New Laptop for playing CoX on the road
By
AnElfCalledMack,
Posted on: 2011-02-18 07:02 in Player Questions
Quote:
I really hope you meant gigabytes, not megabytes.
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Originally Posted by Enyalios
Would 6-8M RAM
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Quote:
Bill Gates allegedly once said that "64K ought to be enough for anybody". If this is true, he was wrong.|
Originally Posted by Enyalios
Would 6-8M RAM and 1M dedicated video card be enough? or is that even overkill and 4? RAM and 512k be enough?
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Assuming you did mean GB, rather than MB (yes, computer systems have advanced their memory capacities by 3 orders of magnitude over the last 15-or-so years), 4GB will work quite comfortably for a 64-bit system that's running a single instance of City of Heroes and not much else. If you want to dual (or triple, or quad, etc), or if you want to run other applications in the background, the extra RAM will help.
I run the game with a 512MB dedicated video card (9700M GTS), and can manage on low Ultra Mode settings at about 30 FPS, assuming that I'm not running much in the background. I doubt that memory capacity is my bottleneck, but most of the more modern video cards tend to come equipped with 1GB dedicated memory, and would probably handle Ultra Mode better. Resolution can be a big determinant of your graphic card demands. My laptop runs at 1440 x 900, and I experience significant loss of performance when I hook up to a 1080P HD TV (1920x1080 resolution)
Processor speed is my current system bottleneck, at least according to the Windows Performance Scores - I'm running a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, which is rated a 5.5 on Windows 7's scale (all of my other components rate 5.9). For purposes of City of Heroes, you'll generally find that the sum of up to two processor speeds gives you a rough indication of how much processor power you're throwing at the game (though other features, such as cache memory, 4 cores instead of 2, etc, will probably carry some benefit). Reading up on the performance of the various processor lines may prove enlightening as well - there's more to a good, fast processor than just a high clock speed (though high clock speed helps, a lot)
For reference, the laptop I use is a Toshiba Qosmio X300-01u, upgraded to Windows 7 and with a second 640GB Hard Drive added in the secondary Bay (and separated from the other hard drive with a couple of Pog slammers I have from way back when...they're handy for that, provided I don't shake the thing around too much) They've since released the X500 line, which packs a lot more processor and GPU power, and displays in much higher resolution with another inch of screen real estate. If my income wasn't being used for more important things, I'd probably be splurging on one of those, or one of the similar ASUS gaming laptops (depending on pricing differences).
A couple of notes about playing CoH on a laptop. Firstly, it's going to be murder on your battery life. I can get three hours out of a full charge, but intensive programs like CoH cut it down to just one hour. Of course, my laptop's not quite as good as what you're talking about, so I tend to run CoH only when it's plugged in and can squeeze out a bit more performance.
Secondly, playing off a wireless internet dongle is probably going to expose you to a lot more lag than you're used to. Get used to queueing attacks, and try playing your sturdier characters - Kinetics corruptors might not be the best choice for a game where you could go through a dead spot and mapserve at any moment.
Finally, heat. CoH will make your laptop put out a lot of heat, and most laptops aren't great at dispersing it. If you try something like a Task Force, you could find the game starting to slow down, then other problems. I find it tends to make me unable to type chat messages a bit before something serious goes wrong. I had to quit and restart between missions on an LGTF this week just to let a bit of heat dissipate after the Hamidon.
Yeah I'm dating when I actually knew something about computers with my M and k..........thats so 90's right?
My plan is to have the comp be able to be plugged in but you know....when I'm travelling and have left the rest of the family at home I might as well MMO rather than be bored sitting in a hotel room waiting to go back to whatever account or project I'm working on the next day.
Thanks for all the help, I suspect I'll go with 8G and 1G since its not really all that more expensive.
Sounds like a good plan.
Also, there are side benefits to playing on a laptop. For example, I was leading an LGTF earlier, and halfway through the third mission (we were actually finishing it for shards) there was a blackout. I quickly dropped the graphics settings a notch, got back into the fray, and was able to finish the TF on the battery. Just as well, really, because the power wasn't back on for over an hour, and I don't think the team would have waited for me. Which would be a pity, because we were having a great time and rolling through most of the content.
Score one for the laptop.
I'm looking to upgrade from my current laptop
How much memory and how much dedicated memory on the graphics card do I need/want?
I'm looking to run on low-end of ultra-mode.
Does processor speed matter much?
Would 6-8M RAM and 1M dedicated video card be enough? or is that even overkill and 4? RAM and 512k be enough?
Other than CoX I doubt I'll run too many "intensive" programs on the system.....at least not graphical ones.
Thanks in advance.