Guild Wars 2?

Hi Everyone I am getting fed up with this POS Laptop I have now and am in the market to buy a new one. All I really want it to do is play Guild Wars (Which the laptop I have now does so that is of no real concern) AND hopefully have enough power to play Guild Wars 2. I don't know that the specs are out for that yet but I want to be ready because once Guild Wars 2 comes out I won't have the money for a new laptop. Here's what I REALLLLLLLY would like (I've always liked Alienware)

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i3 370M 2.4Ghz (3MB Cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
MEMORY 4GB Dual Channel Memory (2x 2GB DDR3)
HARD DRIVE 320GB SATAII 7,200RPM
LCD PANEL 15.6-inch WideHD+ 1600x900 (900p) WLED
WIRELESS CARDS Wireless 1520 802.11n Half Mini-Card
BATTERY OPTIONS Primary - 6-cell (56Watt) Lithium-Ion Battery
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Slot-Load Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
VIDEO CARD 1024 MB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5730
SOUND OPTIONS Internal High-Definition 5.1 Surround Sound

Personally I would stay away from the Alienware machines as you are paying for a brand and that is about it. If you looking for a decently priced gaming laptop I would check out the ASUS Line up.

I just bought a G73SW for around 2300 AUD.

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Gaming_Powerhouse/G73SW/

Ok well say it wasn't Alienware. Would the Spec's I've Provided sound good enough to run Guild Wars 2?

Yes, but not at max settings. What's your budget and do you NEED a laptop or would you consider a desktop?

Well I would love a Desktop BUT I'm a College student and want the portability to take it to class with me. So I would prefer a Laptop!

Isn't i3 the entry level Intel processor?

What do you want to do with the laptop and on what settings do you want your games to be displayed in?

if you're looking for a GAMING LAPTOP, go for an ASUS brand.
preferably i7 processor.
i recently bought the G53JW-A1 ASUS, its my desktop replacement, nothing wrong, it can obviously run guildwars 1 with gtx460m 1.5gb at max graphics settings. cost me less than $1500 in Canada.

i'm not sure about i3 would work strongly in gw2, but stick with i5 or i7 especially.

I'd say get a G53 as well but get the G53SW (sandy bridge CPU FTW!) or wait a bit for the G74/54 (the G73 looks fugly imo and there's no word on a G54 yet, but knowing asus we'll get one eventually or they'll do a refresh of the G53 with a GTX560). Right now, just don't get the m15x (if you decide you're willing to pay the premium for Alienware it is in dire need of a hardware refresh).

The only reason i can see not to get a G53 from asus is that it doesn't have e-sate, PCI-E and firewire ports. Asus reduced the amount of ports to lower costs but it does have USB 3.0 though. If you need one of those get a MSI G series or a clevo (they rebranded by a lot of manufacturers: sager (NA), eurocom (NA), kobalt (UK) so you need to find which brand is actually clevo in holland)

Whatever you get, i'd say get at least an i5 sandy bridge and a GPU with GDDR5 if possible GTX460 or higher (if you want 1080p) too to get more performance. The strongest mobile GPUs right now are the HD6970m and GTX485m. You can find a HD6970m build in the US for around $1500 or higher and a GTX485m build for $1600 or higher, nVidia GPU are more expensive...

Define "run".

I'm sure those specs would "run" GW2, but it would be at much less than "max" settings. It should run it well enough for a reasonable gaming experience, but I'd suggest you go for an i5 instead of an i3.

the only reasons i would buy an ALIENWARE laptop are the looks(brand name) and battery life(mobility) = school w/o charger.
its hard to find an alienware product equivalent to asus especially price range. alienware u have to modify at an huge expense to be close to the specs of an ASUS laptop.

but for asus gaming laptop u'll need ur charger at all times if u attend a school session.

i might buy an alienware for school in the future.

Another option is Dell XPS 15 L502x, mainly for the good screen which is extremely important.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4274/d...h-sandy-bridge

So if GW works the old laptop works and you have money now and just want to be able to play gw2 when it comes out.

Then the real advice is stick that cash in the bank and take it out and buy the week before gw2 comes out.

but because you said: "once Guild Wars 2 comes out I won't have the money for a new laptop."

So i will add my thoughts on the specs here.

PROCESSOR: core i3 is good (aka it's way more then the HD 5730 need to run at full speed).
MEMORY: 4gb ram is standard no problems here

VIDEO CARD: 1024 MB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5730 at 1600x900 might be a issue. It will run at playable rate but if you are forced to turn everything down to low we just don't know yet.

I never owned an AW so i can't comment on battery life from experience, but on power saving, i get 3 hours (enough for one lecture) on my G73JH with a few tweaks to the GPU clock. The same goes for any AW, you need to kill all lights, put it on power saving etc.

Ok it's fine on Battery life I have friends with AW now and they say that they can get thru their day without it dying. My campus has outlets in the chairs in lecture halls anyways.

So what I'm hearing is one of these two things:

1. Don't buy AW buy Asus

I don't want asus I have never had good luck with them I'm sorry, the laptop I have now is an Asus and it is complete garbage.

2. Don't get the i3 try and get an i5 or an i7.

This is fine I was looking at upgrading during the customization process anyways so I will go with the i5

3. The 1024 mb ATI card might not be strong enough. \

Again not an issue I am looking at either upgrading when I buy it or my cousin owns a computer shop and said I can get a big discount on some nice video cards. For the Video cards does anyone have any suggestions?

With AW, at least you can upgrade your GPU, but it will cost you and by cost you, i mean a lot. An HD6970m goes for around 450 euros right now and I'm not sure your bios will like it. Sorry to hear you had bad experiences with Asus, i only had good ones but it's different with everyone. In this case, i'll say get a sager np8150 with the 6970m or 485m goodness. I would check on battery life before though, sager improved it over previous models but i'm not sure you'll get up to three hours.

Since you seem intent to go with AW, I'd say to wait for the m15x refresh before pulling the trigger on an AW though.

Im fairly certain that all of your specs will be fine to run GW 2 except for the video card. Ive got an i7 960 processor and gw only uses 10% of my proc. power max and thats only when loading. GW relies much more heavily on your GPU so if you could spring for a more up to date graphics processor your experience with gw2 will be much more enjoyable.

An i3 is plenty to run GW3 just fine. And any GPU with 1 GB of GDDR5 is going to provide an excellent experience as well.