

Buy a mouse.

Put laptop on desk at hotel room.

Plug in mouse.

Ready to go.

It could have given more advice, but obviously this article isn't for people who already know what they are doing. If you tell some random joe to download an application to overclock his cpu, he's not going to finish reading or care. In a way I agree, though, at least that this article isn't fit for N4G.

[zaherdab]

thas got to be the dumbest article of 2011 :/ ... seriously lowering ur resolution ? and streaming games from a desktop ?

[Baka-akaB]

The best tweak is to get a proper gaming machine .

What kind of dumb advice is just lower res or play old games ?

[kagon01]

Dosbox FTW!!!

[Motorola]

I just attach a USB mouse then Im good....

[STONEY4]

"StreamMyGame runs the game on your desktop and streams it over your local network to your laptop or netbook."

If you have a desktop in your house capable of running the game, why in the hell are you playing on your laptop in the first place, while dealing with streaming lag and artifacting from compression?

[itsralf]

That's exactly what I was wondering. I know little about StreamMyGame. I've actually never heard of it before until now. But I'm sure it could be convenient if you can stream your game to your laptop while at school or waiting for a flight. But I guess that's what PSP/DS/Mobile gaming is for.

[Welshy]

I primarily game on PS3 and 360, but I needed a new laptop and got one, which from my PC noobness research, I hope is pretty decent so I can play some PC games too so u don't miss out

Article kinda sucked, I know my way around PC's no problem just not in gaming terms, but this "advice" was useless common knowledge.

Here's the PC I ordered if someone could give an opinion lol

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbu...

[dragunrising]

The laptop isn't too bad for light gaming. You should be able to play a good number of games on medium to medium low settings if they're within a year or two old. Valve games should run especially well as they have lower recommended system specs. Team Fortress 2, Left for Dead 1/2, Half Life etc, run well on my laptop and I have a weaker GPU and CPU than your lappy.

You might want to consider upgrading your ram to 4 GB. RAM is pretty important, and 3 GB might not cut it.

[Sarcasm]

Yeah your looking at low quality settings on most modern games but good enough for older games or something like wow.

[P1NKY]

Title of Article: "How to tweak your laptop for gaming performance"

There's nothing in that article that tells me how to upgrade my laptop, change settings so that games run better etc. All it says it that I can, but not how. A bit misleading.

I know that reducing the resolution will improve the performance alot but what about tweaking your laptops system settings to improve game performance. Someone needs to do another article like this but actually tell people "how" to do this stuff.

[ultramoot]

To sum it all up -
"If you really want to enjoy PC games in all their glory, you should've bought a f**king desktop in the first place."