Question about guildwars on a laptop

Getting a new laptop pretty soon.
NVIDIA 7150M GS 799MB shared and a 1.67GHz Core 2 Duo T5450 with 2 gigs of ram running vista 32bit.would this run guild wars well?If you have these same specs can you post what fps on what settings you get i would be very thankful

That laptop is much better than the laptop I am using right now to play Guild Wars and I have absolutely no problems running Guild Wars at all with 1 G of RAM and a 128 MB graphics card. My connection is always great and I usually average around 25-30 fps, I think.

I'm sure you'd be fine.

60-90 fps depending on your connection.

eh?

My laptop shits all over this one and I rarely hit 60fps unless I'm in my GH. As for 90fps..not unless you turn vsync off. Turning vsync off isn't wise.

With that card 10-20FPS busy areas, and 30-50fps quiet areas/guildhall.

I may have thrown a larger number than is correct.

But aside from when I said depending on your connection, why play with vsync on if you have a monitor capable of a high refresh rate?

my 6mb connection doesn't give me any more fps than my 2mb one. I wonder why.

Its has all to do with your service provider and your actual connection (satellite, dsl, cable, dialup) as well as your location and your ability to reach a guild wars login/game server with minimal packet loss. There are many many factors that can contribute loss of fps.

Of which the most significant one is definitely the laptop's video chip, not the network connection. I've occasionally seen the FPS getting a little unstable when the network at my student apartment hangs for a second or two (probably just the local router getting raped by thousands of BitTorrent connections), but it's barely noticeable in most cases.

Dunno about how packet loss would affect things, but generally you do not want to play anything over a network connection where it's a factor, anyway. It does funny things to netcode, especially when a game relies as heavily on client-side prediction as Guild Wars does.

A 7150 is sufficient. Expect around 20-30 fps in town, 40-60 in explorable.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4145

Internet conn/ISP affects your ping.

Computer hardware affects your FPS.

On my laptop, which has more ram but a shared-memory video card, gets about 40 FPS w/ everything turned down, and about 20-30 FPS w/ detail on medium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vsync

Why play with tearing?

Thank you all for your posts.Thanks alot for that link Combatchuck it was very helpful.I think ill save up some more $ and get the laptop with a NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS its about a 100$ more then the one with the 7150.

Maybe I'm missing something, but tearing only occurs when the image is being taken out of the frame buffer earlier than the video card is done importing the data it needs. When you have a monitor capable of keeping up with the video card, then there is no problem.

LCDS are usually incapable of tearing anyway.

Network settings and connection affect fps just as much if not more as graphical hardware and settings. Maybe if your little world, does not not affect the other.

EH?

You can have the best connection in the world, but it will make no difference if you don't have the hardware to back it up.

OP - Get a 7900GS or a 8600 if you can.

Tearing occurs when the monitor refreshes while the video card is in the middle of updating the primary framebuffer, resulting in the monitor displaying a mix of the current and previous frame, typically split (near-)horizontally as the monitor refresh takes place one line of pixels at a time, from top to bottom. How bad the tearing is is more a matter of the computer's performance than the monitor's, since with higher framerates, the difference between the frames will be smaller and the tearing less noticeable. Nothing besides having vsync on (which forces the framebuffer to only update between monitor refreshes) will completely eliminate it, though.

You're confusing the flicker caused by the electron beam scan in CRTs with tearing, which is an entirely different thing as described above.

Wrong. In any properly written network game the framerate is in no way locked to the rate at which the client can communicate over the network - if it was you'd be lucky to get 5 FPS

/woot... I love fellow techs... hopped into this late

Agreed and I cosign you last post

Meh, I always run with vsync disabled and I've never had any tearing.

Mind you, I run a pair of 8800GTX...

I do have terrible pop-ups and an apparentl tiny draw distance, but that doesn't change with vsync - probably nVidia's crapolata drivers. May well post here myself about that one of these days

Thats essentially all lag is, and its hardly something you can control beyond your own hardware on your specific network, even then your isp is the ultimate judge.
But in a practical situation where your playing GW on a machine with the recommended requirements, your going to be reaching an optimal framerate for your graphics settings witch will not cause any tearing at all as long as your monitor can manage a higher refresh rate than the machines, in which case there is absolutely no need for vsync. Which is why, when I play I disable it so I can enjoy smoother gameplay over unnoticeable or non-existant tearing.

Not so much locked, as hindered by the fact that your network is experiencing problems (overflow, peak hours, bittorrent , faulty networking (your end), or normal routing routines) I don't disagree that FPS will be good if you have a solid reliable connection, but the second you throw in the problems that 99% of people have with the internet, you can kiss 50fps goodbye.

rotflmao...

you need to work for geek squad. it sounds like that is where you get a lot of your....info.

Geek squad sucks! FTL!!!

The following is an excerpt from their manual...

"...we know nothing so we flat-line."

I got a Fujitsu Lifebook and it has Intel Centrino Duo (Yuck) and an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (Double Yuck) but the thing manages 30-40 FPS average with Guild Wars up. Besides.. I can't see why you'd need more then 60 FPS anyway, that's why most people are capped at that.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html

Check out www.delloutlet.com if you haven't purchased the laptop already. My buddy managed to get a 15" widescreen laptop with a 2.0ghz Core2duo + NVidia 8600M-GT-256MB video card for $800. He bumped up the RAM from 1 to 4 gigs for +$200, bringing his total to $1000 for a sweet mid-range gaming portable.

