New Laptop arriving today. GW Performance question.

So here's the deal. Today, at some point, I'm expecting a new laptop to be delivered to replace one that died last week. Keep in mind I'm limited to what I can budget, so I couldn't afford a 2K machine, but purchased what I could afford and what could perform my daily work as that will be the primary use. I work from home in my own business.

I have plans to install GW on it as well so I have a few questions for those who have far more knowledge on the issue than I could ever have.

The main specs are as followsTaken directly from my order status invoice)

-Inspiron 1720, Intel Pentium Dual Core T2330(1.6GHz 533Mhz, 1M L2 Cache)

-3GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm

-256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600

-120G 5400RPM SATA hard drive 5400RPM

-Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, English

-Integrated High Definition Audio 2.0


Again, I know this is not your top of the line, "Let's get my game on!", machine. My only question is, by looking at the above, should I expect any issues regarding Guild Wars?

I'd also like to make note that the laptop that perished was far less than the listed above, especially in video (some areas would only run 10fps ouch!).

Thanks for any replies.

Sincerely,
Sonata.

yes, this machine will easily run guild wars, and you should be able to get high fps with high settings

I just received my inspiron 1720 a few days ago. I pretty much have the same specs as you and it runs perfectly! It's an awesome machine!

Thanks so much for those quick replies!

That's the reassurance I needed to hear. It will be my first time running/using Vista so that was my main concern, but it's nice to hear I shouldn't have any issues.

Much appreciated!


-Sonata

From what I can tell, it should run just fine.

This is kind of off topic, but I was just curious what kind of color did you get with it?

Oh yeah that laptop can run it good.

3GB of RAM is enough for your Vista needs, you'll be just fine.

Now would you like to buy me one as well? jk!

EDIT: Also any ''Problems'' you might find will only be related to Vista most likely, in which you can find workarounds for, but I doubt you'll have problems.

Just black LOL

Didn't think it was worth the extra money for other colors. I only had a limited amount of funds I could budget so I had to be careful as to what I used as upgrades.

The only upgrades I made were to RAM, the Vid Card, and a more stable network card. I was told that I should have at least 2gb of RAM on Vista. I put in 3 and the additional cost wasn't much to get in a huff about. My video card on the now deceased laptop was a cheap intel chip set of 128mb. I had pretty much that default choice, but knew it'd be in my best interest to up it to the Nvidia with 256. If I wasn't going to use the machine for GW I wouldn't have made that upgrade, but I knew I was, so I did :P

--Edit: Brianna, as soon as I hit the lottery, you'll be on the top of my gift-giving list . I may be 60 by then, or dead, but I'll do it.

Yay!

Hehe, well my laptop has worse specs than yours, and it runs Guild Wars with 30-40 FPS on max settings.

It's a Fujitsu Lifebook and has an ATI Graphics card.

Just be glad you went with Nvidia for a laptop, I really recommend against ATI for a lot of reasons, mainly system crashes.

Cause as far as my laptop goes, it always says ''Resetting Graphics Accelerator because it stopped responding'' cant update its drivers either, so S.O.L.

/agreed with brianna ATi graphics are so so bad, all they semm to be able to do is crash, reset, overheat and explode.

Nvidia is more annoying and problematic than ati is, especially driver wise. Nvidia also doesn't like to fix well known bugs in their drivers for reasonably popular games.

Alright, well let's not high-jack her thread and turn it into an ATI/Nvidia war.

Both companies, as all do, have their own flaws. I have just found my faith in Nvidia more.

I own an ATI card and it makes very good graphics/performance as well, I just don't like the problems my laptop gets with it, but that is only my experience. (And a laptop)

I think you might, just might, have some issues with that comp in a few areas (like KC), but most of GW will probably run just fine.

90k average ping for me =(

How much was the total for your comp? From what I see on your specs you should have no problems with GW

Well the comp arrived about 4 hours ago and after installing all my work software I tackled Guild Wars. Nothing like redownloading 15,000 files. I'm sure I'll get leech reports in PvP when I have to redownload maps. but anyways hehe..

I went to usually laggy areas that made me suffer on the old system, ie- KC, some explorables in Asuran Territory, and Raven Point dungeon (dungeons were always rough) and I'd say, on avg, I'm getting 35+ fps which is just dandy for me (edit: I'm actually getting 90+ in many areas now that used to run around 20. Edit again: 120+ in RoT areas where I was doing some left over masters quests). So far so good on the GW front

It was a $999 starting price. I added some additional upgrades and with shipping and taxes it was around $1200. I don't have the exact figure in my head and my invoice is upstairs. I'm not slogging up to get it sorry :P



In regards to V-Card brands, I wish I could offer input, but I can't! I'm horrible with such things. The only thing I know is the higher the memory, technically, it means better performance....or so I'll assume lol. In any case when it comes to GW, this new system runs it much, much better compared to the old one.

Thank you again for all your responses and putting ease to any worries I had pre-arrival. It helped a lot.

-Sonata

Some of the best video cards are by ATI, the 2900XT and 3870 X2 to name a few. If they didn't have such poor driver support, I'd hop on board, especially since you *have* to get an nForced based mobo to run SLI. There were a lot of rumors of the G92 with their 1 teraflop this and that, if they (Nvidia) don't release their 9800GTX and/or 9800GX2 that way, I swear I will throw my nForce board away.

I'm glad you enjoy your new notebook, create a shortcut and add -image to the command line to download all the files in one sitting.

If you throw it away can I have it pleeease?