[bryansmiley]

I'm desperately trying to choose between these two laptops and would appreciate any advice as to comparisons, key things to note, and general views.

Compaq V6630EM - £320, refurbished from pcworld;

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...rmationSection


Acer Aspire 5920 - £320, refurbished, eBay
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,...9290611,00.htm

The specs there are pretty detailed, but there's others online. I'm really after high Graphics MB.

The Acer has Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 256 MB independent, and can borrow up to 512 MB from RAM. So should one consider this 256+512 effectively, or?

The Compaq has independent NVIDIA GeForce7150M up to 599 MB. Now 599 MB is something I've really not seen before. I've looked at 50+ laptops in and around these price ranges from all kinds of sources, and not only does 599 MB seem odd, it seems to good to be true to £320. Is it possibly 256 like the Acer, and the rest can be borrowed from RAM, so in fact very similar?

[RSM123]

You might find it advantageous to read up at these forums since they are laptop specific :

http://www.notebookforums.com/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/

As regards high spec. graphics, this really depends on what you will be using the pc for, and what your requirements would be.

If you're planning to run things like Half Life 2 - then you may well be able to have high settings and stull get decent fram rates ... but newer games like Crysis - you would only get middling frame rates even on average settings.

The 8600 GT is not a bad card, but the 8800 is a quantum leap ahead - and naturally they are still at a premium in laptops.

Cards that use system ram are not comparable to cards with dedicated memory since they are still juggling resources rather than being purpose built.

Read the forums above, look at their faqs regarding expected performance, and likely gains from tweaking, overclocking, or optimising drivers.

You should then have a better idea of what you're likely to see for your money.

Depending on your budget, consider these people as they have a whole cross section :

http://www.google.co.uk/url?q=http:/...EyY5GdsIEeURsg