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Gaming Notebooks: The Full Story

Author	Stuart Andrews
Published	22nd Mar 2007

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How about the games? The first thing I noticed was that games generally took noticeably longer to load (and save games longer to reload) than on my usual desktop system. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for example, takes 56 seconds to load a saved game normally, but it took over two minutes to load one on the Pegasus. How much of this is down to the comparative speeds of the hard disk subsystem and how much is down to the installation of Windows Vista – which felt surprisingly clunky – is difficult to say.

Individual games met with mixed results. My first test subject was Company of Heroes, Relic’s spectacular World War II RTS, and one of the most testing examples of the genre as far as hardware is concerned. At medium detail levels and with visual effects set to medium, it was barely playable, with the display stuttering during normal screen scrolling, explosive action, and whenever there was a cut-scene using the in-game engine. Luckily, all this bad behaviour stopped once detail and effects levels were turned to low. There was even breathing room to turn Texture Detail and Physics up to medium. Even in this reduced state, the game still looks and plays superbly.

Battlefield 2142 surprised us at first by playing smoothly with everything set to high. That is, until a walker strode into view and a firefight ensued, at which point it collapsed into a flick-screen affair. Once again, adjusting detail levels down bore excellent results, and with the preset Medium detail level turned on and AA turned off it was perfectly playable.