1005 replies to this topic

[Di-Dorval]

Hi all! I need a good laptop. Mostly for college but if it could run well GW2 too it would be great! (a solid medium at leats). My budget is 2000 and I live in Canada.

[tijo]

Di-Dorval, on 14 October 2012 - 02:26 PM, said:

Hi all! I need a good laptop. Mostly for college but if it could run well GW2 too it would be great! (a solid medium at leats). My budget is 2000 and I live in Canada.

You got any size/battery life/weight requirements oh and also screen resolution. You say you're going to use it for college, any idea of what you're going to do with it for your studies?

[Di-Dorval]

tijo, on 14 October 2012 - 11:34 PM, said:

You got any size/battery life/weight requirements oh and also screen resolution. You say you're going to use it for college, any idea of what you're going to do with it for your studies?

Nothing really heavy, powerpoint. word. autocad (very light 3d modeling program), maple (mathematics program). The screen must be 1080p though and normal battery life, There is plugs almost everywhere where I will be using it.

I don't want it to be too big though I'm thinking standard size or a bit smaller and the weight dosn't really matter but I guess the lighter the best.

I mostly want to buy a very decent gaming laptop and that criteria will make it strong enough for any school stuff in my program.

Edited by Di-Dorval, 15 October 2012 - 02:47 AM.

[tijo]

Then, the sony SVS15 should fit your needs while still handling GW2 well enough at medium settings, you can also look into Sager notebooks (not the NP9150/9170, those are huge, but smaller models). Reflexnotebooks sell sagers and they are in Québec.

You will have to go for a 15" (or bigger) if you want 1080p. You can also look at the Lenovo W530 with the K2000m GPU, it's not a gaming GPU, but it has 555m'ish performance in gaming.

You can look for notebooks with a 650m or a 660m The HP Envy 15 and Asus N56Vz would also suit you, but i'm not sure about availability in Canada for the envy though. The 15" gaming notebooks like the NP9150, G55, etc might be a bit bulky for you.

Edited by tijo, 15 October 2012 - 11:29 PM.

[anudaw]

any thoughts about Sager NP9170, imma get the gtx 675mx version of gpu. thinking of buying it for gw2. any other brands to recommend?

[GamerLucif]

Looking for a decent laptop between 600-800 that can run GW2 on medium at least and can run a decent amount of games. I'd like to avoid anything with know horrible heating issues and I'm hoping it could last me 4+ years with good care. The previous one I wanted was ok but since  my budget increased I figured I'd ask.

Edited by GamerLucif, 02 November 2012 - 03:16 PM.

[Jeter]

Hello, I'm looking for a laptop that can run GW2 pretty well (medium to high) along with others games such as black ops 2 I might play eventually. Preferably 15 inch. My price range is around $1,000; maybe a bit higher if it makes a big difference. Thanks.

[tijo]

Jeter, on 22 November 2012 - 07:52 PM, said:

Hello, I'm looking for a laptop that can run GW2 pretty well (medium to high) along with others games such as black ops 2 I might play eventually. Preferably 15 inch. My price range is around $1,000; maybe a bit higher if it makes a big difference. Thanks.

Late reply, but at ~1000$, you can start looking at laptops like the MSI GE60/GT60 as well as the Sager NP9150.

[owly]

How will the GT 650m handle GW2 at 1090p and keep +40 FPS in pvp/pve/wvw?  Medium, high?

[Nash]

owly, on 30 November 2012 - 09:13 PM, said:

How will the GT 650m handle GW2 at 1090p and keep +40 FPS in pvp/pve/wvw?  Medium, high?

On high you will barely get 40 fps on high @1080p. For WvW you CPU will be the bottleneck. For comparison: i got a laptop with 1600x900, GTX 660m 2 GB DDR5, i7 3720. Settings are almost everything on high, except for the really demanding ones like supersampling etc.
In normal PvE: depending on the amount of other players, effects and events: between 30 (e. g. Shatterer with 40 ppl) and 60-80 fps when there's little other people around and not many effects. Also very depending on the environment of the area it seems.
In WvW: in a zerg attacking a NPC base: constant 30 fps. But still can drop down to 15-20 in a zerg vs zerg.

GT650m is about 15% slower than the GTX660m and you have the higher resolution....

Edited by Nash, 01 December 2012 - 05:35 PM.

[owly]

Thanks! and I meant 1080p btw

[Nash]

owly, on 01 December 2012 - 05:01 PM, said:

Thanks! and I meant 1080p btw

So did I, just copied the "1090" mindlessly

[tijo]

owly, on 30 November 2012 - 09:13 PM, said:

How will the GT 650m handle GW2 at 1090p and keep +40 FPS in pvp/pve/wvw?  Medium, high?

In PvE, at med-high, 40fps should be possible. I get around that with a mobility 5870 which is close to a 650m.

