New Computer Shopping, need advice!

[NvrShoutNvr]

Hello SWToR! This is my first forum post, so bare with me. I'm a veteran player and have been playing since beta on my handy dandy little HP Pavilion DV6 lappy. I won't go into specific specs because I know no one cares about that, but I'm here asking for advice. I love my laptop, but it only gets a consistent 20 frames on very low settings, shooting down to 2-3 fps, sometimes even 0 alltogether when she gets too hot. I know laptops are not ideal for gaming on, and since tax season is coming up, I thought I'd invest in a new rig with this years rebate. I'd like to be playing a max settings, but in all honesty, I'd be content with playing on medium with little to no lag. My laptop is a trooper, but with its minimal specs and my guild getting geared up to take on 16 man raids every weekend, I can't very well be tanking with 3 frames a second and expect to be successful. What I'd like is for some of you who play at medium and above settings to share your specs with me so I might make good decisions when building a new machine. I know you're all sick and tired of hearing this, but I'm really not in the market for a $500 GPU. Gotta pay rent and all that jazz, don'tcha know. I just need something to make the game more functional, and possibly look good at the same time thanks in advance

 

-Kris (Corneera, Sith Assassin on the Begeron Colony)

[ckoneful]

You don't need a $500graphics card to play this game. I play fine and mine cost $250ish 1 1/2 years ago.

 

Do some reading, and build your own. That's what I did when I originally upgraded from prebuilt quite a few years back. I built a decent gaming rig that could still run tor these days at medium settings for about 500$ total and that was 4 years ago, with the prices of 560s and i5s these days you could build quite a nice "gaming" rig for 500$ now as well.

 

Going ATI may be better bang for your buck these days on the cheap end, but I prefer Intel and Nvidia myself.

Edited December 4, 2012 by ckoneful

[Malastare]

My wife likes her ASUS G75vw. It's got an Ivy Bridge i7 quad-core and a GeForce 660M. She actually plays at High settings with a very good frame rate, and unlike most laptops, it can play the game for hours without ever overheating (we've gone as long as 8 hours and the laptop still doesn't have heat issues). Now, it does have styling that might not appeal to everyone, and it does end up being a bit heavy for its size.

 

On a more generic note, if you're looking for a laptop to play on, you do want to look for something with an Intel i7 (or AMD equivalent, if it exists....). They generally don't cost much more than an i5, and the extra CPU power is what you need to keep the framerates high. The GPU will define what level of detail you can pull off. Generally, you don't need the top tier of GPUs for SWTOR. As above, a 660M is more than enough, but using CPU-based graphics isn't going to pull off the performance you want, I'd guess. Look for a mid-range gaming card. The final part to think about is the hard drive. Using slower hard drives (5400rpm, in most cases) are going to give you slower load times and more delays before conversations. Look for 7200rpm drives. SSDs work great, too, but that is likely more costly than you want, and it's a luxury you don't need for the performance you describe.

[Asavrede]

If you want to do endgame content, and particularly 16-man raids, I really can't recommend another laptop. You can get a fully capable system for that for like 500$ though.

[ckoneful]

You don't need a $500graphics card to play this game. I play fine and mine cost $250ish 1 1/2 years ago.

 

Do some reading, and build your own. That's what I did when I originally upgraded from prebuilt quite a few years back. I built a decent gaming rig that could still run tor these days at medium settings for about 500$ total and that was 4 years ago, with the prices of 560s and i5s these days you could build quite a nice "gaming" rig for 500$ now as well.

 

Going ATI may be better bang for your buck these days on the cheap end, but I prefer Intel and Nvidia myself.

 

I did mean a desktop btw, I don't recommend gaming on laptops.

[MonsterBike]

I bought a couple of Inpiron laptops for my nephews Xmas present on the Dell Outlet for just over £300, so probably cheaper to you in the Land of the Free.

