Toshiba L40

Tenger

My wife recently got me a new laptop for my birthday. She told the sales guy that it was for gaming and chose this one. I could have brought it back to Dixons but the models above it in (my range) price didn't seem to be worth the extra cost to me. This is want I now have:

Toshiba L40-17M
ProcessorIntel Pentium Dual Core Processor T2330 (1.6 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 1 MB Cache)
OS:Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English
LCD: 15.4" Wide Screen WXGA (1280x800) TFT Display with TrueLife
Memory: 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024)
Hard Drive: 120GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
Graphics cardIntel GMA X3100. 256MB.


Now my queries concern the ability to play some of my games.
I have downloaded the new drivers for the Graphics card to allow it to cope with T&L,got this info from another website. However there are 2 drivers, one for Vista 32 bit and one for Vista 64 bit. How do I tell which my Vista is? I cannot find this info in the Vista booklet or on the machine.

Secondly I have encountered problems with Vista. Do older games have difficulty installing on Vista. I installed Medieval 2 an dit works no problem.I tried Blitzkrieg 2 and was told it was incompatible. Supreme Commander told me there was a problem with the setup.exe and stopped installing. Battlefield 2 installed but does not run!
I have DoW:Soulstorm and Starcraft2 coming soon and don't want to be dissappointed.

Am heading away for work on monday and was looking forward to long sessions of SupCom in the hotel. Will I need to download anything to sort this out? Luckily the hotel had wi-fi if needed.

Thirdly: Apologies for what seems to be a simple question I am a gamer but not too involved with the hardware/software that I game on. Dual Core processor-how do they work. Does it double the speed or does it just handle multple things better? For instance my dual core is 1.6,is this equal to a single core processor of higher gHz?

Thanks for any replies.

Gurgle

Bramble wrote: »

OS:Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English

Problem #1
Vista Home Premium will crash on attempting to play many games, and crawl on the ones it actually manages to run.

Get rid of it ASAFP, any version of XP will be far better.

Bramble wrote: »

Graphics cardIntel GMA X3100. 256MB.

Problem #2
You're stuck with it, but you should be able to play some games if you keep the specs turned down.

Bramble wrote: »

Dual Core processor-how do they work. Does it double the speed or does it just handle multple things better? For instance my dual core is 1.6,is this equal to a single core processor of higher gHz?

As far as playing games is concerned, you have a single 1.6GHz processor. There will be a second one sitting there pulling fluff out of its naval while the first one is running all-out to try to keep up with the game.

Unless you have serious money to spend, laptops aren't for gaming.

Tenger

Gurgle wrote: »

Problem #1
Vista Home Premium will crash on attempting to play many games, and crawl on the ones it actually manages to run.

Get rid of it ASAFP, any version of XP will be far better.

Problem #2
You're stuck with it, but you should be able to play some games if you keep the specs turned down.
Unless you have serious money to spend, laptops aren't for gaming.

The graphics card isn't a huge problem for me as I don't play graphics intensives games(slower strategy games). Turning down the setting doesn't bother me. And I travel a lot for work so this lets me watch DVDs while away.

Someday I will buy an expensive gaming laptop. It was a birthday gift and I couldn't really tell her that I would have preferred a better desktop instead.;)

One of my mates may have a copy of XP. Its handy having techy mates.

Gurgle

Bramble wrote: »

The graphics card isn't a huge problem for me as I don't play graphics intensives games(slower strategy games). Turning down the setting doesn't bother me. And I travel a lot for work so this lets me watch DVDs while away.

Someday I will buy an expensive gaming laptop. It was a birthday gift and I couldn't really tell her that I would have preferred a better desktop instead.;)

One of my mates may have a copy of XP. Its handy having techy mates.

I'm not knocking the laptop - I have its older brother, a Toshiba L20, Celeron M 1.4GHz, 1.5Gb RAM, Radeon X300 Mobile. It was dirt cheap & has survived over 2 years of travel + abuse in PWO, I'd recommend a Toshiba to anyone.

Practically all games support the 2 main graphics chipsets - GeForce and Radeon. Working on the Intel chipset is very much a maybe/maybe not, you don't know until you try it.

Unfortunately, XP from a copy could be a problem, but you might be able to install it using the Vista license key. Some versions allow this, some don't. Tbh its worth buying XP if you have to, you won't believe the difference in the system with Vista gone.

AlmightyCushion

Gurgle wrote: »

Problem #1
Vista Home Premium will crash on attempting to play many games, and crawl on the ones it actually manages to run.

Get rid of it ASAFP, any version of XP will be far better.

That's nonsense, there are people on here with gaming rigs running vista 64 bit which is more unstable then vista 32 bit who have very little problem with it.

Gurgle wrote: »

As far as playing games is concerned, you have a single 1.6GHz processor. There will be a second one sitting there pulling fluff out of its naval while the first one is running all-out to try to keep up with the game.

Not really true either, older games were crap with dual cores but newer games will utilize them a lot better (still not to their full extent though). Although saying that the graphics card is the main thing when it comes to gaming and the one you have is rubbish, Bramble. It would play older games all right but anything new will suffer greatly on it. Whoever told you this was for gaming has lied to you or know nothing about computers.

For graphics drivers you need to download them from the manufacturers website.

Unless you have serious money to spend, laptops aren't for gaming.

You can get a vostro with an 8600gt in it for around €900 maybe even cheaper if you get your hands on a voucher.

AlmightyCushion

Bramble wrote: »

One of my mates may have a copy of XP. Its handy having techy mates.

If it's an oem copy (usually comes installed on a computer) than he won't be legally able to put that on your computer as it is tied to the motherboard that it is supplied with.

KPKomputers

Bramble,
If you don't want to invalidate your warranty by switching OS, you can try running your games under COMPATIBILITY MODE, this can be done by right clicking on the programs .EXE file and selecting the compatibility mode option, you can select anything back to Win98. This is very good for old fashioned games. Alternately, for newer games it is possible to speed up games by closing down unrequired programs, either via the system tray (bottom right on your screen) or via MSCONFIG (Start, Run, Type in msconfig) you do need a bit of OS knowledge to use the second option and don;t turn off networking if playing an online game. As others have said, the biggest drawback is your Intel integrated graphics which are truly dire, if this machine was suggested by a store as for games, you have genuine reason for complaint. For the type of games you want to play the best option would be a single core processor of high speed (P4, PM/D or Athlon/Turion) with a separate dedicated graphics card and lots of RAM.

Alanstrainor

Eh? This thread is one year old, i some how think that their problem has be sorted. And changing your OS does not invalidate your warranty. Warranties only cover hardware.
Thread closed.