See for yourself in this Youtube video of GW2 running on an i5-3570k with the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000.
Of course it doesn't look as good as a 4GHz i7 with an Radeon 7970 (duh) but it looks very playable to me and doesn't look half bad. Watch it full screen at 1080p:
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Is a gaming laptop and at a very very good price I would go with this , nice link Sammyeli!
Hey thanks buddy , yea its the best bet for budget laptops
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
i will say it again, with black friday only 3 weeks away, buying a laptop now will be stupid. for your money you will get a better laptop. Unless you need it asap.
This link, just click laptop tab and it will show all laptop deals from all sellers (newegg, tigerdirect, even dell and hp themselves)
or just browse newegg throughout the month and other places.
Unless you need it right this second, I see yourself with regret, because those laptops posted will not go any lower.. nothing to lose. but alot to gain.
But I also have to suggest going with desktop, unless you need portable/ already have desktop!
The video card in both of those is a rebadge of the lowest end Nvidia card of the last three generations. It will get completely destroyed by modern AMD integrated graphics, and will probably even lose sometimes to the Intel HD Graphics 4000 of the laptop in the original post. If you're thinking about a discrete video card that is slower than integrated graphics, you might as well just go with integrated graphics.
To mordern AMD maybe but to intel 4000 chip no, they are a great buy, please go check them out at your local fry's electronics and you will see what I mean, plus I dont know if you are aware currently the game is CPU intensive and with the boost you can push it up a bit. once again look at the stats and then post something.
Yes, Guild Wars 2 is processor-intensive. I think it's a classic case of badly-coded syndrome, as there's no excuse for being processor-bound at low frame rates without being able to push eight or so cores for people who have them.
But that doesn't mean you don't need a video card, and a GeForce 610M is very low end. It features a mere 48 shaders, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs. For comparison, AMD's new Z-60 tablet chip (4.5 W TDP, which includes a dual core processor and memory controller, among other things) offers 80 shaders, 4 TMUs, and 4 ROPs, albeit clocked much lower.
If you want to compare it to integrated graphics, Radeon HD 7660G integrated graphics offers 384 shaders, 24 TMUs, and 8 ROPs. One "Fermi" shader is about equivalent to two "VLIW4" shaders, and the GeForce 610M is clocked higher, which narrows the gap somewhat. But a GeForce 610M is still only going to get you about half of the performance of Radeon HD 7660G integrated graphics. Why get a discrete card if that's all of the performance you want?
Yes, Intel HD Graphics 4000 does lose badly to Radeon HD 7660G. But does it lose badly to something with half of the performance of Radeon HD 7660G? Sometimes yes, but sometimes it would win that comparison handily. Intel video drivers have long been a mess, but discrete switchable graphics will get you driver problems, too.
Before continuing the hardware discussion on Intel vs Nvidia vs ATI, I think it would be a great help to ask the OP what his budget is.
I didn't see any mention to what he's willing to spend on the laptop, true that the examples he provided might be an indication of his budget, but I think it's easier to recommend something once we know what he is actually planning on spending.
Also, is gaming on 11" really what he's after? You can get more hardware on a bigger laptop for the same price, with bigger screen resolution.
So I think the OP should clarify some stuff first before we get into hardcore hardware discussions
Before continuing the hardware discussion on Intel vs Nvidia vs ATI, I think it would be a great help to ask the OP what his budget is.
I didn't see any mention to what he's willing to spend on the laptop, true that the examples he provided might be an indication of his budget, but I think it's easier to recommend something once we know what he is actually planning on spending.
Also, is gaming on 11" really what he's after? You can get more hardware on a bigger laptop for the same price, with bigger screen resolution.
So I think the OP should clarify some stuff first before we get into hardcore hardware discussions
I will most certainly do that!
Thanks for all the input so far.
