Miscellaneous laptop discussions forum: Dell 700m freezes during game play

You mean call them and ask for help or ask them to exchange it?

Sorry to be a dunce

It is an ultra-portable notebook. They aren't ment to run these high end games. When you buy a sub compact car you understand you are trading size and performance for fuel economy, cheaper insurance, etc. You don't take it back to the dealer because the car overheated when you were trying to qualify at Le Mans with it.

I have tried this game on a Dell XPS and an HP Pavillion, both laptops and it freezes up everytime no matter what. I have been able to play without locking up on my desktop. The Tech Support people at Atari tell me that it is a video driver problem and that most laptops don't have a powerful enough video card for the game. I might buy that for the HP but the XPS is supposed to be designed for high end gaming and has an ATI Mobiity Radeon 9700 with 128 MB so it should have plenty of juice.

Anyhow, if you have a desktop, I would suggest your husband just plans on playing the game on it.

The 700m is not really designed with playing the newer games, like Sid Meier's Pirates, in mind. This laptop is ment for office and media (DVD watching) type applications. I would be suprised if the Intel Video Chipset is supported by that game. I am not sure what type of DirectX support the video card has. Even if it was supported, I would not expect great performance out of it when playing the newer games.

Not trying to discredit the 700m. I just bought one myself. It is a great latop, especially considering it is in the ultra-portable class of laptops. This class has never been known for gaming ability. I knew when I bought it though games were out. Doesn't matter anyway since I am running Linux on it.