Im getting a new laptop soon, but I don't know anything about them, so I had to ask my friends what a good gaming laptop should have. I did find one, but i understand WA won't run if the comp has an intel graphics card or chipset or something... well this laptop has NVIDIA graphics card but it does say that it uses an intel chipset...

Intel® Centrino® 2 processor technology with interrelated Intel® Core™2 Duo processor P7450
Intel® PM45 chipset, 802.11a/b/g/n network connection and extended battery life capability.


Will this laptop run worms without me having to do a bunch of working around the problem stuff? here is the full specs of the laptop:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9173262&type=product&id=1218044029168

That "chipset" looks like a WiFi chipset, not a graphics chipset, so as long as it definitely has an NVIDIA graphics card/chipset, you should be safe.

EDIT: Actually, that's the chipset for the whole motherboard it seems, but the same still applies. The only problems occur when the graphics are handled by Intel products on Vista. The rest of the PC being handled by Intel shouldn't cause a problem.

Can anyone confirm that 3.6.29.0 is still causing problems on Intel-based video chipsets? AFAIK it's been fixed...

The intel integrated graphics works on my sisters laptop, however it's very laggy on high resolutions. I wouldn't recommend a laptop with intel graphics for gaming really.

Is that with Vista?

Mine's a Vista notebook with integrated Intel GMA 4500M graphics and I can confirm that csrss.exe still kidnaps the palette when using the latest versions, even with all non-Windows [as well as many non-vital Windows] processes disabled. Once I kill explorer.exe, though, it stops happening. On very rare occasions, the palette fixes itself after minimising/maximising, but I think that only works once per game launch and it seems unrelated to any processes running at the time.

Camera movement and animation is acceptably smooth at 1280×800 @ 60 Hz as long as I keep the background disabled. Once I set the background detail to level 4 [out of 6] or above, the game does get unplayably choppy, but I hear a tweak in the next version will address this with a workaround which disables the smooth gradients on all detail levels.

Also, yes, that Intel PM45 is just the motherboard. You won't have any problems in WA because of it, ShieGuie, though obviously I still wouldn't recommend a laptop for playing the game. Definitely not for roping schemes, as the keyboard is bound to suffer from a key lock of some sort or another.

Laptops trade size for power; while they're really handy for carrying around and doing stuff on the go, they just aren't as powerful as desktops.

However, for a game like worms, the laptop you're choosing should do just fine. :)
In fact, that laptop is quite a nice deal: an Nvidia 9800M GS is a high-end graphics card at the moment. :D

Malevol3nt, Try disabling Vsync in the Nvidia Control Panel if possible.

Try with an ASUS chipset. I've been worming with 3 different ASUS (kind of old computers anyway) and a nvidia 3200 mx (also very old) and never had a single problem with worms graphics. In fact I can super-sheep through huge maps with full detail and the maximum resolution without getting screen lag at all.