Right now my budget is right around 800 dollars, I can push it a bit if a laptop comes up that is ridiculously better than an 800$ one we can find, but right now that's what it is. I already have a desktop that plays GW2, I just wanted a laptop that had that capability. I also do not need it immediately, so black friday sounds like a great option to wait for.
I would prefer around a 14" screen, that seems to me to be portable but you also don't lose a lot size wise (obviously my large desktop monitor is way better for gaming but I'd prefer a light portable laptop in this scenario).
But that doesn't address the critical question. Why do you want a laptop that can play games in the first place? What are you going to do with it?
Also, 14" is a bad idea if gaming is your goal, as 14" means that the standard form factor video cards will not physically fit. You can do a bunch of custom engineering to make things fit, but that adds a lot to the price tag.
But that doesn't address the critical question. Why do you want a laptop that can play games in the first place? What are you going to do with it?
I do plan on traveling quite a bit, however as far as gaming goes I don't expect to use it exclusively for that. I do not see any situation where I will be gaming on it for hours on end. I do want it to play Guild Wars 2 just to log on when I'm away once in a while and run around the map, I don't believe I'll be raiding dungeons all day. However, I do want it to be able to run the game with a decent frame rate. It doesn't have to be ultra high graphics, as long as it runs and doesn't look choppy.
Also, 14" is a bad idea if gaming is your goal, as 14" means that the standard form factor video cards will not physically fit. You can do a bunch of custom engineering to make things fit, but that adds a lot to the price tag.
I'm glad I posted on here, most of this I either A: never thought about or B: didn't even know about.
What sizes fit? I always thought that the game could adjust to the screen size and display, is that not right? Sorry a lot of this I'm fairly new to.
Edit: I also plan on running Photoshop and Sony Vegas Movie Studio, and read that video rendering is better with an intel i7. I would ideally like a laptop that can run all of these, but I can settle for super low graphics on GW2 so long as it runs at a good clip.
I'm glad I posted on here, most of this I either A: never thought about or B: didn't even know about.
What sizes fit? I always thought that the game could adjust to the screen size and display, is that not right? Sorry a lot of this I'm fairly new to.
Edit: I also plan on running Photoshop and Sony Vegas Movie Studio, and read that video rendering is better with an intel i7. I would ideally like a laptop that can run all of these, but I can settle for super low graphics on GW2 so long as it runs at a good clip.
It's not about the games "fitting" on the screen, they adjust to the resolution no problem.
It's about the 14" laptops being so small physically, that standard graphics components simply don't fit inside them. Meaning that you will have to pay a premium to get a 14" laptop with a good graphics card, as opposed to buying a 15".
What sizes fit? I always thought that the game could adjust to the screen size and display, is that not right? Sorry a lot of this I'm fairly new to.
It's a hardware problem, not a software problem. A processor takes so much space. A video card takes so much space. So does a hard drive, and memory, and so forth. And if you want to fit everything into a 14" laptop, you can't fit a standard-sized video card. It's like trying to fit 14 eggs into a carton meant to hold 12.
You can make a video card fit, but you have to do a lot of custom engineering, rather than just grabbing off-the-shelf parts and putting them in. In particular, the video card doesn't get its own PCB (the "card" part of a video card), but has the GPU, video memory, and so forth attached directly to the motherboard.
This is why, out of 276 14" laptops on New Egg, exactly two have a discrete video card that is faster than modern integrated graphics. And why the cheaper of those two is $1300.
As soon as you go up to 15", a video card fits. Many 15" laptops still don't have a discrete video card, and many of the ones that do still don't have a video card faster than modern integrated graphics. But once you have a 15" form factor, suddenly you can fit even a high end video card.
For what it's worth, 17" typically adds the option to have to have two hard drives instead of one.
-----
But again, what are you going to do with the laptop? Do you need long battery life, or will it nearly always be plugged in? Are you always going to set it on a desk, or do you have ideas about setting it on your lap?
