Curse

CasterOfShame27 · Oct 12, 2010, 11:43 PM // 23:43

I think for now, I'll keep my eye on the Qosmios - It really won me over for the time being, it's just the size that is keeping me on the fence. I love it, but I need portability as well.

http://us.toshiba.com/computers/lapt...X500/X505-Q887

I also really like this laptop that Elder III posted earlier:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220827

Thanks for your help everyone, it means a lot to a gamer who doesn't know a lot about computer specs!

tijo · Oct 13, 2010, 01:02 AM // 01:02

One last thing, i suggest you also ask in the what notebook should i buy forum at notebookreview and cross-reference the choices we gave you here. You should have a pretty solid idea with recommendations from both sites. You can also give them our recommendations and see their thoughts on it.

Lourens · Oct 15, 2010, 06:05 AM // 06:05

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834127279 best bang for your buck

Looks nice, can play GW2 on medium/high and isn't that weird looking and heavy as a gaming laptop

jesh · Oct 17, 2010, 06:56 PM // 18:56

I see a lot of misinformation in this thread..

Macs will run gw buttery smooth if you just use WINE. You don't even need to waste money on crossover. WINE comes with a preset just for guildwars and is free software. Open source. My brother uses it all the time.

There's also the obvious option of buying a copy of windows 7, installing it onto the mac with bootcamp and using software (open source too) to run windows 7 without having to reboot. Yeah. Lots of people have done it.
This would also ensure gw2 compatibility without experimenting with settings in WINE or waiting for a preset to be made or bothering to restart your computer to run windows.

Keep in mind the new macbook will give you 10 hours of battery life, (less when gaming, obviously), weighs less than most laptops by a good pound, and will be a lot more dependable than anything else you're looking at.

The new macbook base model comes with the geforce 320m, which is an integreated chip and will share memory with your laptop's ram. Generally this would be a bad thing, but the 320m is brand new and has been designed fairly well. It is replacing the 9400m and is quite a bit faster as you can see from apple's website.

There's a lot of controversy over the 320m, but in general you can compare it to the 9600m ddr2 gpu.

9600M:
Pavilion dv7-1050eg ( 1280x800)
T9400
4096 MB
500 / 400MHz
512MB GDDR2 175.53
3dmark: 4419

320M:
MacBook Pro 13" 2010
P8600
4096 MB
3dmark: 4754

Lots of people have reported playing starcraft 2 and bad company 2 very easily on this card as well, so I wouldn't worry about gw2 performance. ANet has stated they are designing gw2 to run on a wide range of machines, just as gw1 did.

What I want you to get out of this is to not rule out the macbook. OSX is hands down designed better than any other OS for actually get stuff done fast, and apple is extremely well known for making dependable hardware.
You're looking at qosmios.. which is the exact opposite. Huge, clunky, unstable things, just to get ~10 more fps out of gw2?

Well I guess the choice is yours in the end.

Lord Sojar · Oct 19, 2010, 12:14 PM // 12:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by jesh

I see a lot of misinformation in this thread..

Macs will run gw buttery smooth if you just use WINE. You don't even need to waste money on crossover. WINE comes with a preset just for guildwars and is free software. Open source. My brother uses it all the time.

There's also the obvious option of buying a copy of windows 7, installing it onto the mac with bootcamp and using software (open source too) to run windows 7 without having to reboot. Yeah. Lots of people have done it.
This would also ensure gw2 compatibility without experimenting with settings in WINE or waiting for a preset to be made or bothering to restart your computer to run windows.

Keep in mind the new macbook will give you 10 hours of battery life, (less when gaming, obviously), weighs less than most laptops by a good pound, and will be a lot more dependable than anything else you're looking at.

The new macbook base model comes with the geforce 320m, which is an integreated chip and will share memory with your laptop's ram. Generally this would be a bad thing, but the 320m is brand new and has been designed fairly well. It is replacing the 9400m and is quite a bit faster as you can see from apple's website.

There's a lot of controversy over the 320m, but in general you can compare it to the 9600m ddr2 gpu.

9600M:
Pavilion dv7-1050eg ( 1280x800)
T9400
4096 MB
500 / 400MHz
512MB GDDR2 175.53
3dmark: 4419

320M:
MacBook Pro 13" 2010
P8600
4096 MB
3dmark: 4754

Lots of people have reported playing starcraft 2 and bad company 2 very easily on this card as well, so I wouldn't worry about gw2 performance. ANet has stated they are designing gw2 to run on a wide range of machines, just as gw1 did.

What I want you to get out of this is to not rule out the macbook. OSX is hands down designed better than any other OS for actually get stuff done fast, and apple is extremely well known for making dependable hardware.
You're looking at qosmios.. which is the exact opposite. Huge, clunky, unstable things, just to get ~10 more fps out of gw2?

Well I guess the choice is yours in the end.

Misinformation indeed....

The MBP uses a GeForce 330M as it's dGPU. It is not a gaming grade GPU, but it can play many games on low to medium settings. It should be noted, however, that the 330M will struggle with Guild Wars 2 on anything over a mix of medium/low settings at resolutions over 1440x900.

