How well can this laptop run GW?

So, I'm getting a new laptop for college, and I'm just curious if there will be a significant improvement if I run GW on that than over the 5-year old computer I'm using now.

Current Computer:

Windows XP
64 MB NVIDEA GeForce MX 440
2.66 GHz Pentium Processor
512 MB RAM (!)

My computer is able to play GW at about a smooth 30 FPS, with armor textures on high (everything else on low). Towns suck, thanks to the 512 MB RAM.

Planned Laptop:

Windows Vista Home Premium
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
2.5 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB RAM

Yes, I realize it's not an 8800 GT, but I just want 60 FPS and all settings on atleast medium, maybe a few on high. Would that be possible?

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

I run on a:
Windows XP
512 MB NVIDEA GeForce 8500 GT
2.0 AMD Athlon 64 Processor
2.5 Gb of Ram

On all highest setting, in kamadan d.1 I get about 30 fps, and in guild halls and mission outposts I get 50-150 fps.

So yes, a 8600 will run faster than 60 fps

The planned laptop should max the game out with 60 FPS.

Lol wow. A geforce 4 mx? I'm surprised gw even ran on that. Since those are merely re-badged geforce 2's.

Anyway, you'll see a pretty huge performance increase in just about everything, including gw, when coming up from that old set-up. When looking at gw alone though..: While the mobile 8600gt is slightly weaker than its desktop brother it should still perform pretty well on max, only dropping a bit in heavy towns.

Yeah I was going to blame it on the GeForce 4 MX as well too. The 512 MB will get you places if you're just talking about Guild Wars.

Ah, good old MX.

I believe it stands for Mistake Xtreme.

Let me make a fine suggestion and tell you to stay in international districts.

GW has low requirements it self but GW II may not, so you might want to up your hardware to next gen if you plan on playing it and anything else that comes out.

And to be honest the main problem I face on my laptop is not framerate or problems graphically. It is simply overheating. I can't tell you how many times I have been on a FoW run or any mission and had my laptop just overheat on me.

One of my old laptops (which I happen to be typing on right now) has a GeForce 440 MX (64 MB) and 512 system RAM. It runs GW on low settings (with medium textures) pretty well. I get about 15 FPS in combat with all the fireworks going off.

The 8600 will run GW on max settings very well. Nobody knows for sure, but it should probably also handle GW2 with no problems. MMOs tend to have low requirements in order to appeal to a wide audience.

That's what I'm hoping for. They said that it'll support DX10 rendering, but I'm hoping they don't go overboard with it. I'd hate to upgrade from my 9600GT...

I think that would work fine. I can play GW (but don't as it's mostly annoyingly slow, even on all the lowest graphics settings) on an IBM T43, 1.6Ghz, 256mb Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (or something like that), 512 MB RAM.