gaming laptop advice
By
Back_Blast,
Posted on: 2010-06-14 13:22 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
No specific advice on models but I'm not sure you can get a UM-capable laptop for that price. The chart you can see here gives a comparative ranking to pretty much all current video cards available. For UM, you want something at the very top end of the mobile chips. Whether you can get that at your budget I'm not certain but I doubt it. In any case *AVOID* Intel graphics chips like the plague. Whatever you do buy, make certain it has an ATI or Nvidia chip in it for graphics. Intel graphics are a joke and will definitely not give you good performance in CoH. And they absolutely won't do UM at all.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
Getting a laptop for £300 that can run ultra mode is as likely as Karen Gillan, Amy from Doctor Who, becoming my wife.
£1000-1500 is much more likely. I'm not even sure you can escape from integrated graphics for only £300.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Quote:
Well if you'd get up some guts and propose already... |
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Getting a laptop for £300 that can run ultra mode is as likely as Karen Gillan, Amy from Doctor Who, becoming my wife.
£1000-1500 is much more likely. I'm not even sure you can escape from integrated graphics for only £300. |
But more seriously, I suspected £300 wouldn't do the job but I'm not up on current exchange rates so I wasn't certain.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
For £1500 the laptop better be capable of running crysis on high settings nevermind CoH...
I know I can get a UM capable laptop for around £450 mark with one of the samsung laptops (model number I cant remember off the top of my head) which was 2.2ghz dual core p4-M, with 4gb ram and a ati mobility card (forget number there too)
Problem is it would mean waiting another month to get enough cash together 
Well assuming that system is truly capable of UM and UM is what you really want, then some extra saving sounds in order.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
Quote:
Let's see, a mobile CPU that's 3 generations (p4-m -> Core -> Core2 -> Core iX ) old and most likely a GPU from the same era, running UM. Yea, well good luck with that. |
Originally Posted by Sunstormer
I know I can get a UM capable laptop for around £450 mark with one of the samsung laptops (model number I cant remember off the top of my head) which was 2.2ghz dual core p4-M, with 4gb ram and a ati mobility card (forget number there too) |
And you sort of missed that the whole point of UM is to raise the graphics quality so it is Crysis like, well at least Fallout 3 like.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Theres a monumentally huge difference between CoH and Crysis in requirements....
My friend plays UM fine on a similar laptop to the one I mentioned above. If your going to attempt to flame at least try get your facts right 
Well when you get one of these marvelous inexpensive UM playing laptops please post a CoHHelper report so we will all have an idea what to look for here in the states.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Quote:
Ultra Mode requires a GOOD video card, and most laptops do NOT come with even a decent one (if Intel makes the graphics, it's definitely not decent, much less good) unless you customize the order.|
Originally Posted by Sunstormer
Theres a monumentally huge difference between CoH and Crysis in requirements....
My friend plays UM fine on a similar laptop to the one I mentioned above. If your going to attempt to flame at least try get your facts right |
I'd be highly surprised if a laptop for the price you quoted could even run CoH in non-ultra mode well. Without knowing the actual parts (especially the graphics), there's no way we can say for sure (who knows, one of the OEMs might have become oddly nice and caring).
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
|
To be fair, maybe the OP's friend is fine with running a pretty game at 10-15 fps and never teaming. I'd have to say though that I can't imagine any cheap laptop being able to run Ultra Mode settings with good performance. I get lag on a fairly good desktop with a decent (GTS 250) video card on mid tier Ultra Mode settings.
Its makes me laugh how people are willing to jump in and not actually help nowadays on the forums anymore and much more likely to try make you look like an idiot for the sake of it.
I play on a laptop now which isnt amazing and isnt UM capable. Its a very old Toshiba satellite model, 2.53ghz p4 with 1gb ram, and a 32mb geforce 420GO graphics card which cost me £100 yet I can still team perfectly fine and I do frequently, still loading faster than a lot of players and definately on par with other people plus I use high settings on charecter quality etc. I do use low quality world effects however though and yes most of the options are blacked out, hence why Im going for an upgrade. The point I'm making is in reply to Kitsune knight, who stated a laptop at £300 or under wouldnt play none ultra mode.
