Flameshot

You don't.

You're welcome

Thing about laptops is, it's very difficult to find one specifically designed for gaming. Alienware was one of the good guys before Dell took over. They manufactured awesome laptops with high end hardware capable of running most games at high settings. There are a couple of things that you need to consider when planning to game with a laptop:

1.) Is the hardware on the higher end of the spectrum to be able to play games properly? (Ie. Dedicated graphics card, lot's of RAM and a good CPU.)

2.) Do I have enough money to spend to get those things?

Laptops are expensive enough on their own (Not including netbooks and the lower end types) without throwing in the high end hardware. I generally recommend a desktop over a laptop but I realize some people need a laptop for other things and the gaming is just a want over necessity. If your friend absolutely needs a laptop, Alienware is generally the best of the best (or it was). I've heard mixed reviews since Dell took over.

If a laptop isn't absolutely necessary, your friend can get a desktop with all very high end hardware for the same price. Just some things to consider

Edit: Cooling is also a very big issue when gaming with laptops. Especially with the higher end games.

I agree. But just wanted to point out it was a rumor because I saw someone mention it may support the new PhysX even though there has been no evidence of that.

Also note that although some suspect the Going Rogue will support nVidia's PhysX, this is strictly a rumor at this point. There's isn't anything to indicate such an update but you never know.

It is compatible. The issue most likely lies with one of your settings.

Right click on the City Of Heroes shortcut on your desktop and click on properties.

Go to the Compatibility tab and make sure "Run this program in compatibility mode" is unchecked. Look down a bit further and make sure "Run this program as an administrator" is checked.

If the problem persists after you've done that, try reinstalling your drivers. Posting a CoH Helper log may be helpful as well. There are a lot of people who are running City Of Heroes just fine under Windows 7, including myself.

Lag is always tricky because there are so many factors that come into play. If you could post a CoH Helper log, we might be able to find a reason for it.

Also, what do you mean by "all over the place"? Are you seeing high green, yellow or red in your netgraph?

I personally haven't heard of this issue. While we wait for someone to chime in with a possible resolution, you could try posting a CoH Helper log. Maybe we can find out what's going on

No problem

Those crashing issues where the driver stops responding have for the most part been resolved. As long as your video drivers and Windows are up to date, you shouldn't have that problem anymore

This will actually vary from person to person. Hardware configuration, software configuration etc come into play. What may be the perfect drivers for you, may not work so well for someone else.

Are you having a particular issue currently? You mentioned crashing in the past but I don't think you're saying you're crashing now. If you are having issues currently, post a CoH Helper log and we should be able to give you a hand

It sounds like you have a physical Ageia card. The problem lies with the drivers then. As I said, nVidia purchased PhysX and Ageia no longer manufactures those cards. Drivers for your physical PhysX card are probably super old and when you installed the nVidia drivers it probably installed PhysX for your actual video card and not the physical PhysX card.

I know there are other users here who have Ageia PhysX cards, and they might want to chime in and give you explicit instructions on how to use the latest nVidia drivers for your video card while still being able to utilize the Ageia card, but until then you may want to do as Sharker_Quint suggested and contact nVidia. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Additional Note: nVidia does have seperate PhysX drivers as well. I believe they may be beta. You could try those as well. But I'd research it a bit on Google first.

This machine should run Ultra Mode just fine. We're not sure how high you'll be able to turn up the settings in Ultra Mode as we're still fairly short on details, but from what's been said from an nVidia perspective, a GTS 250 is about where Ultra Mode will start at the lower settings.

As for your RAM, do you need 12GB? 6 is more than sufficient for pretty much anything out there game wise or software wise. Unless you do something that's a lot more RAM intrusive such as video editing etc, I doubt it's necessary at this time.

Quick question, do you actually HAVE an Ageia PhysX card? As in the physical card? Or are you referring to the built-in PhysX of most nVidia cards?

Edit: While waiting for the answer, I guess I'll explain a bit.

When City Of Heroes introduced support for PhysX, it was for the actual Ageia PhysX card. Shortly after this, nVidia bought PhysX and started manufacturing cards with PhysX built-in. City Of Heroes never actually supported PhysX outside of the physical card Ageia created. As the nVidia drivers progressed, the PhysX drivers changed and were updated obviously. Basically, if you're not running an actual Ageia PhysX card, you will not see support for PhysX.