No need for 4 gigs of RAM for mid-range gaming, let alone GW. If you're gonna game then get 2GB RAM and invest the rest of the money into the GPU imo, and get more RAM only when needed.

Anet... xD... says GW runs fine on dial-up.

2GB is the minimum these days, 3GB is ideal and 4GB is pretty much overkill...for now.

2 gigs is still overkill, I run a group of 2003/4 tech machines that can still play some of the latest games quite decently. I would recommend people buy 2 gigs of ram if they want to, not because they need it.

Does the above apply for both XP and Vista? I think my buddy's system set-up came with Vista, which can be a real memory hog.

Xp's minimum requirements require only 128 megabytes of ram, which under the right setup can run as smoothly as anything as long as you dont plan on any gaming or intense applications.

specs: (From ms.com)

Vista has a recommended requirement of 1 gigabyte of ram for full feature capabilities, however I have seen it run smoothly at 512 megabytes.

specs: (From ms.com)

I look at it this way:

WinXP needs ~512MB to run decently. Vista needs ~1GB to run decently. At 2GB, both run quite well. XP doesn't show an appreciable gain in performance at 3GB, but Vista will take all it can get.

XP's little GUI animations and effects, if turned on, don't impact performance too much, but if you turn the ones in Vista on, then prepare for a performance hit if you don't have RAM to spare...

As for the laptop, the biggest issue is getting a GPU w/ dedicated RAM. If it's a shared-memory video card, then it's going to perform below your expectations. My laptop, which has a Radeon Xpress 1150 that shares the system memory, runs GW quite well at 800x600 on medium settings, but the performance drops off steeply if you increase the resolution or other effects.

For laptop I say go for the better Video Card (not based on MB ie 128, 256, ect since that really makes minute differences).

I have a 3 1/2 year old Alienware running a 128MB Radeon Mobility 9000 and can't support 64MB graphics games because the card isn't a 9400 or 9600 series, just a little fyi.

Also I average 22-30fps with a 300-800ms ping (connection rate only causes lower fps when I get bad lag). Also I run 800x600 since I've always had problems (with different comps and video cards) running higher res. It basically just gives me screen lag, CPU is overwhelmed, hence fps drop (and can drop fast).

To improve your fps you have to turn off or turn down settings via Advanced Display Properties Settings. The GW settings make very little difference I've seen on fps. I saw no to little fps change when changing graphics settings in GW but went from 5-7 fps to the 22-30 fps currents from turning off max settings in the display properties.

With my knowledge of Vista you also want to probably run 4GB RAM since Vista is a ram hog and you'll want to tune that down some. Also you want to run Vista Ultimate Edition since you'll get better gaming off of it (also 64-bit OS's norm run games better but XP Pro has been beating out all Vista OS's last I saw).

Also for the money the Intel Core2 Extreme Q6850 is the best CPU for the money even though it seems pricey. The CPU won't really start being an issue until is fallen out of mid range and current programs start becomming process heavy. I run Dual 3.01 P4's (I believe at least can't member) with no issues on GW, but not sure how GW2 will be if I keep the rig. I do have heavy process issues with other updated programs and newer games and new programs.

Man I keep editing :P. Also you want a 7200rpm HD at a minimum and you want to have a HD that's double the size of what you want to have installed ie. your currently run with 50-60GB on your HD and never really exceed that, go 100-120GB. It'll keep the performance running good. Also I recommened a program called Diskeeper which is nothing but a defragger that runs in the background and uses little to no CPU power (does cost about 100 bucks though but is well worth it imo).

I was always under the impression that your graphic card gives the main FPS and every other bit of hardware supports how well the graphic card gives FPS

or am i wrong?


And for some reason when i lower my graphics i get the same or even less fps than i usualy get (30-110 depending on areas)

oh yeah if your going fora new graphic card check benchmarks, not MB's lol

I once bought a £45 graphic thinking it will be the S*** but infact my New out of date x1650Pro (£34) out performs it ten fold because of its performance and spec.

To improve your fps step by step from personal experience.

First "rick click" on your desktop.
Select "Properties"
Click the "Settings" tab
Click "Advanced"
Click through the tabs and if you see one that has Anti-Atrophsic (or whatever AA is lol).
Tweak these (I personally have everything on low 0 or off).

Next open Guild Wars and change the screen res to 800x600 (massive fps improvement if you were running something like 1600x1200). Then start tweaking the graphics settings in Guild Wars (my stuff is off, 0, or low for faster performance) but remember that you loose animations and effects with some stuff and others make minimal to no fps changes.

Agreed with most of the above, though I'm finding 1gig RAM insufficient for XP once anti-virus/anti-spyware apps are factored in (their in-memory definition footprints easily push my system into heavy virtual memory use unless I go 1.5gigs+ RAM).

Discrete/Dedicated video RAM is usually a big requirement for most performanced based gaming laptops since shared video / system RAM memory is significantly slower than the latter. Beware of routine factory misrepresenting actual dedicated video memory present in their products (like the 256MB 8400GS's or similar low-end video card line which actually has 128MB discrete memory + 128MB shared memory). Yes, GPU grade is much more important than dedicated video memory quantity present, but memory type and quantity does matter.

I can't see Vista running on 512MB RAM. I'm using that much RAM just to run background applications.