In addition, Apple makes NONE of the hardware in their notebooks. The only thing they produce are the aesthetics (the frame and fashion design) The hardware is all standard, run of the mill x86 hardware from Intel and nVidia. I believe they use either Samsung or LG drives for their disk drive supplier. This may have changed.

Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a Toshiba. 2 of my friends have the large Qosmio notebooks, one of which is 3 years old and still perfect. The other is about a year old, and fast as hell even now.

10 FPS? This will beat a Macbook pro in GW2 by at LEAST 30 FPS. I do mean AT LEAST.

Buy this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834214050

And slaughter Guild Wars 2 like it was Pacman. Also, it's at an excellent price.

It has nVidia's new 460M, which features Optimus. That means the GPU can completely shut itself down when gaming, consuming 0W of power, therefore increasing battery life substantially. Yes, it's big, but... it gets nearly 4 hours of battery life when you aren't gaming, and even while gaming, you'll still get at least and hour and half.

tijo · Oct 19, 2010, 05:34 PM // 17:34

Agreed, don't go MBP if you intend to do some serious gaming.

Impressive battery life and something that will play GW2 decently on a 1080p. If you plan on buying that one, just make sure that your classrooms have enough space for it.

My experience with my old toshiba (bought in 2005) has been a blast. My M40 literally went through laptop hell and is still working (it got wet, dropped, i stopped counting the desk corners i hit with it etc.). There might be a few dents in the casing, but no cracks or broken parts, pretty sturdy stuff.

Since then i went with asus (N50 and G73) and so far i've been satisfied with product quality. I can't really comment on other brands from personal experience, but from relatives' experiences i'd stay away from anything HP except their envy and business lines.

EDIT: Since the topic pops up quite often, it's not GW the guys recommending PCs are worried about, pretty much anything can tear through GW at this point (even the new intel IGPs), it's GW2. See the comments about the 330M and GW2 in this thread and what the OP wants for GW2, it's basically why we can't recommend the MBP at this point (256mb of video memory could end up being a problem at higher resolutions as well).

Thistle Xandra · Oct 19, 2010, 08:10 PM // 20:10

I purchased a MacBook back in Feb this year (specs 2.26 GHz IC2Duo, 2GB mem, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M) and setup bootcamp and windows 7 to play window games. GW is fine to play. I never run higher than the mid graphic setting and have enjoyed the game immensely. Just to give you an idea, this was a recent screenie I took with the settings I usually play with and this was taken with the highest setting on my 2.5 year old imac, so not a laptop, running XP. The screenies are saved as .jpg which accounts for some of the image degradation. BTW, I usually play on my laptop instead of my desktop, even though I can go higher quality on it.

Personally, I went macbook, because it had everything I wanted at a price I could afford. I didn't have to worry about buying windows since students at my school can download it for free through a program with microsoft. If you're planning on taking your comp to class alot, I would take into account size of the laptop as well. The other reason I chose MacBook is because it's light, yet has a big screen, and can run games. Personally, I still like their iBooks line more though (a little smaller/lighter) and wish they still made those

Send me a PM if you'd like more info about playing GW on a macbook since I just stumbled across this thread and probably won't be checking it again

Madpierre · Oct 19, 2010, 09:45 PM // 21:45

I run GW on my macbook pro using wineskin. You need a special version of GW which is available online and accepted by Anet. The graphics are amazing as they are full HD, much better than my pc. The only issue I have is that as wineskin is an emulator I cannot use push-to-talk on Vent but I get around that by having my mic open all the time and just turning it off and on when I want to speak. You will need to get used to the diff keys though as you need fn+F-key to access them and the CTRL/ALT keys are slightly diff. To get out you need to ALT+F12 and then can get back to the desktop.

All in all it works well and I would recommend the macbook pro.

Lord Sojar · Oct 19, 2010, 09:47 PM // 21:47

The point is, Guild Wars 2 will absolutely rip a MBP apart given their current resolutions + dGPU.... I mean tear it to pieces.

diabiosx · Oct 20, 2010, 02:19 AM // 02:19

my recommendation is bring ur desktop to your dorm and buy a mac book pro for school work. Macbook pros have the best battery life and will get you through the whole day of notetaking in class. You dont want to go cheap on battery life if you are using laptops for educational purposes(battery dying in class is soo annoying). Also DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND USE THE MAC OS OPERATING SYSTEM(no bootcamp bullshit). The fact that macs dont support games means that you wont be gaming in class(aka wont be distracted you get better grades). And when you go back to your dorm you have ur desktop waiting for you.

Elder III · Oct 20, 2010, 11:46 PM // 23:46

if all you want is to take notes in classes get a $200 netbook and be done with it.... 14 hrs battery life and weighs nothing, so even the wimpy kids these days can handle it.

Then get a desktop to game on.

CasterOfShame27 · Oct 21, 2010, 12:33 AM // 00:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Sojar

Misinformation indeed....

