Pimp My Specs!

<<<realizing how lame this thread title is :-D<<<

Anyway, here's the skinny.

I custom built my PC about four to five years ago. However, I've been thinking of doing a desktop replacement laptop. I just need to know if the one I picked out compares to what I have. Keep in mind, I don't need to have the top of the line of what todays market is. I just want it to be at least as good as the PC I built four years ago as I'm still satisfied with it.

Would I see a dip in performance switching between these two when doing things like video editing and gaming?

 

Since you like gaming and do video, at least get a dual cored machine. Trust me, I did video encoding etc. and on a single core, the process killed the machine for anything else until it was finished. Going dual core was like night and day! cool

You could do a lot better on the GFX card too though I don't know the pricing on laptops. What are you willing to spend? That will really help the laptop gamers/video folk to know what to suggest.

 

Agree with Augie, single core are horrible for any kind of video encoding.

As for comparison, the only thing the laptop has is 1 extra GB of ram.
The GFX on the laptop are a fair bit lower than your 8600, core clock on the 8600 is around 675 and the HD3200 (based on the HD2400) is around 500.

What is your budget?

You can get decent laptops for under $800, but too much lower and you're looking at not much more than internet browsers.

 

Well, if I sold my current machine for parts I assumed I'm looking at a budget of around $500.

However, even if I can only get a laptop that is as good as my current machine (which is four years old) I'd be satisfied. I'm still fairly happy with it's performance.

 

Well for $500 you can certainly out perform your CPU with something like this...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114788

Or Intel, this...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146706

But niether live upto your 8600GTS, not far short but they are short, the 8600 clock is 675mhz while as far as I can tell both of the above onboard are around 533mhz.
I'm not sure how well the GFX would perform in gaming and video encoding but the CPU will definitely be a chunky boost.

 

One thing to remember is that laptops are not easily upgraded. You need to buy the processor and video card you want for the future- unlike your desktop where you can step up later.