Curse

Emmavescence · Feb 04, 2007, 04:05 AM // 04:05

I'm in the process of buying a new laptop, and I have a question about graphics cards. Does anyone play GW with the ATI Mobility Radeon X1400? The machine I'm looking at has 256mm dedicated VRAM with up to 512mb HyperMemory. I have a friend who gets good performance with the X600, which I believe is a model down, but I'm specifically looking for how well the X1400 runs. What kind of framerate do you get, and can you play it on the max settings? What about with antialiasing? I'm getting a Duo T7200 2ghz with 2gb RAM (533mhz initially, but I can upgrade this to 667mhz later if I feel the need), with SATA HD (though only 5400rpm), so everything else should be in order. It's almost an identical machine to the Alienware Area 51 m5550 except the branding, the graphics card and about £600, so if I can get away with the X1400 I'll be happy!

j_unit66 · Feb 04, 2007, 04:11 AM // 04:11

i would think you would be able to use that Video card, not sure a bout any anti aliasing, but you should be able to run with most on high.

tijo · Feb 04, 2007, 11:56 PM // 23:56

That video card should run guildwars without any problems. If youwant an idea of how well that video card performs overall compared with other video cards, you can check the benchmarks on the internet. http://www.tomshardware.com should be a good place to start looking for benchmarks. You probably wont find any information on performance with guildwars but there should be info on performance with games that demand much more out of your video card than guildwars does.

Riceboi · Feb 05, 2007, 11:27 PM // 23:27

I just ordered a Dell laptop last week with that exact video card. I also have pretty clse to your system specs. I got the 1.6 Ghz duo with 2GB RAM and the Radeon x1400. I almost went with the Nvidia 7900GS (I think that's right), but I decided to save about $200.

The laptop should arrive today, and I will see if I have time to try Guild Wars on it tonight. I don't think we have anything to worry about.

tnam7 · Feb 05, 2007, 11:37 PM // 23:37

Do yourself a HUGE favor and go with a 7200RPM HD, you will get a noticable drop in performance with your current HD.

I have GW installed on an IBM Thinkpad (work computer ;o) T2400 1.83 Duo, 1GB RAM, running on a ATI Mobility X1300. I can play on the recommened graphic settings with no problems. If I turn on AA or post processing effects, the FPS drop to below 10 and it becomes unplayable.

Riceboi · Feb 06, 2007, 06:25 AM // 06:25

Well I got my laptop up and running GW, and the Radeon x1400 runs guild wars good IMO.

MegaMouse · Feb 06, 2007, 06:30 AM // 06:30

I have an HP8315nr laptop thathas the ATI mobility 200m grapics set in it with 128 megs of dedicated ram and with the graphics settings lowered some it plays GW quite fine. I do not run AA or AF because the FPS hit but I do get arund 40-60 FPS at ll times. The X1400 is the big brother to what I have so just play with the settings until you get the balance of Frame rates and eye-candy.

Mega Mouse

Menzoberranzan · Feb 06, 2007, 07:18 AM // 07:18

I have the exact graphics card and its more than enough to be able to play Guild Wars. However it doesn't handle maxed AA well enough for gameplay to be considered fluid.

If possible I would suggest you get a more powerful card. Maybe go for a Dell Inspiron 9400 instead of the 6400.

Make sure your HD has enough space, if you are a media downloader 80gb isn't really enough for games, music and videos combined. 5400 is decent enough unless you frequently transfer files from one directory to another, rename stuff, basically utilize a lot of HD activity.

I have also heard about something called Santa Rosa. Apparently its a new platform that makes even better use of the Dual Core feature. It should be available in laptops in a month or two. If I were you I would wait for a bit before getting a laptop as this isn't really the best of times.