 

Both are i5 3xxx (2.5 to 3.2 I think). One has a 7670 and the other a 7730, both run really well on the settings I normally use(no shadows or AA and high everything else). but the 7730 is 10fps better on tython (so 50 and 60fps)

 

I added a 128gb £50 Sandisk 500/350mb/s SSD and have been greatly impressed with them (obviously I removed the Dell Bloatware by doing a clean install), basically my nephews have better systems than me now.

Edited December 4, 2012 by MonsterBike

[Fornix]

My advice if you'd want to stick to budget:

 

i5/i7 CPU @ 3.2 Ghz minimum, take your pick based on budget.

RAM DDR3 8GB minimum, pref 16 GB, take your pick on clock speed based on budget.

Mobo, pick suitable based on budget to match above. Don't cheapen out and go for the absolute cheapest though, if in doubt, consult hardware sites or ask in here again mentioning brand + model (including desired CPU + RAM).

 

GPU, stick to your personal preference, if none I'd recommend nvidia. Take your pick based on budget, personally I would say go for the GTX 660 Ti. If going lower, refer to benchmarks to give an impression on how performance may be.

 

SSD in case you want fast loading screens, can be welcome in progression based raiding if you end up whiping a bit at points. The Crucial M4 series is still a solid pick in that line.

 

 

 

Not sure what your budget limit is, so you may need to tone down at some points or have room to up a bit on others. Considering as to how you used a laptop I take it you'll still need to add casing, PSU, disk drive, monitor, mouse, keyboard to all of this as well? In general I wouldn't recommend using a laptop for gaming, unless if budget is not an issue.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Fornix

[johnnyreece]

I will just say: Sandy Bridge CPU or better. I was getting acceptable framerates on low graphics settings with a bargain basement Pentium G850. Switching to the i5 2500k has allowed me to run graphics on high, even with my crappy Radeon 6850.

[Nidza]

Here are some tips for u m8

 

1. intel processor

2. graphics card depending on the resolution 6870 will run you the game on 60 fps non stop,so 6870 and up.(from personal experience avoid gtx 570)

3. SSD drives are nice but it only gives u 5 seconds if that loading time advantage in swtor.

[Belacose]

GPU, stick to your personal preference, if none I'd recommend nvidia. Take your pick based on budget, personally I would say go for the GTX 660 Ti. If going lower, refer to benchmarks to give an impression on how performance may be.

 

That video card is a good bit better than mine yet my SWTOR bottleneck still comes from my i7 sandy bridge CPU.

 

Having said that, rarely do I ever drop below 60 fps. I'm usually hovering around 111 fps.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Belacose

[Fornix]

That video card is a good bit better than mine yet my SWTOR bottleneck still comes from my i7 sandy bridge CPU.

 

Having said that, rarely do I ever drop below 60 fps. I'm usually hovering around 111 fps.

 

Aye, CPU bottleneck is quickly the case. Regardless though, I'd never suggest buying an older series GPU considering as to how you're instantly 1 ~ 1.5 years additionally behind and the price difference isn't too bad.

 

You may for example buy the GTX 660 Ti now for 280 Eur vs the GTX 560 Ti for roughly 200 Eur. That 80 Eur investment gives you a roughly 60 ~ 100% performance boost (in other words, up to doubles your fps). Additionally, 2 years down the line the GTX 660 Ti will still be playing titles on medium. Whereas the GTX 560 Ti will start running games on medium next year, and be ready for replacement again in 2014.

 

Price/performance wise the latest-gen simply remains the best pick there, and actually saves money in the long run as you have that extra time before you need to upgrade again.

[ckoneful]

I bought a couple of Inpiron laptops for my nephews Xmas present on the Dell Outlet for just over £300, so probably cheaper to you in the Land of the Free.

 

Both are i5 3xxx (2.5 to 3.2 I think). One has a 7670 and the other a 7730, both run really well on the settings I normally use(no shadows or AA and high everything else). but the 7730 is 10fps better on tython (so 50 and 60fps)

 

I added a 128gb £50 Sandisk 500/350mb/s SSD and have been greatly impressed with them (obviously I removed the Dell Bloatware by doing a clean install), basically my nephews have better systems than me now.

