I am looking at buying this laptop cos its cheap and I don't have much money

Anyway the graphics card and stuff is a AMD Dual-Core E1-1200 Accelerated Processor with AMD Radeon™ HD 7310 Graphics. Would I be able to play anything decent or released this gen with a card like this? Obviously its not going to play Far Cry 3 on Max but is it even worth having?

Also if anyone has any good hints on a laptop under £400 that might be able to play some games - (it will mostly be for music, writing, internet etc) I would be grateful.

Don't know why the link didn't work - this is the lap top

Don't get that one unless it costs under £300, it's pretty old tech, although it will play most games this gen - the console specs for this gen are pretty old remember.

I was looking for exactly the same thing, I plumped for this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-15-6-inch-Quad-Core-Processor-DDR3_SDRAM/dp/B009ZQLKE0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1359045608&sr=8-3

Under £400 that's the best graphics performance you will get (assuming you're in Britain). I spent ages looking for a laptop for that price and can barely find anything with a graphics card (maybe an acer but I heard bad things about those and I use my laptops for years). My girlfriend has the same model, and the screen is matte, which is nice, thogh the speakers are shit. This amazon price is stupidly low too, I'm sure it won't be that cheap for long unless ther's some tech announcement soon I'm unaware of.

Edit: Just saw the linked laptop, for that money it's pretty good. The processor isn't great, but you will be able to play this-gen games on it on at least low to mid settings. Toshiba's are also great, I've been using one for 5 years now, and their speakers used to be really good - not sure about the new ones though.

@9cupsoftea: Its £250 at the moment on PC World, (I am in the UK) but its a refurbished model and i'm not quite sure what that means in terms of reliabilty or warranty. Thanks for the recommendation though, its a bit of a minefield looking for something like this, there are so many different models and makes etc.

I read somewhere that prices are dropping a bit because new tech is round the corner, although this might be rubbish tbh.

Basically i've had a 360 all this time so it would be nice to get a laptop for the internet and Itunes and then if I could play some of the games I have missed out on through only having a console that would be great. Like strategy stuff etc - i'd like to have a bash at Starcraft and some other thangs along those lines so if I could find something which let me that would be great. Its not easy though.

No the 7310 is not for gaming. You're not going to be able to run Far Cry 3 on that.

Now if you take: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/toshiba-satellite-p850-138-refurbished-15-6-laptop-silver-13985295-pdt.html which is 30 pounds more but you will be able to play far cry 3 on minimum settings. It also has double the memory and a much faster CPU.

@Nictel: Thanks - is actually £180 more. The refurb model I found with the 7310 is £250. But if its not going to be able to play anything then I suppose it doesn't matter how cheap it is.

Like I said i'm not really worried about playing Far Cry 3 or other monster games - it would be more for things you can't get on console like Starcraft other tactics/strategy games. Do you think it would be able to run anything - Can you give me an example of what it could play?

@leebmx: Yeah it's not a good time to buy with new consoles around the corner. Even if you get a decent gaming laptop right now come the end of the year you probably won't be playing console ports because the specs for those will jump enormously. If you have an xbox you don't have to worry about that though (and not if you're planning to get one of the new consoles too). PC games are usually very good about scaling their specs though, so you don't really need to worry about getting top of the range stuff for gaming, especially strategy stuff.

That 7310 does seem a bit weaker than I thought though like Nictel says http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-7310.70634.0.html notebookcheck is a good place to check out where graphics cards sort of stand.

It's easy to look so much at forums and spec reviews that you end up buying something way more powerful and expensive than you want, but I think right now it's smarter to bite the bullet, buy what you can on the budget you have, and think about top specs in a couple of years when the consoles are established and pc hardware will have moved on a lot.

@9cupsoftea: Thanks for the advice - much appreciated. I expect I will be saving up for one of the new consoles at the end of the year. The link you put up seems as if it would be pretty good for what I need - in any case this has given me a better idea of what to look for. Like your avatar as well :)

@9cupsoftea: Ah yes that site is good for checking out the power of this mobile graphics cards

@leebmx: Starcraft 2 will do fine on that. Looking now the link that @9cupsoftea shared actually mentions Starcraft as being playable.