Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, so I love this game, I really do. And I spent $550 on a laptop the same day I bought this game. I’m a college student, and don’t work, so spending $1000+ was never an option. Anyway, I have the Pavilion g7-2118nr notebook pc. I have checked the framerate thread above this, but as some of the last posters in that thread have said, that solution was old, and out of date. I downloaded the trial version of WoW in order to compare framerate, and was getting 76-99 framerate on WoW on low, but I am only getting about 20-25 on this game on “Best Performance”. Is there anything I can do to get higher framerate, and thus enjoy this game 1,000x more?

Here are my cpu specs:

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/hp-pavilion-g7-2118nr/4505-3121_7-35411612.html

The CPU is weak. Anything under 3Ghz (of the AMD variety, I don’t really have much experience with intel) really stutters along. Especially dual core under 3Ghz.

You also don’t have a true dedicated graphics card in the laptop. The APU processor you have is a GPU and CPU combined. Which is meant more for media and less graphically intense games.

WoW ran acceptably because it’s a very old game that even had low system requirements when it was launched, by Blizzard design, since they wanted it to be able to run on practically any system.

I’m not sure that you can do anything other than return it (if that is even an option) and look for something with a quad core or dual core with a higher frequency, and integrated ATI or Nvidia mobile graphics card.

Technical support thread would have been a better place to post since some people ..myself included ..like to lend there knowledge to help ppl. Luckily i also check this part of the forum

Anyway…

laptops & gaming do not mix well unless you spend alot on them. With that said certain games would run well on your laptop. WoW being one of them becouse it uses a very old game engine that can be easily run on almost any modern CPU and GPU.

GW2 however uses a more modern game engine. Granted its the same GW1 engine ..but it is highly modified. This engine takes ALOT of performance from the CPU and as such you need a pritty beafy cpu to run it in all its glory.
All laptop CPU currently available will fall short of being able to handle GW2’s most intensive areas such as large WvW fights without droping below 30 fps.
Even top end Intel Desktop CPU’s need OC’ing to be able to stay above 30fps in WvW, and on AMD’s side the FX 8350 is able to produce simular results.

GPU wise you need atleast a top end dedicated desktop media card like a Nvida 550ti or a AMD 7770. For a laptop that wold be equivalent to maybe a GTX 570m or AMD 6900m.

I understand as a student you dont have the money for a high performance gaming laptop that could atleast play PVE.. and also dont have the ability to use a Desktop since your likely living away form home. Im afraid there isnt much you can do.

The only advice i can give you is to shutdown ever single possible process you have running the background to free up as much ram and processor usuage as you can. however if your GPU is whats slowing you down which it does look like ..there isnt anything else you can do.

EDIT: if your living at home then i see no reason why you shouldnt have a desktop computer, even is space is at a premium there is ways of making a computer not that much bigger than a small wine/beer cooler ..plus a monitor keyboard and mouse ofcourse, that could handle GW and i beleve (som1 from the US correct if im wrong here) that with current sales on $550 would net you a ncie rig.

$550 cuts it close but is doable. The thing that would push you over would be the OS if you don’t already have a Windows 7 key you can use. Some schools have software programs that let you get things like Windows for free. I know when I was in college I got three free Windows 7 keys from https://www.dreamspark.com/Student/Default.aspx

If you can avoid that $100 on the OS, have a mouse, keyboard and monitor or TV with a HDMI/DVI input, then system builders here can come up with something capable in that price range pretty easy.

It won’t exactly help in class or labs though if that’s something you require for your classes.

You can ‘acquire’ windows 7 64bit by other means but i cannot say what they are due to rules and such >.o ..and ofcourse i would ‘never’ endorse said ‘unstated’ ways of ‘acquiring’ it

Darn, well thanks for the responses everyone. Unfortunately I’ve had this laptop for 2 months, so I very much doubt I’d be able to return it. Guess I’ll just have to make do for now until I have some extra money. And thanks for the heads up on the system builders, will definitely see what they can do in the future.

When I bought the laptop (from HH Greg) I made sure to ask the guy there how well it should be able to play, and although he wasn’t a gamer (and I know nothing about cpu’s except ram) he said that this graphics card (or OS, don’t remember which) was about equal to the i5, and that with the 4 gigs of ram this had, I should be good to go. Then I went to Best Buy after buying the laptop and the woman there (who was a gamer) said that this should run well enough.

Thanks again for the advice everyone, if anything else pops up, please let me know.

In the future, I would definetely post the computer spec’s to some kind of forum, because the people here aren’t trying to make a sale and know what they’re talking about. This forum has been really good on the tech-side lately which inspired me to make my own tech post.

Do a search for Razer.
They`ve bought Cnet` old gamebooster s`ware.
Just need to make a Razer account, install it etc.

May help you a bit, it closes all things not required for the game to play.

iJuan YouLost.4872:

When I bought the laptop (from HH Greg) I made sure to ask the guy there how well it should be able to play, and although he wasn’t a gamer (and I know nothing about cpu’s except ram) he said that this graphics card (or OS, don’t remember which) was about equal to the i5, and that with the 4 gigs of ram this had, I should be good to go. Then I went to Best Buy after buying the laptop and the woman there (who was a gamer) said that this should run well enough.

Ok, some beginner’s clarification (just so you understand the sales people better next time):
OS: Operating System, in your case probably Windows 7.
Graphics Card: Usually referred to as GPU.
i5: Usually referring to a type of intel processor, or CPU.
→ A graphics card can’t really be equal to a processor, it’s like comparing apples to pears

The nice people at the tech forums will probably tell you what particulars to look out for when building your own PC once you have the funds to do it