Guild Wars 2

Hey Guys,

I’m seeking a bit of advice on purchasing a laptop with GW2 in mind. I know desktops are far superior and quite less expensive — but I’m currently looking for a laptop.

Been spending the past week now reading up on mobile technology and the overwhelming consensus seems to be that GPU is king when it comes to gaming on laptops. So I’ve since been solely focusing on that aspect while trying to find something decent. The problem I keep running into are often contradictory opinions on certain GPUs.

While some say that the 660m and 670m are both similar and decent GPUs for gaming, others claim that both are rubbish and only the 675mx need be considered — still others claim that it’s either the 680m/7970 or nothing at all. Needless to say, I’m paranoid that I’m gonna invest $1500 in a 15 fps paperweight if I make the wrong choice.

So instead of asking for laptop model suggestions (although go right ahead if you know a good one), I’m more interested in opinions on GPU’s, experience with certain laptops and lowest frames per second of certain models/cards. Currently, this is what I am considering:

<a href=“http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP9150”>Sager NP9150 (With 675MX)</a>

<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Gamers-G75VW-AS71-17-3-Inch-Gaming/dp/B007MW73C2”>ASUS G75VW-AS71</a>!

So yeah, any thoughts or opinions would be very appreciated. I’m at my wits end.

Thoughthe information you found about gaming laptops is usualy true…GW2 unfortunatly is an exception to the rule . .CPU is king with GW2 ..not GPU.

Desktop wise GW2 needs an OC’d intel i5 (4.5ghz) to be able to stay above 30 fps in WvW. So you can imagin how next to impossible it is to find a laptop CPU that can do the same ..since u cant really OC.

The best thing u can do is look for a laptop with one of the following CPU’s. Since they are top end,and any laptop with these cpu’s should (if desigined for gaming) have a reasonable GPU as standard.

CPU:
3840Qm
3820QM
3740QM
3720QM
3630QM

The higher the top end clock the better, and has to have a minimum of 4 threads.(Asuming 2nd/3rd gen intel ‘i’ series)

GPU wise… honestly i would go AMD 7970m since it usualy comes cheaper than a 680 by a good margin and offers as good performance. However for GW2 you can go with a 480m, 570m, 660m, ..or the AMD equivalents, they are all roughly equal to each other and should be abe to run GW2 on medium with some high settings and have good FPS. The 670m/mx and 675m/mx are not that much better than the 480m,570m,660m ..so i wouldnt bother spending the extra money unless ur gunna jump to the 680m or 7970m.

Gaming laptops that can run GW2 with good fps and quality wont be cheap ..so be prepaired.

EDIT: i went to that Sager website link and customized that same laptop to what i would look at. Came to a little under $2000.
CPU: 3740Qm
GPU: 7970m
zero dead pixel insurance
W7 home
12gb RAM
IC Diamond thermal compound

Everything else standard.

Thanks for the suggestions, SolarNova.

I should have clarified that $1500 is my absolute limit. Anymore than that and I’m breaking the bank. Since you think that the 675mx isn’t that much of an improvement over the 670m — do you think I should go with the 670m on th NP9150 and reinvest that money into a 3740Qm?

Obviously this rig is primarily for GW2, but will downgrading the 675mx to a 670m hurt me in other games or is it completely negligible?

Edit: Also sort of set on the Sager because, apparently, it’s very upgrade friendly. So, supposedly, things like the GPU/CPU can be upgraded later on.

Well i would not know if it could be upgraded .. usualy Laptops cant be upgraded .but if this ones desinged to be upgraded then thats good.

I use this site to compare GPU performance mainly,
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
(navigate to high end video card chart)
If i wanna go further into detail i then look for comparison benchmarks.. but as u can see the difference isnt that great between a 660m and a 675m..however a 680 is a big jump ..along with the 7970. I would think the 660m,670m,and 675m would all have GW2 running at medium, the only difference possibly being a few fps.

So if u wanna save money i would go with the 660m tbh. But if u wanna run on high graphics settings with good fps u generaly need a GPU that scores 3000 or above on that chart.

Bassicaly i would say 7970m or 660m, go all the way or save as much money as possible.

Played around with the customization a bit more and I can get the entire system for $1550 (Holiday instant -$100 promotion) if I keep the default processor ( i7-3630QM) and add the 7970. From what I’ve read, the Sager is supposedly a highly upgradeable laptop. I was under the impression that laptops stayed the way they came out of the box as well, but apparently this brand is the complete opposite.

Thanks for your help, Solarnova. My head has been spinning this past week trying to decide what I should be prioritizing. I think I’ll go with the 7970 and upgrade the CPU later for better performance in WvW and such. But I suspect this will cut through PvE content pretty well, eh?

Sager now has dual GPU laptop. How will dual 670m fair vs a single 680m/7970m gpu considering both cpus are the same.

Terok: Yes PVE will be fine, it should cope well. Its a shame u cant push for the 3720QM, but yea if u are indeed able to upgrade later it wont be a problem.

Xandman: Its not really worth, for GW2 this is, to go dual gpu when u cant OC the processor. The main reason being that a single GPU can and will be bottlenecked by the processor in places like WvW, so you wont get the benifit of those 2 cards.

This is why i always recommend getting the fastest clocked ‘non extreme’ laptop processor availabe. That would be the 3840QM ,,but it costs alot so the 3740QM is the next best thing being 100mhz slower, and the 3720QM 200mhz slower, and the 3630Qm 400mhz slower.
Now for other games like FPS’ers (BF3 CoD etc) dual gpu’s would help.