Advice on a gift
By
BigDaddyDream,
Posted on: 2010-11-11 07:31 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Quote:
With a Radeon HD 4250, it'll run CoH at low to low-middle settings, but not a whole lot better. You could do worse, of course.|
Originally Posted by BigDaddyDream
I am going to be buying THIS for my 11yo son.
While we do have a nice desktop that he uses to play CoH, I was wondering if the laptop will be able to run it. Thanks in advance. BDD |
Also, if you don't mind giving him a refurbished machine, you could go to Toshiba Direct and get him this laptop, with similar specs (though a mildly slower processor)... and save almost a hundred bucks. (The system, new, costs about the same as the one you're looking at. I'm not a big fan of HP and have had good luck with Toshiba - we bought a refurb for each of our kids this past spring - but your mileage may vary.)
If an extra couple hundred isn't as much of an issue, and you really want a system that's going to pack more of a gaming punch for your son, you could try and find a Acer Aspire AS5740G-6979, which has a Radeon HD 5650 Mobile graphics processor. It should run Ultra-Mode graphics at medium to mid-high quality. It's a discontinued model, however, and was about $700 when it went off the shelves. Amazon.com has a similar model here with an nVidia GeForce 430M, which should do a bit better than the 4250 in that HP. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of Acer, either...
EDIT: Looks like the updated version of the Aspire AS5740G-6979 is the Aspire AS7551G-6477. It's $680 at Newegg.com. For that extra hundred and eighty dollars, you get a triple-core processor (rather than the double in the HP), 4GB RAM (rather than 3GB), a 500GB hard drive (instead of 320GB), a Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB dedicated RAM (over the HP's Radeon HD 4250 with 1GB shared RAM), a 17.3 inch screen (an upgrade over the 15.6 inch on the HP), and Gigabit Ethernet (replacing the HP's 10/100BaseT). It's a pretty serious upgrade for a relatively reasonable price.
Hope that helps.
Where do we go from here?
Quote:
I'd second this advice; the only downside is that the larger machine will naturally be heavier and less portable, you didn't mention if that was a concern however.|
Originally Posted by Hero Prime
With a Radeon HD 4250, it'll run CoH at low to low-middle settings, but not a whole lot better. You could do worse, of course.
Also, if you don't mind giving him a refurbished machine, you could go to Toshiba Direct and get him this laptop, with similar specs (though a mildly slower processor)... and save almost a hundred bucks. (The system, new, costs about the same as the one you're looking at. I'm not a big fan of HP and have had good luck with Toshiba - we bought a refurb for each of our kids this past spring - but your mileage may vary.) If an extra couple hundred isn't as much of an issue, and you really want a system that's going to pack more of a gaming punch for your son, you could try and find a Acer Aspire AS5740G-6979, which has a Radeon HD 5650 Mobile graphics processor. It should run Ultra-Mode graphics at medium to mid-high quality. It's a discontinued model, however, and was about $700 when it went off the shelves. Amazon.com has a similar model here with an nVidia GeForce 430M, which should do a bit better than the 4250 in that HP. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of Acer, either... EDIT: Looks like the updated version of the Aspire AS5740G-6979 is the Aspire AS7551G-6477. It's $680 at Newegg.com. For that extra hundred and eighty dollars, you get a triple-core processor (rather than the double in the HP), 4GB RAM (rather than 3GB), a 500GB hard drive (instead of 320GB), a Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB dedicated RAM (over the HP's Radeon HD 4250 with 1GB shared RAM), a 17.3 inch screen (an upgrade over the 15.6 inch on the HP), and Gigabit Ethernet (replacing the HP's 10/100BaseT). It's a pretty serious upgrade for a relatively reasonable price. Hope that helps. |
I wasn't a huge fan of Acer myself thanks to their really poor quality in the late '90's but apparently they're a different breed of cat now; I've a buddy who bought one for his young son a couple of years ago. After seeing what that kid put the laptop through without so much as a hiccup I have to say I'm impressed with the durability.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Just a little warning, I've had my HP laptop (not the model mentioned above) blow up. Twice. Due to poor design. They used the same fan to cool both the CPU & the GPU, with no heat sink of any kind, not even a copper bushing, or thermal gel on the GPU.
Personally, I will not purchase another HP laptop. I'd recommend searching the web for forums on this model to see if it might be having similar issues.
Thanks everyone for the advice.
I am going to be buying THIS for my 11yo son.
While we do have a nice desktop that he uses to play CoH, I was wondering if the laptop will be able to run it.
Thanks in advance.
BDD