Gaming for Laptops

Desktops aren’t the only way to play – your laptop can work just as well with a little tweaking

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. 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.

Improvements in technology mean you can use a laptop as your main gaming machine.

There are several factors that have helped increase the gaming potential of even the cheapest laptops, and the improvements made to processors are leading the way. With the likes of the Core 2 Duo trickling down to budget machines, and the wonderful Atom coming in dual-core spins, there are cores aplenty to keep modern multi-threaded games going at a healthy pace.
Not only that, but memory capacities have continued to increase as well, with a previously unimaginable 1GB now available as standard in many laptops, and it’s generally easy to upgrade your machine’s offering to 2GB or more yourself (see below for more information on this).

Integrated graphics

The biggest advances in gaming PCs, however, have come through improvements to integrated graphics engines. Even Intel’s oft-maligned Graphics Media Accelerator has come on in leaps and bounds, and with a little care and attention can be cajoled into playing games that would once have required a desktop PC costing many thousands of pounds. You may need to pick lower quality settings to get some games working at reasonable speeds, but that’s not too great a sacrifice.
The only potential problem comes from the handful of games that demand DX10 hardware, but even this isn’t quite as limiting as it sounds, because Intel offers support for the DX10 API with the GMA X3100, 4500 and HD ranges.
Besides, most games still offer a DX9 codepath for compatibility reasons, and all of Intel’s chips support that revision of Microsoft’s gaming API. Don’t worry about DX11 yet either – it’s been available for a while, but there are no DX11-only  titles out there right now and few are in development.
As with desktop gaming, your display is the biggest barrier to smooth frame rates. The higher the resolution, the lower your framerate. In fact, apart from anti-aliasing, which improves the look of games significantly, screen resolution is the one factor that affects performance more than any other. Drop the resolution down as low as it will go (maintaining the aspect ratio where possible) and you should be able to hit the all-important minimum of 30fps. If you manage to reach the heady heights of 60fps, you can try increasing the detail level or resolution to improve the game’s fidelity.
Either way, experimenting with games settings is essential and can be fruitful. Getting your game running smoothly is an important factor if you want to enjoy some serious gaming on the move, but don’t underestimate how important the input side of the equation is. A mouse of any description will improve most games notably, with the likes of the Logitech G9 being the preference for many. Don’t forget to disable the touchpad to stop unwanted movement at vital moments – you can usually do this via a shortcut on your laptop, such as [Fn]+[F3].
A USB keyboard isn’t quite so essential, but can help if you have a smaller laptop with cramped keys.

Serious mobile gaming

If you’re looking for a serious mobile gaming experience, you’ll need a machine with plenty of RAM, an SSD or fast hard drive and a recent GPU, such as Nvidia’s GeForce GT 460M engine or AMD’s Mobility Radeon HD 5850. These options come at a price, and despite the big names, they lag behind desktop components by quite a margin.
Fortunately they’re still capable of driving the latest and most demanding games at reasonable settings and resolutions.
If you have a powerful desktop computer as well as a laptop or netbook, then there’s another option for playing games on the go in the form of game streaming services.
StreamMyGame (www.streammygame.com) runs the game on your desktop and streams it over your local network to your laptop or netbook. The free- to-use client limits the resolution of the stream, but upgrading the service is affordable and the inherent lag isn’t anywhere near as bad as you might expect. If nothing else, this experience will give you a taste of what it might be like playing games hosted on the cloud – something that many experts predict will be the future of gaming.
There are plenty of ways to use your laptop or even a humble netbook to punctuate your working day with a little entertainment. It’s worth taking a look at the likes of Good Old Games (www.gog.com), which has taken a selection of classic PC games and re-released them to work on modern versions of Windows. The system requirements are generally quite modest, and there are some stunning games to be had for only a few pounds.

Add more memory to your laptop

Increasing the volume of the memory in your machine will reduce the amount of caching out to the hard drive it has to do. This is particularly important with laptops, because the drives in such systems tend to spin at 5,400rpm, or even as slow as 4,200rpm (compared to up to 7,200rpm for a desktop PC).
These drives offer impressive capacities for their 2.5in size, but seek times and transfer speeds are considerably lower than those of most desktop  drives. Critically, when it comes to game playing on your laptop, more memory means less paging to hard disk – too much drive thrashing can make games unplayable.

1. Check what’s already there

Start by checking the memory that’s already in your machine and whether there are any unpopulated slots. If there are free slots, then match whatever memory is currently installed. There will be a label on the SODIMM that includes the capacity, memory type (DDR2 or DDR3), speed and the CAS latency. You don’t have to match the maker as long as these figures are the same.

2. Install extra memory

If both slots are full, or if you only have one, you’ll need to replace the existing memory. Check the laptop manufacturer’s website first to ensure you don’t try upgrading beyond the capacity supported by your machine. Installing SODIMMs is straightforward – simply ease the SODIMM into the slot at an angle, then push it down into place, ensuring that the retaining clips click into position.

Set up a gaming partition

Modern games are as well behaved as most other applications. During installation you can install the game files to a path of your choosing – even a network-attached storage device or USB stick if necessary.
Ideally, though, for speed reasons you’ll want your games to be stored on a separate partition of your main hard drive – if only because modern games can be incredibly large and may be unwieldy if they’re allowed to install into your normal programs folder.

1. During Windows reinstallation

If you have the luxury of reinstalling your operating system, possibly after upgrading to a larger laptop hard drive, then you can create two partitions during the Windows installation routine. Just make sure you allow at least 50GB for the main boot partition and the rest for your games.

2. Use EASEUS Partition Master

If you’re looking to create a new partition, you’ll need to use a non-destructive partitioning tool such as EASEUS Partition Master. Clear as much space as possible, then create your secondary partition, again leaving at least 50GB for Windows itself. Format the new partition and you’ll have plenty of space for your games.