Laptops have traditionally been a no go area for gamers. However, in the recent years times have dramatically changed from a business man play toy in the year 1990s the next generation of gaming laptops have the raw power to cope with the most hungry of 3D gaming and graphic intensive software applications. With the obvious advantage of unique portability the gaming laptop is certain to gain a big slice in the gaming hardware market in the next few years with many PC users opting for a more versatile approach to playing PC games and the booking market of on line games. Technology is changing even month by month and day by day but one should be able to grasp the basic understanding of what one should be looking for when choosing a gaming laptop.

The engine of any laptop is processor power. The processor or CPU is one of the most vital components of a gaming laptop and you should be looking for a duel core processor, expensive yes but will stand you in good stead in the forthcoming months. If you cannot afford a dual core then a minimum of a 1.8mhz processor is what you should be looking at.

Random Access memory is often overlooked and forgotten about, RAM combined with the processor is pivotal in a gaming laptop. The bottom line is if you have a cutting edge CPU but only 256 mb of RAM or even 512 mb then you are seriously limiting your gaming laptop performance. Go for at least 1 mb of RAM and even better for the all important frames per second count get 2mb.

As regards Graphics Card, this is where you have a decision to make. The big difference between a laptop and a desktop PC is the upgrade ability of your graphics card. In your desktop it is easy to upgrade your video card but inside a laptop it is difficult and often needs a pc engineer to carry out this process. Most standard laptops come with a on board graphics card and you must expect to pay for a top end card such as a Radeon or Geforce.

Wide screen is recommended for gamers but do not compromise on screen quality. 17 inch screen will help with those long gaming sessions and a good tip for when you are looking at laptops is to use the machine for a few minutes to see if your comfortable with the clarity and image quality of the laptop screen.

As regards battery life, with raw graphic power busting out of your laptop you will need to make sure your battery is up to the job.