[Var]

I'm in the market for a =<14" laptop (desire is on portability) with the ability to play (not necessarily well or on anything fancy) GW2 and Minecraft. As of so far, the only thing to strike my fancy and not be over 1000$+ is the Samsung 5 Series with the A10 APU (which can be had from Amazon warehouse of just over 600$) which is at the cut-off of 14". I haven't been able to find many better deals without either going into the 15.6" regime which I don't want or the 1000$+ pricetag range which, while not restrictive in terms of available funds, is more than I'd like to spend. I know the specs and throughput of the A10(M) as this has and the graphics are, as far as my knowledge of the benchmarks is concerned, above and beyond the HD4000 of the respective 3rd gen intel series (though feel free to correct me if my knowledge on the 7620G vs 4000 is wrong).

If anyone has an opinion or a better buy idea, let me know.

[Mugen]

I bought an Asus g75vx recently and its amazing. It's quite heavy and big so portability is a bit of an issue. You can run gw in mostly max settings. Some settings siginificantly affects the fps if set to max for some reason so I put them in medium. Don't really notice a difference in max anyways. My fps sits comfortably at around 40-45 mark. The screen is amazing, you can use it outside without any reflections. I use this for college as well however carrying it from my car to the class isn't the most comfortable part of my day. Besides that it is a great replacement to my desktop. I took out the hard disks from my desktop and bought a Sata/IDE to USB kit to connect them to my laptop. Here are the specs if anyone is interested:

Processor: Intel® Core i7 3630QM 2.4Ghz (Turbo 3.4G)/6M
Display: 17.3" FHD (1920 x 1080)
Memory: 16GB DDR3-1600   (4 DIMM Max 16GB)
HDD: 1 x 256GB SSD   1 x 1TB 5400rpm
ODD: Bluray Writer
Graphic: 3GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce GTX670MX
Audio: Built-in speaker;Built-in microphone ;Built-in subwoofer ;Sonic Master
NW: 802.11 b/g/n, 10/100/1000
BT: BT 4.0
Camera: 720P HD Camera
Weight: 4.50 KG
Dimension: 41.5(W) x 32.0(D) x 1.70 ~ 5.20 (H) cm
Card Reader: SD、MMC、MS
USB: 4x USB 3.0
I/O: 1x Microphone-in jack;1x Headphone-out jack (S/PDIF);1x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert;1x VGA Port (D-Sub);1x HDMI;1x Display Port

The only bad thing about this laptop is the sound. They took the trouble of installing a subwoofer but left a subpar sound system. Besides that is an awesome desktop replacement.

[tijo]

Late reply, laptop speakers are always meh, the problem lies with their size mostly.

You should try lugging around a Dell Precision M6700 through mass transit to university every day, I need the hardware for things other than gaming though.

[Warmaster Bacon]

Was just looking at upgrading my laptop, and Decided on either the MSI GT60, or a sager NP9130 (whichever I can get cheaper). On sagers website they have a couple of different screen options and I was wondering, whats the difference?
First they have a normal 1920x1080p LED screen
Then they have the same screen but matte finish 15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Matte Finished Surface
The third option (which is an extra $175) is a 15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display featuring 95% NTSC Color Gamut in Matte Finished Surface
What does having a matte finished surface do?
and what does the 95% NTSC Color Gamut do?
Last question, should I go for the GTX670M or the GTX670MX?
I did a bit of research and found there was only a 1fps difference on average for gw2 on high settings, would it be worth it for other games like skyrim?

Edited by Warmaster Bacon, 31 March 2013 - 12:58 AM.

[tijo]

A matte surface has a non reflective coating on it, the colors are slightly less vibrant that a glossy screen, but you get close to no glare on the matte. Personally I prefer matte, but you'll find people who prefer glossy.

NTSC refers to color gamut: http://en.wikipedia....iki/Color_gamut. You will get nicer colors on the 95% NTSC gamut panel, I'd personally go for it, it's about as good as it can get before going for a HP Dreamcolor 2 or Dell Premiercolor laptop display. It's not IPS, IPS gives you better viewing angles, but most don't have as good color reproduction and there's no IPS options for those displays anyways.

Finally, go for the 670MX, the 670M is a rebranded 570M, the 670MX is a true Kepler and has better gaming performance. The only reason you'd want a 670M is if you use OpenCL (not OpenGL) extensively.

Edited by tijo, 31 March 2013 - 04:46 AM.

[Warmaster Bacon]

tijo, on 31 March 2013 - 04:46 AM, said:

A matte surface has a non reflective coating on it, the colors are slightly less vibrant that a glossy screen, but you get close to no glare on the matte. Personally I prefer matte, but you'll find people who prefer glossy.

NTSC refers to color gamut: http://en.wikipedia....iki/Color_gamut. You will get nicer colors on the 95% NTSC gamut panel, I'd personally go for it, it's about as good as it can get before going for a HP Dreamcolor 2 or Dell Premiercolor laptop display. It's not IPS, IPS gives you better viewing angles, but most don't have as good color reproduction and there's no IPS options for those displays anyways.