 

Do Inspirons still have the terrible heating issues? I know for quite a few generations they couldn't handle gaming because of heat issues. I actually fried one in an 8 hour sitting on WoW once. My computer has decent healing and occasionally will get quite hot on TOR which is why I ask.

 

Aye, CPU bottleneck is quickly the case. Regardless though, I'd never suggest buying an older series GPU considering as to how you're instantly 1 ~ 1.5 years additionally behind and the price difference isn't too bad.

 

You may for example buy the GTX 660 Ti now for 280 Eur vs the GTX 560 Ti for roughly 200 Eur. That 80 Eur investment gives you a roughly 60 ~ 100% performance boost (in other words, up to doubles your fps). Additionally, 2 years down the line the GTX 660 Ti will still be playing titles on medium. Whereas the GTX 560 Ti will start running games on medium next year, and be ready for replacement again in 2014.

 

Price/performance wise the latest-gen simply remains the best pick there, and actually saves money in the long run as you have that extra time before you need to upgrade again.

 

 

Damn, those things are still going for $200?(560 Ti's) I hadn't actually noticed, I figured they'd have dropped quite a bit by now.

Edited December 4, 2012 by ckoneful

[Belacose]

Aye, CPU bottleneck is quickly the case. Regardless though, I'd never suggest buying an older series GPU considering as to how you're instantly 1 ~ 1.5 years additionally behind and the price difference isn't too bad.

 

You may for example buy the GTX 660 Ti now for 280 Eur vs the GTX 560 Ti for roughly 200 Eur. That 80 Eur investment gives you a roughly 60 ~ 100% performance boost (in other words, up to doubles your fps). Additionally, 2 years down the line the GTX 660 Ti will still be playing titles on medium. Whereas the GTX 560 Ti will start running games on medium next year, and be ready for replacement again in 2014.

 

Price/performance wise the latest-gen simply remains the best pick there, and actually saves money in the long run as you have that extra time before you need to upgrade again.

 

good point

[swredrage]

I'm really happy with my Radeon 6870, it is still a good mid-range card and can be had for $150 or less these days. On max settings at 2560x1440 was getting 60+fps in Warzones I turned shadows down and eventually left them down as it was just easier to play with visually.

 

That is also with a intel 3930k 6core and 64GB ram though. On the AMD 1090T 6core w/8gb i was lucky to get 30fps on medium settings at 1920x1080.

 

The game engine seems to be pretty picky as far as CPU/chipset setup.

[Danbuterx]

I recommend not getting an nVidia card. For whatever reason, this game plus nVidia means crash to desktop and even blue screen of death. I've reported my results, with dxdiag etc., and I"m hoping they can fix it.

[morfius]

Hello SWToR! This is my first forum post, so bare with me. I'm a veteran player and have been playing since beta on my handy dandy little HP Pavilion DV6 lappy. I won't go into specific specs because I know no one cares about that, but I'm here asking for advice. I love my laptop, but it only gets a consistent 20 frames on very low settings, shooting down to 2-3 fps, sometimes even 0 alltogether when she gets too hot. I know laptops are not ideal for gaming on, and since tax season is coming up, I thought I'd invest in a new rig with this years rebate. I'd like to be playing a max settings, but in all honesty, I'd be content with playing on medium with little to no lag. My laptop is a trooper, but with its minimal specs and my guild getting geared up to take on 16 man raids every weekend, I can't very well be tanking with 3 frames a second and expect to be successful. What I'd like is for some of you who play at medium and above settings to share your specs with me so I might make good decisions when building a new machine. I know you're all sick and tired of hearing this, but I'm really not in the market for a $500 GPU. Gotta pay rent and all that jazz, don'tcha know. I just need something to make the game more functional, and possibly look good at the same time thanks in advance

 

-Kris (Corneera, Sith Assassin on the Begeron Colony)

 

If you want mobile game station - go for Asus G75 with at least 8GB RAM, SSD + HDD & x64 Windows 7 or 8

If you want desktop one, fastest 2+ core Intel CPU you can afford, 8GB of RAM at least, above medium class Asus MB, SSD + HDD and Nvidia 660/ATI 7870 (or better) video will play game very smoothly.

