My work laptop is a core i7 and it seems to run most games pretty well. I got through the intro to Skyrim extremely smoothly and I've also checked out Last Remnant and Darksiders II and they run pretty well too.
The biggest problem up until now was the lack of storage. It came with a 128 GB SSD in it and I have over 70 GB worth of games to load up.
So I bought a 1 TB USB 3.0 portable drive for it last week. I've been loading my games from Steam, GOG and Humble to it in hopes that I might actually play them.
I was going to set it up on the 27" LCD upstairs yesterday. I have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard plus a 360 controller so I thought it just might work.
The show stopper is that my TV doesn't work through the HDMI output of my laptop. All I get is snow on the screen. It also won't let me try any other resolution than 1080P and my TV only supports 720P or 1080i.
Very frustrating. :( Oh well, back to Tales of Graces F and to hell with it.
is USB 3.0 fast enough to allow the games to run smoothly off from it? my desktop PC is lacking memory and I was thinking of doing that option instead of getting a new HD for it. Plus I want to put an SSD HD in there for the OS and other program hungry usages.
SSD is definitely the way to go for OS and USB 3.0 is 10 times faster than 2.0 theoretically. Practically it's still much faster than 2.0
So far I've been able to run games from it without any issues. and I like the fact that when I change PCs I can take this disk with me.
Caveat: this may be obvious but you do need to have USB 3.0 ports on the PC itself in order to run the drive. You can plug a USB 3.0 drive into a 2.0 port but your net gain is 0.
i have the same question NSonic does... is it fast enough to run games off that? I know 3.0 is fast...
Last Remnant, yay!
My mac is broken. Won't turn on. Got to get it fixed tomorrow at the stupid apple store.
Last Remnant is all your fault Matt. :)
USB 3.0 is plenty fast from what I've seen so far
The last time I tried playing Skyrim on PS3 it had to download a 655 MB update. Then it loaded twice, I killed a dragon, and it froze up lol. That was enough for me.
I'm kinda having a similar "problem". I have my PC hooked up to my TV, and got a wireless keyboard and mouse, but we went all over looking for some kind of keyboard tray, lap tray, or something. Nobody had anything like that. I'm just about desperate enough to go buy a piece of wood from Home Depot lol.
I have some wooden TV tray tables that are exactly the right height for keyboard and mouse and you can eat off them too. LOL Keep liquids far away though.
I know what you're saying about needing more space for games, I've thought about external HDs myself.
It's odd to me you're getting snow with HDMI (though it is possible, I guess), since that's a problem usually caused by electromagnetic interference with antennas. You changed the picture settings to the HDMI port, right? I just get a black screen with no signal when my TV isn't working the best, unless I'm trying to get signal from my antenna. Granted, I'm no technician, so I don't know what exact differences exist between our TVs or what other issues could cause snow.
It's a resolution and frequency thing Joe. The video resolution is probably running at too high a frequency for the LCD to translate so it shows up as snow just like an improperly positioned TV antenna,
Gotcha.
Tech issues - I am no help there at all, sorry.
That's ok Tami.:)
I think I know what the problem is. It's just going to be too much work to fix.
Why not just replace the internal hard drive? Those things are cheaper too.
Flexibility. This one I can move from device to device quickly. At some point I'll have to give my laptop back.
Got it.
I'm planning to get a 2TB harddrive, for all my videos and music and keep the other one for... I don't know, it's a 2.0 so I'll keep it as an emergency I have too much (or not enough) anime, Cartoons and films.
I don't have anything wireless except a fightpad. more on my PC status tomorrow if all goes to plan
Speaking of which, I finally watched Gran Torino. Clint Eastwood is fantastic 
My 32" TV works fine though.
I got it to work but the image is crap. It's the TV's fault I know. I need a new gaming TV.
That sucks, but maybe you'll get it all sorted out eventually.
I've been thinking about getting an external hard drive myself, if only to have a proper backup for my music collection.
I managed to get it working but A. now the picture is too big for the screen cutting off icons and the taskbar. I've been trying to mess with the resolution but it there's not much I can do. B. the image is really shaky. You get up close to it and you can see the image vibrate. It's all washed out too.
USB drives have really come down in price. I paid 60 for 1 Terabyte and I just saw a 2 Terabyte external for 99 at Bestbuy. USB 3 is the way to go if you have the ports in your PC.
Can't help since i'm not that expert on tech. However, I realized that I haven't sent you a friend request on Steam, so i'm going to fix that right now.
Thanks Alex, wasn't really looking for help, just bitchin' is all. LOL Sure send me a request.
I had the same problem with space as well. My iTunes library calls an external home.
Sucks about the HDMI problem. From my experience the laptop will lower the output if the TV can't handle it. I wish I could help but after reading some of the comments, I still have no idea what could be the problem.
I have a few more things to try yet but it shouldn't be this difficult. I can plug in to our HD overhead projectors at work and I don't have to do any messing around. This TV needs to go anyway. The other day I tried the Lightning Returns demo and was wondering wny they did the opening in black and white, then the game started and it was still black and white. I quit the game and low and behold my PS3's home screen was black and white. Restarted the PS3, still the same. Turned off the TV and turned it back on, colour comes back. Stupid TV
i7 Core? 27" screen?? You make me sick. Show off. LOL!
When you mentioned the Xbox 360 controller, you just reminded me that I should try using my PS3 controller for playing my emulators. I'm currently using the PS2 controller, but I just want to see if I can use the PS3 with just the mini USB cable.
Congrats on the new system!