new laptop, correct performance?

i just got a new laptop. here are its specs:

core 2 duo T5450 1.66ghz
2gb ram
nvidia geforce 8400M GS 128mb
resolution: 1280x800
windows vista home premium

currently, with everything maxed out except shadow quality (medium) and AA x2, i can get 30-45 fps generally, and 25-30 fps in towns.

is this the normal performance for a laptop such as mine? i have nothing to compare it to right now.

yep its normal performance. I had nothing to compare my laptop too. I have a Dell Vostro 1500.

That's good for that card tbh

I get 30-35fps busy places, 50-60 elsewhere.

Specs:

Core2Duo [email protected]
2gb RAM
7950GTX 512MB
1680x1050

i think the major limiting factor is the core 2 duo processor, since GW can only utilize one of the cores. i might be wrong though.

Limiting factor?

I don't know what kind of performance you were expecting, a 8400 is a low end card. Also, be aware that a laptop can go no higher then 60fps.

Even a single Core 2 Duo core should be perfectly adequate for the game. The only limiting factors in that computer are the video chip and Windows Vista.

i just think it's very odd that my computer, depite with superior components (except maybe the gfx card), gets outperformed at GW by my friend's 3 year old pentium 4 (2.4ghz) with ATI radeon 9800PRO. yes, i know his graphics card is high end, but that's 2 generations old now.

There's nothing odd about the 8400 GS being slow at 1280x800 or any other reasonably high resolution. As usual with low-end cards its internal memory bus is badly crippled to save costs; only 64-bit, with max bandwidth around 9.6 GB/s. Compare to the 9800 Pro's 256-bit bus, bandwidth around 21.8 GB/s.

Two generations newer or not, the card still needs the data to process it, and that 64-bit memory bus doesn't deliver it very fast.

My laptop is a Dell XPS M1710 w/ T7600 Core2Duo (2.33ghz) + NVidia GF Go7900GTX-512. It's able to hold 60fps @1920x1200 in all but the most crowded districts.

Although GW is only single-threaded, XP and Vista are both multi-processor aware operating systems. As a result, they can offload other tasks like internet browsers, virus scanners, defrag, etc... to the less-busy core while GW gets a core all to itself. This translates into better performance for both GW and the rest of the PC.