Looking for a Few Opinions

[Donk3y]

About a little over a month ago I ended up with a Gateway 7410GX. To make a long story short, it is a very nice upgrade over what I previously started out with but the 64M mobility 9600 is a bit lacking in CS:Source. I mainly play CSS and WoW on this laptop. WoW plays super smooth at 1280x800 with alot of options on high. CSS does not play so silky smooth on 1280x800 low everything. I have to put it down to 720x480 to have a good smooth experience but its very rough looking as you could imagine.

Here is my question: Do I upgrade to more RAM and a faster HD or do I move up a little bit more to a laptop with a 128M radeon mobility 9700? My laptop is in my sig. I am looking at an ABS G2. Here is link to it http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=34-224-007&depa=3

I am not terribly sure that moving up from 64meg 9600 to a 128meg 9700 is going to be a big enough step or not to make that 1280x800 res run smoother. Should I stick with what I have and just make a few upgrades or move to yet another laptop?

Any thoughts?

 

[Donk3y]

Anybody have any thoughts or experiences?

 

[SILVR 6]

If you add ram and a 7200RPM hdd your system will get noticably snapppier, but won't do anything for the gaming experience. I can give you my experience with CS:S on my lappy. 800x600 I can run with setting maxed out without aa and 16X AF. @ 1024x768 med setting with 8X AF is very playable. Doom 3 also runs well on this laptop. The MR9700 is clocked about 40mhz more than the 9600's. The extra ram does help too. Hope this helps

 

[Donk3y]

Thanks for the response. It has been about a 2 week review for me deciding on another laptop w/ slightly better graphics or upgrade the one I have a little bit. I decided to go for 2 gigs of ram and 7200RPM drive. After reading reviews and posts about the 9600 and 9700 mobiles it seems the performance bonus is not necessarily the jump I am looking for. I mainly play WoW and that runs fantastic. I can live with CS at low res for just those random lan party nights. I think the money is better spent on upgrades and I dont have to hassle with selling the gateway. And besides it is a fantastic laptop for the money.