The point is, people act like laptops are incapable of doing anything and there more powerful than people give them credit for. Yes the hard drives suck and most are onboard graphics but will good shopping you can get some pretty capable ones.
I got my friends laptop make and model btw. All the info can be found here:
http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/lapto...specifications
To add to this, another of my friends has just paid £550 for an Acer laptop that is fully capable of running crysis on high settings as well with only a tiny bit of lag. He didnt tell me his model number but Im trying to get it now.
Quote:
I said it won't play CoH well, and from your description, it doesn't sound like it runs all that well. |
Originally Posted by Sunstormer
The point I'm making is in reply to Kitsune knight, who stated a laptop at £300 or under wouldnt play none ultra mode.
|
Quote:
| The point is, people act like laptops are incapable of doing anything and there more powerful than people give them credit for. |
Quote:
| I got my friends laptop make and model btw. All the info can be found here: |
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
|
First, apologies for whatever misunderstanding we have between us. You have to understand that the guidelines that Positron gave us for minimum UM settings was a desktop 9800GT which in laptop land is equivalent to a GTX 260M, found only in higher end, expensive laptops ($1500+ here in the US, over £1000 in the UK).
Then again, what you listed as your friend's computer isn't anywhere close to your original description. It's not a 2.2GHz P4-M, it's a 2.13GHz Core i3-330M, which is 7-8x more powerful. It's not an ATI mobility card but an nVidia 310M. And it's certainly not £300 but before VAT is £486.
Now looking at a review of a similar laptop over at Notebookcheck, same CPU, GPU and screen resolution, the comments on gaming performance isn't all that positive.
Quote:
You have to understand we are trying to be helpful. Laptops can induce significant buyer remorse because there is so little you can do with them if they don't give you the performance you desire. It would be like buying a truck to tow your camper on vacation and then finding out that the engine isn't powerful enough to tow it over that mountain on the way to the camp grounds. Not a lot you can do without buying a bigger truck to start with. The same is true with laptops, it's best to go in without a lot of expectations about gaming performance and try to find an acceptable compromise between resolution, frame rate and pretty.|
Gaming Performance The Nvidia GeForce 310M graphic card can access 512 MB DDR3 and is categorized as a starter GPU. The performance should be the same as the GeForce G 210M because of the identical core rate (625 MHz). The built-in DDR3 memory has a clock rate of 790 GHz. The GPU isn't only built into the case for games but also for supporting the processor. The graphic chip (PureVideo HD) can take over HD decoding (H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 etc.) just as well as video coding (CUDA, DirectX Compute und OpenGL). The GPU is capable of DirectX 10.1 effects but not of PhysX. The latter wouldn't be used due to the lacking performance anyway. We established a weak 3223 points in 3DMark06. Even if the negative rating is obvious for gaming, we couldn't resist playing Risen and Anno 1404. As expected, Anno 1404 only runs smoothly in the lowest settings (89 fps, 1.024x768). The frames drop without mercy to 11 fps in high details. The fantasy adventure, Risen, even only reaches 31 fps (800x600, low details). Thus, demanding gamers can bid well to the GeForce 310M. |
Good luck with your purchase but again I warn you, I don't honestly believe you can run UM, meaning all UM effects on at least minimum, with that laptop.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
With payday coming up, I'm going to be looking to upgrade my prehistoric laptop to something shiny that will support ultra mode.
However Im from the UK and my cash is limited to around £300, that being said can anyone suggest a decent laptop for around this price mark?
Ive been looking around ebay and theres some decent laptops there but I would prefer to buy from a more trusted resource if possible since you never know how many times the seller has dropped it and stuff until you get it.