Is my pc up to gaming specs

What kind of design flaws? Would it be a big problem or just a little issue that can be ignored?

its a big problem, it causes artifacts on the screen and missing textures in games, or worse.

Are you sure it happens to every one? Is it caused by overplaying or is it there from the start?sorry for all the questions but I'm kinda worried now :P

it took my 280GTX about a year to start doing it, but my mate went through 3 285GTXes in 6 months, all had the same problem. He kept RMAing them to XFX and the replacements they sent out just had the same problem. When we looked it up on google it appeared to be fairly common.

Damn. So should I look for something with a different graphics card? Or is the problem more to do with the fact that its a laptop?

look for a different graphics card, its not heat related.

thanks a million loony :)one last question. in general, what graphics card (or make of graphics card) should I be going for?EDIT: I found a good value one with a "NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M 1GB DDR3". is that a better graphics card?

it may or may not have the same problem, I dont know, I switched to ATi after the issues with the 200 series.

Thanks for the help, I'll start searching for some good deals