Guild Wars 2

Hello my beloved GW community

my “gaming machine” is getting a little outdated and I’m not getting the graphics/smoothness I want playing gw2 so I’m deciding about buying a new laptop. (Yes, laptop; pc is not an option for many reasons and don’t even bother asking me why ^^)

Wishes are running the game on at least medium+ settings, and of course, smoothly. I don’t know what to buy exactly, budget is flexible but I don’t wanna spend too much money. I was thinking something like this maybe:

Intel® Core™ i5-5200U (2,2 – 2,7 GHz)
43,9 cm (17,3") FHD LED (1920×1080)
ram 8 GB DDR3
SSD 256GB+ HDD 1TB 5400 rpm
NVIDIA GeForce 940M, 2 GB DDR3

would that be sufficient? How’s the gpu? Would really like to hear your opinions and recommendations, maybe what computers you have and what’s your graphics settings

Thanks in advance and looking forward to all your replies!

Nope, dont do it.

the 5200u is problem #1
Nvidia 940M is problem #2

If you want a gaming Laptop, then buy a gaming laptop. If you are on a budget, then get a laptop used that has high end parts from 2010-2012 (best bang for your buck, thinking that the quoted Laptop is running you about 550-600?)

Your game won’t run much better on any laptop currently on the market. Clock speeds haven’t changed much for laptop computing purposes.

You’ll only start seeing big gains in the expensive custom-built desktop market, and even then, they’ll be small in terms of FPS in crowded areas.

http://asphyxia.tv/computer-setup/
^ My PC setup.

Runs pretty well for the most part, only time I get any big frame drops are when there is a really big zerg around in WvW. Usually the frame drop doesn’t last long though.

Uhmm alright so first thing’s first, I don’t really need a high-end gaming laptop for all sorts of games, GW2 is pretty much the only thing I play, so that’s why I’m asking on this forum about the purchase.

So if that’s not enough how high would I need to go to get at least medium smooth settings in GW2?

Ravart.1963:

Uhmm alright so first thing’s first, I don’t really need a high-end gaming laptop for all sorts of games, GW2 is pretty much the only thing I play, so that’s why I’m asking on this forum about the purchase.

So if that’s not enough how high would I need to go to get at least medium smooth settings in GW2?

You start with 2 Things.

1. your Budget, what is the max you can/will pay for this
2. what size machine are you willing to accept. 14", 15" 17"…ect

we always start there.

I want 17" so that’s that and I guess SSD. Budget like I said is flexible. For number’s sake let’s say 1000eur, but keep in mind that prices obviously differ from where you and I live cuz for 550eur here you can’t get a 17inch ssd laptop with above specs. When I hear approximate specs that I’d need to “fulfill my fantasies lol” then I’ll check prices and decide if I wanna spend that much or not.

What I’m saying is, if I had a thousand prepared to buy a laptop, then that would be easy: check online shops etc. and buy the best u can for 1000. But I don’t and I’d like to know what machine will buy me what kind of visuals in GW2, then I’ll see and maaaybe I’d reach deeper in my pocket but I certainly don’twant to cuz I’m not rich lol.

New, you are looking at something like this right now – http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152947

Basically a i7-HQ, GTX960M, 1080P LCD and 16GB of ram
the Size of the screen (15" vs 17") SSD vs HDD are going to vary based on location

or if you dont mind getting your hands dirty you can buy used/gray market and rebuild it yourself for about 500.

I am telling people who are buying laptops right now to look at the M4600 and M6600 machines from 2010 (Ebay or Amazon). They use SandyBridge CPUs, can take 32GB of ram, mSATA/mPCIE SSDs…ect. But most important can take Clevo MXM type GPUs.

I just put a GTX970M in my M6600 and got a nice upgrade from the stock HD6870M.

And I can play this game on that machine with all settings maxed and character limit set to Medium or Low (Boss fights) and still get 60FPS.

just something else to consider.

Not sure where you are or your price point but theres things such as this available for a budget:-
MSI GP Series GP62 Leopard Pro-002 Gaming Laptop 5th Generation Intel Core i7 5700HQ (2.70 GHz) 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 2 GB GDDR3 15.6" Windows 8.1 64-Bit $699.00

http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx

Lycan Nibbler.1567:

Not sure where you are or your price point but theres things such as this available for a budget:-
MSI GP Series GP62 Leopard Pro-002 Gaming Laptop 5th Generation Intel Core i7 5700HQ (2.70 GHz) 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 2 GB GDDR3 15.6" Windows 8.1 64-Bit $699.00

http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx

thats not a bad find, esp for that price. But the GTX950M is kinda Meh over all. If you are going to buy a laptop for gaming might as well look at the 960m or 970m if you can afford it.

i would reccommend the MSI Computer P Series PE60 6QE-031US intead of that one, usually they have similiar price but this one has ddr4, a 960m, and a skylake i7 6700 cpu.
goes arround 700-900 deppends on reseller and country :\

I went with the 17inch screen, the laptop barelly heats while gamming :\, the only issue on cheaper gamming laptop is the batery :P need a nuclear powered central on my pocket XD, even when doing some work.

Thanks for your inputs! Well there isn’t really a lot of MSI computers on the market here and they’re expensive. Only thing I found in such range for a good price is an Asus that’s on sale for 980€. Comes with
Core i7–4720HQ Processor, 2.6 GHz (6M Cache, up to 3.6 GHz)
8 GB DDR3L DRAM, 1TB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX960M 2 GB GDDR5
43,9 cm (17,3") FHD LED (1920×1080) anti glare

which looks fairly solid to me right? The only thing I’m worried about is overheating. I watched a review on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5L_SmWspg (note that this one is a slightly upgraded version, but still. On the stress test temperatures of the cpu and gpu came up to 87 and 83 degrees celsius, respectively. Sounds kinda hot to me, should I be worried about that? I won’t be running any really demanding new games though.

Ravart.1963:

Thanks for your inputs! Well there isn’t really a lot of MSI computers on the market here and they’re expensive. Only thing I found in such range for a good price is an Asus that’s on sale for 980€. Comes with
Core i7–4720HQ Processor, 2.6 GHz (6M Cache, up to 3.6 GHz)
8 GB DDR3L DRAM, 1TB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX960M 2 GB GDDR5
43,9 cm (17,3") FHD LED (1920×1080) anti glare

which looks fairly solid to me right? The only thing I’m worried about is overheating. I watched a review on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS5L_SmWspg (note that this one is a slightly upgraded version, but still. On the stress test temperatures of the cpu and gpu came up to 87 and 83 degrees celsius, respectively. Sounds kinda hot to me, should I be worried about that? I won’t be running any really demanding new games though.

Stress tests are synthetic tests that your laptop would never normally do. under those tests 85c is absolutely normal. So that means under gaming and normal use your laptop should never get above 75c for max settings and probably 65c if you lock your vsync to 60hz (60FPS).

As others have said, this game is really CPU heavy. I personally don’t care for trying to play it on a laptop because laptops tend to get super hot while trying to play this game due to the CPU usage.

I don’t really understand why the game uses the CPU so much more than the GPU but I guess that it is what it is..

One of the advantages that MSI has in my opinion is that they do an extremely good job in the cooling department. I bought an MSI GT72 Dominator Pro last year (i7-6700HQ, 980M, 32 GB RAM, SSD), and I have no problem playing GW2 on max settings with only medium fan speed. If I turn the fan on full, the laptop stays roughly at idle temps, but I prefer not to do that unless I’m wearing headphones or not paying attention to the audio.

The downside to MSI is that they are expensive, and the laptop above is way overkill for just GW2.