Curse you Ultra Mode! - I need Laptop Advice

Sorry to ask this, but laptop graphics tend to confuse me after a while but ultra mode has made it time to get a new laptop - and after scanning a few threads I still can't work out which of two laptops I'm looking at would be best...

Any comments/advice would be much appreciated - even if it's just 'gawd - don't bother with either they won't run ultra'!



Laptop 1:

• Windows Vista® Home Premium
• Intel® CoreTM 2 Extreme processor X7800 (2.6GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, FSB 800)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 8700M GT (DirectX® 10 graphics with 512MB GDDR3 memory
• 320GB Hard Disk
• 3GB DDR2 SDRAM

Laptop 2:

• Windows® 7 Home Premium
• Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo processor T6500 (2.10 GHz , 2MB L2 Cache, FSB 800 MHz)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GS (DirectX® 10 graphics with 512MB VRAM , Hybrid SLI® with HybridPowerTM support )
• 500GB S-ATA hard disk
• 4GB DDR2 memory

I hope I've included the relevant info... guess gfx card, CPU and RAM probably make the biggest impact without providing full specs...

And it's partly the interplay between these that leaves me with no clue which is better - though I (possibly mistakenly) think either should manage low-level ultra...

Thanks in advance for any help/laughter you can give.

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Not really a direct answer I know, but...

My daughter plays on a Dell XPS Studio with a 9500M-GE SLI Hybrid. But.. it won't play in SLI Hybrid mode. I assume this is because CoH doesn't officially support SLI.

The other thing you might want to look at is the RPM rating of the hard drive. Picking a 7200RPM drive over the standard 5400 RPM drive can make a noticeable difference in the performance of most everything you run.

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We don' need no stinkin' signatures!

Minimal UM is about what I'd tend to expect of those, if that. Hard to judge for sure but I wouldn't expect much from either one. And as #2 mentions SLI, it will be very less optimal since SLI isn't supported by CoH. There is a switch to force SLI but it isn't officially supported.

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My laptop isn't even as good as the ones you listed. I can put reflections on Ultra with no slowdown. I can put shadows on minimum with it becoming somewhat choppy but (for me) tolerable. With those two things, it makes a big difference graphically. I could stare at water for hours... So I imagine that either of those sould be ok for you, depending on what your expectations/ desires are, but you certainly won't be able to max things out for the full effect.

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Est sularis oth Mithas

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Thanks for the advice all.

I never said in my OP (as it was long enough already) but I was also considering replacing my desktop.

In the end I decided that rather than replace both my desktop and my laptop I'm probably going to wait a (little) bit and get a beefier laptop and turn my desktop into a fileserver.

And a fair part of that was the help you gave which made me realise the laptops I had been looking at probably weren't the gaming answer.

Thanks again.

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By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)