If you want an Intel Core i7 processor, then you've already used about half of your budget just on the processor. That means having to cut back on everything else in the entire system, such as by skipping a video card entirely. In that case, you're likely not going to do any better than the laptop you linked at the start. But be warned that Intel graphics are slow when they work and far more prone to driver problems than AMD or Nvidia graphics.
That's a Clevo W110ER, and an 11" laptop. It's the world's first 11" gaming laptop. (Alienware claimed that their M11x was an 11" gaming laptop, but I say it wasn't a gaming anything.) It has an Intel dual core processor, not a quad core, and the video card is substantially faster than integrated graphics. It's a little over your budget, and it doesn't have a full sized keyboard, but if you really want portability, then there you go.
Customize that to get an A10-4600M processor, 8 GB of system memory, and a 7200 RPM hard drive and it comes to $720, which is under budget. You can save about $30 by buying your own memory module and installing it yourself rather than paying HP $50 to add a $20 memory module for you. That gets you a real quad core processor, but AMD's processor cores are slower than Intel's. It also gets you the fastest laptop integrated graphics ever made.
What sizes fit? I always thought that the game could adjust to the screen size and display, is that not right? Sorry a lot of this I'm fairly new to.
It's a hardware problem, not a software problem. A processor takes so much space. A video card takes so much space. So does a hard drive, and memory, and so forth. And if you want to fit everything into a 14" laptop, you can't fit a standard-sized video card. It's like trying to fit 14 eggs into a carton meant to hold 12.
You can make a video card fit, but you have to do a lot of custom engineering, rather than just grabbing off-the-shelf parts and putting them in. In particular, the video card doesn't get its own PCB (the "card" part of a video card), but has the GPU, video memory, and so forth attached directly to the motherboard.
This is why, out of 276 14" laptops on New Egg, exactly two have a discrete video card that is faster than modern integrated graphics. And why the cheaper of those two is $1300.
As soon as you go up to 15", a video card fits. Many 15" laptops still don't have a discrete video card, and many of the ones that do still don't have a video card faster than modern integrated graphics. But once you have a 15" form factor, suddenly you can fit even a high end video card.
For what it's worth, 17" typically adds the option to have to have two hard drives instead of one.
-----
But again, what are you going to do with the laptop? Do you need long battery life, or will it nearly always be plugged in? Are you always going to set it on a desk, or do you have ideas about setting it on your lap?
If you want an Intel Core i7 processor, then you've already used about half of your budget just on the processor. That means having to cut back on everything else in the entire system, such as by skipping a video card entirely. In that case, you're likely not going to do any better than the laptop you linked at the start. But be warned that Intel graphics are slow when they work and far more prone to driver problems than AMD or Nvidia graphics.
That's a Clevo W110ER, and an 11" laptop. It's the world's first 11" gaming laptop. (Alienware claimed that their M11x was an 11" gaming laptop, but I say it wasn't a gaming anything.) It has an Intel dual core processor, not a quad core, and the video card is substantially faster than integrated graphics. It's a little over your budget, and it doesn't have a full sized keyboard, but if you really want portability, then there you go.
Customize that to get an A10-4600M processor, 8 GB of system memory, and a 7200 RPM hard drive and it comes to $720, which is under budget. You can save about $30 by buying your own memory module and installing it yourself rather than paying HP $50 to add a $20 memory module for you. That gets you a real quad core processor, but AMD's processor cores are slower than Intel's. It also gets you the fastest laptop integrated graphics ever made.
Thanks for the help, I'll look into these and play around with the options, maybe I can get an even better deal on black friday with one of these. I may be able to push the budget a bit if I have to.
If you want a gaming laptop, imo you want it to have a Nvidia or Radeon video card. So I wouldn't buy that, even though quad core is more important for this game than VC. But I'd have both. In fact my son does have a gaming laptop, it plays it ok.
Do not buy "integrated graphics 4000" <-- this is usually advertised in lieu of a proper graphics card
Always, always make sure you have a dedicated graphics card inside the laptop. This is very important for playing games.