The MBP uses a GeForce 330M as it's dGPU. It is not a gaming grade GPU, but it can play many games on low to medium settings. It should be noted, however, that the 330M will struggle with Guild Wars 2 on anything over a mix of medium/low settings at resolutions over 1440x900.

In addition, Apple makes NONE of the hardware in their notebooks. The only thing they produce are the aesthetics (the frame and fashion design) The hardware is all standard, run of the mill x86 hardware from Intel and nVidia. I believe they use either Samsung or LG drives for their disk drive supplier. This may have changed.

Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a Toshiba. 2 of my friends have the large Qosmio notebooks, one of which is 3 years old and still perfect. The other is about a year old, and fast as hell even now.

10 FPS? This will beat a Macbook pro in GW2 by at LEAST 30 FPS. I do mean AT LEAST.

Buy this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834214050

And slaughter Guild Wars 2 like it was Pacman. Also, it's at an excellent price.

It has nVidia's new 460M, which features Optimus. That means the GPU can completely shut itself down when gaming, consuming 0W of power, therefore increasing battery life substantially. Yes, it's big, but... it gets nearly 4 hours of battery life when you aren't gaming, and even while gaming, you'll still get at least and hour and half.

Did I miss this on the Qosmio site? I'll get this one - it's a lot cheaper than the $1600 one and I trust you that it will play wonderfully. My only concern is the i5 processor instead of i7; will I be able to donwload multiple games (GW, GW2, maybe Oblivion/Fallout 3) on that? If that's way out of the question, don't be afraid to tell me. I often have high standards.

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabiosx

my recommendation is bring ur desktop to your dorm and buy a mac book pro for school work. Macbook pros have the best battery life and will get you through the whole day of notetaking in class. You dont want to go cheap on battery life if you are using laptops for educational purposes(battery dying in class is soo annoying). Also DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND USE THE MAC OS OPERATING SYSTEM(no bootcamp bullshit). The fact that macs dont support games means that you wont be gaming in class(aka wont be distracted you get better grades). And when you go back to your dorm you have ur desktop waiting for you.

Yeah, I'm not taking a desktop to my dorm...I'd rather have a laptop so I can go portable. I would plug it in when playing GW anyway, I never game outside of my home really.

You all have been so helpful! I think a Macbook is out of the equation now...I might take Elder III's advice and invest in a Netbook for notes.

Lord Sojar · Oct 21, 2010, 01:05 AM // 01:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by CasterOfShame27

Did I miss this on the Qosmio site? I'll get this one - it's a lot cheaper than the $1600 one and I trust you that it will play wonderfully. My only concern is the i5 processor instead of i7; will I be able to donwload multiple games (GW, GW2, maybe Oblivion/Fallout 3) on that? If that's way out of the question, don't be afraid to tell me. I often have high standards.

Yeah, I'm not taking a desktop to my dorm...I'd rather have a laptop so I can go portable. I would plug it in when playing GW anyway, I never game outside of my home really.

You all have been so helpful! I think a Macbook is out of the equation now...I might take Elder III's advice and invest in a Netbook for notes.

Yes, it will play all the games you listed. The i5 is essentially a quad core, thanks to Hyper Threading. Games threat it more like a quad core than a dual core. It will be fine for several years to come.

And with 4 hrs battery life... you won't need a netbook.

CasterOfShame27 · Oct 21, 2010, 02:55 AM // 02:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Sojar

Yes, it will play all the games you listed. The i5 is essentially a quad core, thanks to Hyper Threading. Games threat it more like a quad core than a dual core. It will be fine for several years to come.

And with 4 hrs battery life... you won't need a netbook.

Sweet. What is the difference in performance (speed, memory & gaming wise) bewteen an i7 and an i5?

Lord Sojar · Oct 21, 2010, 10:11 AM // 10:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by CasterOfShame27

Sweet. What is the difference in performance (speed, memory & gaming wise) bewteen an i7 and an i5?

Here ya go.

I picked the fastest Core i5 for desktops and pit it against the slowest Core i7 for desktops. The reasoning is simple: The mobile Corei7's run at 1.7GHz, while the mobile i5's run at 2.4+. In this case, the difference is between a 1.7GHz Corei7 720M and a Corei5 460M at 2.53GHz.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/145?vs=108

The few game results are at the bottom. Don't look at them from the standpoint of FPS, but rather the difference between them. As you can see, in Crysis, the i5 beats the i7. However, the slower i7 wins out in Farcry. Really, if a game is super well multi threaded, the i7s can win out, but most games thrive on 2-4 cores if they are multithreaded. So... in other words, the dual core + Hyperthreading Corei5 is more than enough for gaming.

Elder III · Oct 21, 2010, 12:17 PM // 12:17

yep, really no need to go beyond an i5 CPU right now if gaming is your primary concern; you won't regret having one, they are quite nice indeed.

tijo · Oct 21, 2010, 02:16 PM // 14:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elder III

yep, really no need to go beyond an i5 CPU right now if gaming is your primary concern; you won't regret having one, they are quite nice indeed.

Yep, add to that that the mobile i7 dissipate quite a lot of heat and are rather power hungry. Between the highest i5 model and lowest i7, get the i5.