SSD is just for OS + game/s but can be dropped if going for cheaper system.

16 or above RAM will provide you option to put most of/entire game in RAM drive ... faster than SSD (and may be cheaper solution) but may cause issues if not knowledged with PCs.

Edited December 4, 2012 by morfius

[MillionsKNives]

I recommend not getting an nVidia card. For whatever reason, this game plus nVidia means crash to desktop and even blue screen of death. I've reported my results, with dxdiag etc., and I"m hoping they can fix it.

 

You shouldn't be throwing around blanket statements for something that is a localized issue. It sounds like your card is dying if you're getting BSOD.

 

I have yet to have a BSOD with my nVidia, and only a couple CTDs ever in the game.

[Thundergulch]

I have an i7 950, a GTX460SE and 6GB RAM, runs flawlessly on max settings with Vsync on and almost never dips below 55fps, it's usually pegged at 60.

This game doesn't require a high-end system to run on max settings, you can spend approx $800 and be happy with it.

Check out http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/category/intel_pc/

 

They have pretty good prices if you don't want to build your own.

[DarthKarness]

Best gaming laptop in the industry. I play on all full settings, everything with my brother. Asus G75vw my brother and I bought ourselves one. Both work flawlessly. Best deal out there, only $1329 man. Comes with 1 TB Hard Drive, * gigs of Ram. 2 GBS Nvidia GTX 660M graphics card, Quad Core with Turbo Boos, and back lit keys and a 17.3" screen. Get that man, it's so awesome.. Oh its heavy though

[AMKSED]

Hopefully some day laptops will drop about half their price. Because there are really good gaming laptops by you have to pay nearly double the amount to get it.

[BadOrb]

I bought this laptop recently and it runs swtor on high and FPS are between 20-120 never really drops below 50 fps really. I changed the 750 hybrid drive for an SSD one and the GT 650m graphics card is super.

 

http://www.novatech.co.uk/modifier.html?s=NNB-A11

 

Overall it cost £804 with 8 gigs of ram etc.

 

Good luck.

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

Edited December 4, 2012 by BadOrb

[Fornix]

Hopefully some day laptops will drop about half their price. Because there are really good gaming laptops by you have to pay nearly double the amount to get it.

 

Probably not going to happen soon, too much custom work goes into designing the product so it can attempt to stay cool enough. Many of the required parts are the more expensive, smaller alternatives. And additionally for every laptop you have to keep on selling along things which may normally be reused such as a screen, keyboard, casing and optical drive. As well yeh, you can't really sell a laptop without that.

 

Those sort of things will keep on adding to the cost.

 

And in honesty, for what? Inferior performance, more heat production and in all fairness practically equal mobility considering as to how most people play from the same desk with their laptops anyways. Partially considering as to how all the hardware combined weighs like a brick, making it far from attractive to even use it as a mobile device.

 

Hence why gaming laptops are nice is budget is not an issue, good showoff value, but that's pretty much it. A desktop will always get you more value for money.

[Spum]

i play great on my Dell Latitude E5530. I have two laptops that run TOR, my Dell Studio, and the Latitude, and it runs SO much smoother on the latitude. its about $500

[morfius]

I recommend not getting an nVidia card. For whatever reason, this game plus nVidia means crash to desktop and even blue screen of death. I've reported my results, with dxdiag etc., and I"m hoping they can fix it.

 

I recommend you check your event viewer ... NVidia GPUs have no issues with SWTOR.

It is your card/card memory or your driver/s that give you BSOD.

At least wrote numbers (0x000000???) on paper and post them, do not blame in general without knowledge.

[morfius]

Hence why gaming laptops are nice is budget is not an issue, good showoff value, but that's pretty much it. A desktop will always get you more value for money.

 

If you want to change your position, room or even go in bed and still play ... is there more value in laptop?

Extra to be able to rest and play at same time cost some money

Edited December 5, 2012 by morfius