This is why I generally avoid branded crap because they're made for non-gamers or ultracasuals, and aren't properly configured (while still being expensive)
I have a 11.6 inch netbook, but it runs GW2 on high at 50fps without breaking a sweat.
All down to its good 3610QM processor, and a basic but functional 650M 2gb DDR3 graphics card - all for under 700 bucks.
Comments
It's not going to do very well at all because of the graphics card.
Here's how it compares to some other cards on the market:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4000
In particular, the GeForce GTX 480 is a $200 card, which is fairly middle of the road. Your intel card barely shows up on the results...
You make me like charity
See for yourself in this Youtube video of GW2 running on an i5-3570k with the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000.
Of course it doesn't look as good as a 4GHz i7 with an Radeon 7970 (duh) but it looks very playable to me and doesn't look half bad. Watch it full screen at 1080p:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3nvVevqMFM
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Hey thanks buddy
, yea its the best bet for budget laptops
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
i will say it again, with black friday only 3 weeks away, buying a laptop now will be stupid. for your money you will get a better laptop. Unless you need it asap.
http://www.techbargains.com/
This link, just click laptop tab and it will show all laptop deals from all sellers (newegg, tigerdirect, even dell and hp themselves)
or just browse newegg throughout the month and other places.
Unless you need it right this second, I see yourself with regret, because those laptops posted will not go any lower.. nothing to lose. but alot to gain.
But I also have to suggest going with desktop, unless you need portable/ already have desktop!
Yes, Guild Wars 2 is processor-intensive. I think it's a classic case of badly-coded syndrome, as there's no excuse for being processor-bound at low frame rates without being able to push eight or so cores for people who have them.
But that doesn't mean you don't need a video card, and a GeForce 610M is very low end. It features a mere 48 shaders, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs. For comparison, AMD's new Z-60 tablet chip (4.5 W TDP, which includes a dual core processor and memory controller, among other things) offers 80 shaders, 4 TMUs, and 4 ROPs, albeit clocked much lower.
If you want to compare it to integrated graphics, Radeon HD 7660G integrated graphics offers 384 shaders, 24 TMUs, and 8 ROPs. One "Fermi" shader is about equivalent to two "VLIW4" shaders, and the GeForce 610M is clocked higher, which narrows the gap somewhat. But a GeForce 610M is still only going to get you about half of the performance of Radeon HD 7660G integrated graphics. Why get a discrete card if that's all of the performance you want?
Yes, Intel HD Graphics 4000 does lose badly to Radeon HD 7660G. But does it lose badly to something with half of the performance of Radeon HD 7660G? Sometimes yes, but sometimes it would win that comparison handily. Intel video drivers have long been a mess, but discrete switchable graphics will get you driver problems, too.
Before continuing the hardware discussion on Intel vs Nvidia vs ATI, I think it would be a great help to ask the OP what his budget is.
I didn't see any mention to what he's willing to spend on the laptop, true that the examples he provided might be an indication of his budget, but I think it's easier to recommend something once we know what he is actually planning on spending.
Also, is gaming on 11" really what he's after? You can get more hardware on a bigger laptop for the same price, with bigger screen resolution.
So I think the OP should clarify some stuff first before we get into hardcore hardware discussions
Playing:
RIFT, EU Blightweald Server
Waiting to see:
ToR, TERA, GW2
I will most certainly do that!
Thanks for all the input so far.
Right now my budget is right around 800 dollars, I can push it a bit if a laptop comes up that is ridiculously better than an 800$ one we can find, but right now that's what it is. I already have a desktop that plays GW2, I just wanted a laptop that had that capability. I also do not need it immediately, so black friday sounds like a great option to wait for.
I would prefer around a 14" screen, that seems to me to be portable but you also don't lose a lot size wise (obviously my large desktop monitor is way better for gaming but I'd prefer a light portable laptop in this scenario).