Finally, go for the 670MX, the 670M is a rebranded 570M, the 670MX is a true Kepler and has better gaming performance. The only reason you'd want a 670M is if you use OpenCL (not OpenGL) extensively.

what about network cards?
the stock one is a:
Internal 802.11 B+G+N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Combo Module
I was thinking about going for the:
Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 802.11 A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth 4.0 Combo Module
its $50 extra, think I should go for it? Also I was wondering, the B+G+N, and the other one is A/B/G/N. What does that mean? my brother was talking about getting a new router as we have 8 devices on our current one, and from time to time it starts to crash. I remember he was saying something about a new connection type or something and was talking about the BGN stuff. Is "A" the new connection type/cardtype/whatever he was talking about?

[tijo]

Old, but will get you started on the basics: http://www.smallnetb...tworkingntk2006

Anything not wireless N is not worth considering at this point and to get N speeds, you need a N compatible adapter and router.

Wireless a means that your adapter can use both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands, there are advantages and downsides to 5GHz, I suggest you read up on those.

Worth checking if you have wireless network issues: http://www.smallnetb...ix-bad-wireless

Since you're going for a new router: http://www.smallnetb...er-2012-edition

Lastly, is there an Intel 6300 option and how much does it cost? 50$ is on the expensive side for a NIC, especially one that has hit and miss driver releases. Sure the killer has good peak throughput, but 50$ is sill asking a lot, so what are teh other options (all of them) and how much do they cost?

[Warmaster Bacon]

tijo, on 01 April 2013 - 01:32 AM, said:

Old, but will get you started on the basics: http://www.smallnetb...tworkingntk2006

Anything not wireless N is not worth considering at this point and to get N speeds, you need a N compatible adapter and router.

Wireless a means that your adapter can use both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands, there are advantages and downsides to 5GHz, I suggest you read up on those.

Worth checking if you have wireless network issues: http://www.smallnetb...ix-bad-wireless

Since you're going for a new router: http://www.smallnetb...er-2012-edition

Lastly, is there an Intel 6300 option and how much does it cost? 50$ is on the expensive side for a NIC, especially one that has hit and miss driver releases. Sure the killer has good peak throughput, but 50$ is sill asking a lot, so what are teh other options (all of them) and how much do they cost?

These are all the options and how much extra they cost:

Internal 802.11 B+G+N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Combo Module Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Combo Module [+$30.00] Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module [+$45.00] Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 802.11 A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth 4.0 Combo Module [+$50.00] Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module [+$60.00

[tijo]

Took me a while to reply, but here are my thoughts: Bigfoot will give you slightly better performance, but Intel is better reliability/consistency. I personally stick to Intel NICs because they never failed me and I haven't seen a drive that broke something yet. I find all of the options expensive personally, but I'd still get the upgrade if you aren't willing to do it yourself.

[Warmaster Bacon]

http://www.bestbuy.c...1&skuId=6928053

what about this laptop? its only $1200, and has a 7970, seems like a pretty good deal to me. I don't know much about AMD processors, but it is a quad core (was told quad core is ideal for gaming). What would be a comparable intel processor?

[lujate]

Can anyone recommend a laptop in the neighborhood of $1000 US for use when traveling?  I am not too ambitious, and do not intend to go zerging in WvW.  Just something to get my Daily and chat with friends.  Running on medium to low settings would be fine, i just want a decent FPS.

[tijo]

Do you have any size requirements?

The Vaio S13 and S15 are a good place to start, the S15 can be configured with a nice IPS 1080p display as well.

[lujate]

tijo, on 24 April 2013 - 10:47 PM, said:

Do you have any size requirements?
...

Mostly it will be travel by car, and the only movement will be to and from a hotel room.  I guess something small enough to fit under an airplane seat would probably be a good idea, because I do sometimes travel by air.

[tijo]

Then, 15" is the biggest you'll want to get, 14" or 13" would likely be preferable, also check out the Lenovo Y400, try to get it with a 1600x900 display if possible.

[crizpynutz]

I'm curious about the performance of the newer Lenovo y500 series. There are a couple different versions.

All 3 share these specs:

Intel i7-3630QM 2.4 1600
NVIDIA Geforce GT750M GDDR5 2GB
15.6 1920X1080 LED
1TB Hd 5400 RPM + 16GB SSD (cache)

Here is where they differ
8GB 12800 DDR3 1600mhz RAM
or 12GB or 16GB of same RAM

The top end has the 16GB RAM with a 2nd GT750M GDDR5 2GB with SLI

Right now SLI scares me a bit. I'm interested in running on high.  Thoughts?

[tijo]

RAM won't make a difference between  8, 12 or 16 GB, SLI will help in some circumstances, but you will still b CPU bound in large zergs. The 750M is more than enough to get high settings, not max though.

[crizpynutz]

tijo, on 12 May 2013 - 03:37 AM, said:

RAM won't make a difference between  8, 12 or 16 GB, SLI will help in some circumstances, but you will still b CPU bound in large zergs. The 750M is more than enough to get high settings, not max though.

All told then the 8 gb RAM and single 750M is going to yield similar results considering the same processor.

The only game I'm real concerned about is GW2.