Not a problem. Glad I could help

You'll have to delete the checksum file as well (once you've moved it all over).

This is how I do it:

1.) I copy the CoHUpdater.exe to the desktop (Do not create a shortcut, copy the actual file there.)
2.) Run it and tell it where you want to install. Once it starts downloading, go ahead and close it.
3.) Copy the contents of your old CoH folder into your new one.
4.) In the new folder, delete the checksum file.
5.) On your desktop click on the City Of Heroes shortcut and you should be good to go. It should verify your files.

You can remove the CoHUpdater.exe from your desktop after that.

Hope this helps

To be honest, if you're looking for a laptop that will run this game at even decent settings you're going to fork over quite a bit of cash.

I would definitely recommend going with a desktop machine over a laptop if you're planning to game at all regardless if it's City Of Heroes or not. Laptops designed for gaming aren't cheap at all.

On the other hand, for the price of that laptop ($599) you can put together a desktop that will at least get you into a position to game simply by adding a decent graphics card to the mix. I strongly recommend making the time to build a machine. You'll get much more for your money and will get specific components, in some cases a lot higher quality than a pre-built machine.

On the following settings I get 60fps with my GTS 250. Using these as a guide you should be able to find your sweet spot:

I use Windowed mode (basically native screen resolution).

Particle Physics Quality: Very High
World Texture Quality: Very High
Character Texture Quality: Very High
World Detail: 100%
Character Detail: 100%
Max Particle Count: 50000
Vertical Sync: On (If I turn this off, I average 90fps)
FSAA: 4x
Shadows: Enabled
Use Geometry Buffers: Enabled
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Texture Crispness: Smooth
Shader Quality: High
Water Effects: High Quality
Depth of Field Effects: Disabled
Bloom Effects: None
Desaturation Effects: Enabled

With Vertical Sync off, I can reach 105fps in a mission. I usually leave it off as I don't really notice the tearing issues when looking from side to side.

Side note: I currently installed a quad-core which definitely boosted my FPS. When it was my dual-core it topped around 50-60 regardless if Vertical Sync was on or off.

Hope this helps!

Neither of those machines will run CoH well at all.

The laptop appears to be on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of its specifications. The Core 2 Solo's aren't that great at all. Don't let the name fool you. The Core 2 Solo has one processor core.

The other machine is an older machine. Without knowing the specs of your current machine, it's hard to compare. That second machine has an older processor as well as uses the older DDR RAM.

Those stats aside, they both have horrible graphic cards. If your intention is to play this game rather frequently, I wouldn't even bother with either of those machines as you'll end up having to put the money into upgrade and in both cases, probably more than they're worth. Save the cash and look for something else.

So you bought a new hard drive....and then what did you do? Your best bet is to explain what it is exactly you were trying. You're kind of only giving bits and pieces. Did you copy the CoH folder to the new hard drive and attempt to just run it? Did you run the install and tell it to install to the new hard drive? That CoH Helper would be wonderful as well. We can't help you if you're just going to say "Won't work, help."

Maybe a bit more detail is in order. What are you doing, why are you doing it and maybe a CoH Helper would be of use.

I ran an 8600GT off of a 430W PSU. Heck, I even ran my GTS 250 off of that same PSU for a while.

The 8600GT btw is a LOT shorter than a GTS 250 which is shorter than the 8800/9800's so I don't think you'll run into any issues in that regard.

Unless that machine is coming with a PSU lower than 400 (Which is most likely NOT the case), you should be fine Although if you want to make absolute sure, you should be able to find the PSU stats in the specifications for that machine on Dell.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll keep these at the back of my head. Interestingly enough, I think maybe the paste hadn't set entirely. Under load the cores temps max out at around 67c now. That's much better than before. If I notice it getting any higher than that again I'll look into a different heatsink/cooler/fan

Edit to fill in a few blanks: Those high temps I was talking about were last night when I first put it all together and was putzing around. Just checked the temps while playing CoX and watching Supernatural on my second monitor. 67c was the highest temp

I don't care about the noise level. As for budget, well this put me back a pretty penny and I don't really want to spend anymore if I don't have to. I haven't double-checked the stock fan/heatsink yet to ensure it's on properly but I did use a different thermal paste. Arctic Silver. The fan that came with my dual core was awesome. This looks similar if not identical to it. I would have expected the same quality of cooling out of it.

If I had to, I suppose I could spend another $50. But only if I absolutely had to.