But that doesn't address the critical question. Why do you want a laptop that can play games in the first place? What are you going to do with it?
Also, 14" is a bad idea if gaming is your goal, as 14" means that the standard form factor video cards will not physically fit. You can do a bunch of custom engineering to make things fit, but that adds a lot to the price tag.
It's not about the games "fitting" on the screen, they adjust to the resolution no problem.
It's about the 14" laptops being so small physically, that standard graphics components simply don't fit inside them. Meaning that you will have to pay a premium to get a 14" laptop with a good graphics card, as opposed to buying a 15".
It's a hardware problem, not a software problem. A processor takes so much space. A video card takes so much space. So does a hard drive, and memory, and so forth. And if you want to fit everything into a 14" laptop, you can't fit a standard-sized video card. It's like trying to fit 14 eggs into a carton meant to hold 12.
You can make a video card fit, but you have to do a lot of custom engineering, rather than just grabbing off-the-shelf parts and putting them in. In particular, the video card doesn't get its own PCB (the "card" part of a video card), but has the GPU, video memory, and so forth attached directly to the motherboard.
This is why, out of 276 14" laptops on New Egg, exactly two have a discrete video card that is faster than modern integrated graphics. And why the cheaper of those two is $1300.
As soon as you go up to 15", a video card fits. Many 15" laptops still don't have a discrete video card, and many of the ones that do still don't have a video card faster than modern integrated graphics. But once you have a 15" form factor, suddenly you can fit even a high end video card.
For what it's worth, 17" typically adds the option to have to have two hard drives instead of one.
-----
But again, what are you going to do with the laptop? Do you need long battery life, or will it nearly always be plugged in? Are you always going to set it on a desk, or do you have ideas about setting it on your lap?
If you want an Intel Core i7 processor, then you've already used about half of your budget just on the processor. That means having to cut back on everything else in the entire system, such as by skipping a video card entirely. In that case, you're likely not going to do any better than the laptop you linked at the start. But be warned that Intel graphics are slow when they work and far more prone to driver problems than AMD or Nvidia graphics.
A couple other options I'd like to bring up:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Xplorer_X1M_Gaming_Notebook
That's a Clevo W110ER, and an 11" laptop. It's the world's first 11" gaming laptop. (Alienware claimed that their M11x was an 11" gaming laptop, but I say it wasn't a gaming anything.) It has an Intel dual core processor, not a quad core, and the video card is substantially faster than integrated graphics. It's a little over your budget, and it doesn't have a full sized keyboard, but if you really want portability, then there you go.
http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/B5Y73AV?HP-ENVY-dv6z-7200-Notebook-PC
Customize that to get an A10-4600M processor, 8 GB of system memory, and a 7200 RPM hard drive and it comes to $720, which is under budget. You can save about $30 by buying your own memory module and installing it yourself rather than paying HP $50 to add a $20 memory module for you. That gets you a real quad core processor, but AMD's processor cores are slower than Intel's. It also gets you the fastest laptop integrated graphics ever made.
Thanks for the help, I'll look into these and play around with the options, maybe I can get an even better deal on black friday with one of these. I may be able to push the budget a bit if I have to.
If you want a gaming laptop, imo you want it to have a Nvidia or Radeon video card. So I wouldn't buy that, even though quad core is more important for this game than VC. But I'd have both. In fact my son does have a gaming laptop, it plays it ok.
DANGER
Do not buy "integrated graphics 4000" <-- this is usually advertised in lieu of a proper graphics card
Always, always make sure you have a dedicated graphics card inside the laptop. This is very important for playing games.
This is why I generally avoid branded crap because they're made for non-gamers or ultracasuals, and aren't properly configured (while still being expensive)
I have a 11.6 inch netbook, but it runs GW2 on high at 50fps without breaking a sweat.
All down to its good 3610QM processor, and a basic but functional 650M 2gb DDR3 graphics card - all for under 700 bucks.
And it's a netbook! xD