Require Tech Saavy Alvian For Laptop Purchase Assistance

[Dodd Formeianna]

Hey guys...Good news...my wife, while very much pregnant...has expressed an interest in playing SWTOR upon launch. She won't have a lot of time, but she may even become an Alvian. She's also an SWG vet, having played since launch.

Her birthday is around the corner, and she's looking for a laptop that meets or exceeds the minimum requirements to play the game, and do other basic tasks. Been looking online at Dell.ca and Bestbuy.ca to find something in the $700-$1K price range. Any suggestions? Is my budget unrealistic?

[Bulwark]

The simple answer is to look at the posted min requirements and build up from there.
As for specifics, I have no clue. I haven't bought a laptop since they came with 3.25" floppy drives.
However, if you aren't averse to buying online, look at newegg, they are usually pretty good (with good reviews).
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory ... -Notebooks

[Raikir]

You are looking for a laptop with a dedicated vid card. Go with Nvidia 530m or higher, or ATI Radeon 6850 or higher. HP's Envy line, Dell's XPS, MSI's G-series are all good places to start.

[Dodd Formeianna]

Thanks guys. Her birthday is in a few weeks, so ordering online isn't a problem. Here are a few models I'm looking at:

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_ ... _id=038526 $799.99 CDN
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_ ... _id=039914 $749.99 CDN

I'm guessing either of these models would run SWTOR fine. The only constraint I have is I have to order from a Canadian retailer since I don't want to pay for customs clearance, etc.

[Happyclam]

Both of those look pretty nice actually, with them getting similar reviews. They fit into the sub-notebook category apparently and as such have a tighter spacing for the keyboard. I personally prefer Asus over Acer, but the Acer has a larger hard drive and more RAM, so at this point, I'd say to go into a brick and mortar and look at both to see how you like the keyboard and feel of the laptops before just buying it.

[Raikir]

Take the Asus and upgrade the ram to 8 gig (2 x 4).

[Yaj]

This is the one i bought, Toshiba has 1 day specials of $200 off all the time, just check their website.

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cde ... 2000016430

[Dodd Formeianna]

So I went with the Acer laptop, got it Friday. It's nice, got all the specs my wife needed, and I scored some brownie points on the marriage front. Thanks all...

Now...Having done all this research for her, I've come to the conclusion that my PC isn't up to snuff, even for SWTOR. I need to make a decision...to bother upgrading or going net new???

I have a P5K SE Motherboard with a lot of empty slots, Intel 2 Quad Core 2.4Ghz processor. First problem - I want to upgrade my Ram (currently 4GB), but am currently running 32-bit Vista, so more Ram is apparently useless, unless I pony up for Windows 64-bit. Secondly, I have an NVidia 8800 GTS 640MB Gfx card. I want to upgrade to 1GB, really bad. SWTOR beta ran quite laggy on it, and it's admittedly under spec. Finally my 500GB of disk space only has about 150GB left, that's after I cleaned up a lot of crap.

So if my math serves me right, and I buy Windows 7, buy a decent gfx card, more memory and ram, I'm looking at least an extra $300-400. There are some decent entry level gaming PCs I can get for $500-600...should I even bother upgrading, or just go net new?

What would Alvis do?

[Dashl]

I finally ordered a new card and power supply. I went with these two.

Corsair CMPSU-750AX 750W Modular ATX Power Supply

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Superclocked 2048 MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 Graphics Card 02G-P3-1469-KR

[Raikir]

What would Alvis do?

Alvis would be too drunk to care. But, I would buy new.

[Happyclam]

So I went with the Acer laptop, got it Friday. It's nice, got all the specs my wife needed, and I scored some brownie points on the marriage front. Thanks all...

Now...Having done all this research for her, I've come to the conclusion that my PC isn't up to snuff, even for SWTOR. I need to make a decision...to bother upgrading or going net new???

I have a P5K SE Motherboard with a lot of empty slots, Intel 2 Quad Core 2.4Ghz processor. First problem - I want to upgrade my Ram (currently 4GB), but am currently running 32-bit Vista, so more Ram is apparently useless, unless I pony up for Windows 64-bit. Secondly, I have an NVidia 8800 GTS 640MB Gfx card. I want to upgrade to 1GB, really bad. SWTOR beta ran quite laggy on it, and it's admittedly under spec. Finally my 500GB of disk space only has about 150GB left, that's after I cleaned up a lot of crap.

So if my math serves me right, and I buy Windows 7, buy a decent gfx card, more memory and ram, I'm looking at least an extra $300-400. There are some decent entry level gaming PCs I can get for $500-600...should I even bother upgrading, or just go net new?

What would Alvis do?

You're probably just fine with the 4 gigs with that setup. Personally, I would look at upgrading the CPU and the video card as those would be the most bang for your buck, with the new cpu running at least 3.0 Ghz, which you should be able to pick up quite cheaply these days. All told, you could probably upgrade your current setup to run modern games well at around $200-300 total with the bulk of that a new video card. This would help as if you do decide to go new later, you can just swap over the video card to the new setup.