Well, someone might be interested in this. Others may get a good laugh.
For the last year or so, I've been playing COH with my old laptop--a Celeron with Intel Integerated Graphics for the Hard-core Gamer! Oops! Its Intel HD Integrated Graphics.
Yes, This was painful, but I could play. I was plauged with long load times, lots of disconnects and I could not play with a team of more than 3 members. Oh, and avoid Ritki invasions. I can barely load Pretoria.
Well, my sister now has a new low-end laptop. I have to set it up for her (system restore files, anit-virus, etc.) so I took the liberty of downloading COH so I could see how it runs on her new . This laptop has a blazing AMD Turon II P340 and some type of integrated graphics. Oooooh!
When I loaded up COH, I got a message--"You have a computer with a graphics card that can run UltraMode. Do you want to?" Got those two choices--I guess one is UM and the other UM Lite. I chose UM Lite.
Wow! Looks great! I love it. But, I get sooooo much lag. No DC problems though. And it loaded really quickly (compared to what I was used to anyway). But the lag is intolerable. it was better playing in regular mode on my Celeron. Well. except for the DCs and frozen screens.
So,now I've completed this experiment, and I know that anyhing I get will run COH. Probably cant get something that cant. Also, my hunch is that even the --what 5640? or 330M? graphics card will at least let me run UM Lite just fine. It would be nice to get confirmation on this from someone who tried. It will definitley be more capable than my sister's set up. But she wont care--she does not play video games. But no, definitley not the full Ultramode. But I can live with that.
One question--can anyone tell me how to turn this UM off so I can get a rid of the lag?
In game, you go to Menu-->Options-->Audio & Graphics. There's a little section for Ultra-Mode. Just slide everything off and then nudge them back a bit until you hit a performance level that's acceptable.
You can also do a: /showfps 1 - to turn on the frame rate display (/showfps 0 to turn off)
From my own experience, Ambient Occulsion at any level other than off sucks out around 20 fps on my desktop system. I don't notice significant hits with any of the other options, but I keep my setting low to mid.
Teams are the number one killer of soloists.
Quote:
Fixed that for you.
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
First, the words laptop, inexpensive and Ultramode are mutually exclusive.
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Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
I know its been some time, I cant sleep so I am checking threads I have posts on:
That said:
Right now the only decent video cards / graphics chips are by Nvidia or AMD/ATI.
For COH I suggest an Nvidia card if you can manage it. ATI makes good cards as well, however Nvidia is superior with open gl.
Avoid, if you can, any kind of integrated graphics options. Shared memory slows things down. Intel graphics are great for low end systems and doing word, excel, etc, not for gaming.
If you have time look at reviews or go to a site like hardocp.com and ask in their forums to get some excellent advise for a new card or what built in video is better for your laptop choice.
leaning towards a toshiba i7 with a Radeon 330M. That graphic cards seems under-spec. I probably wont be running UM, but I think my overall experience will drastically improve. I just can't shell out the extra to get the units w/ better graphics. Too bad it wont have blu-ray either. Seems like the 330M will perform about like the card in the HP. It may be the same card--hp seems to be matching up the intel chips with the Radeon graphics instead of the Nvidia graphics. The HP did have 8GB of ram though.