Thanks in advance for reading and providing feedback! I was a huge D1 and D2 fan, but I've nearly skipped PC games for 6-7 years. As such, I've never bought even half-decent machines because the need wasn't there. Now the need will be shortly, as D3 looks awesome. I'm looking for a new laptop but am on a pretty tight budget.
From an operational needs standpoint, the portability of a laptop is important to me as it may be a multi-function (not just gaming) workstation that needs to follow me around. Other than that, I seek a balance of acceptable performance and minimal costs. By acceptable performance, I'm willing to tolerate not running on the max resolution, max detail level, etc but eliminating local client caused lag is critical, for example especially during a big battle.
General HW Candidates:
The Acer listed below (looks to be ~650)
Cheaper machine running Intel HD3000 with an i5 (~550)
Slight better machine (~800), probably more than I am comfortable shelling out
The summary specs include an i5 2450M(2.50GHz), NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M, and 4 GB of RAM. I looked at the system FAQ, and while the video card scored above the minimum, it was clearly not listed on blizz's supported video cards which as me worried. Will this mean a HW compatibility issue? (or if compatiable, poor performance, as the number met the min but was far below goal spec level)
Alternatively, I'm looking at cheaper laptops with intel HD3000 and i5s, which looks to save me another $100-150 and is clearly supported for D3 based on blizz's vid card listing. However, I've read mixed post on various sites regarding the performance of the intel HD3000 and am worried the HW, even on low res setting, will have lag-spikes during high-intensity battles with "busy" visualizations.
After GPU speed, the resolution makes the biggest difference in D3 performance. The laptop you linked is only 1366x768, which isn't really high enough to be slow on any modern GPU design. I think even the humble Intel HD 3000 would be okay at this resolution, at medium detail.
There are a lot of gaps in Blizzard's compatibility claims, but bottom line is if you're using a modern (or near-modern) GPU architecture (which the 540 is) and up-to-date video drivers (in other words, from this year), you should be fine.
If you're not in a rush, consider waiting for the new "Ivy Bridge" CPUs and their Intel HD 4000 GPUs to come in a month or so. Early testing suggests the HD 4000 is about 40% faster than the HD 3000. This would allow you to get a cheaper / lighter laptop for the same amount of money as you might spend today.
Also consider AMD. Their "APU"s offer decent CPU performance and better integrated GPUs than Intel has now or on the horizon.
If you're not in a rush, consider waiting for the new "Ivy Bridge" CPUs and their Intel HD 4000 GPUs to come in a month or so. Early testing suggests the HD 4000 is about 40% faster than the HD 3000. This would allow you to get a cheaper / lighter laptop for the same amount of money as you might spend today.
Also consider AMD. Their "APU"s offer decent CPU performance and better integrated GPUs than Intel has now or on the horizon.
Sort of in a rush - unless new intel chips come out ~May 10 or sooner without major cost increases might be a no-go.
On a semi related note has any beta player verified compatibility with the a NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M? Looking at bnet forums, it appears folks concurred this should function OK but nobody explicity verified through demonstration running the beta
Price point is identical and looks to be very similar. Unsure of the trade-off here. The 1st comparision point was an Acer laptop with key stats below. The videocard benchmark rating was basically identical
Just found something else in my range (nice big price drop). The videocard wasn't listed on the videocard benchmark site, but it appeared to be better. What are your thoughts on this and has anybody ran beta w/ this config:
Compared to the first laptop I listed, Looks like par on the RAM, a nice big improvement over an i5-2450m, but couldn't get any independant data on the vid card. I've also seen a number of posts confirming the GeForce GT 540M works fine with high res but am yet to see any live verification with the GT 630M
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From an operational needs standpoint, the portability of a laptop is important to me as it may be a multi-function (not just gaming) workstation that needs to follow me around. Other than that, I seek a balance of acceptable performance and minimal costs. By acceptable performance, I'm willing to tolerate not running on the max resolution, max detail level, etc but eliminating local client caused lag is critical, for example especially during a big battle.
General HW Candidates:
What do you all think of the following laptop:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215256
The summary specs include an i5 2450M(2.50GHz), NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M, and 4 GB of RAM. I looked at the system FAQ, and while the video card scored above the minimum, it was clearly not listed on blizz's supported video cards which as me worried. Will this mean a HW compatibility issue? (or if compatiable, poor performance, as the number met the min but was far below goal spec level)
Alternatively, I'm looking at cheaper laptops with intel HD3000 and i5s, which looks to save me another $100-150 and is clearly supported for D3 based on blizz's vid card listing. However, I've read mixed post on various sites regarding the performance of the intel HD3000 and am worried the HW, even on low res setting, will have lag-spikes during high-intensity battles with "busy" visualizations.
Thoughts?
Thanks
There are a lot of gaps in Blizzard's compatibility claims, but bottom line is if you're using a modern (or near-modern) GPU architecture (which the 540 is) and up-to-date video drivers (in other words, from this year), you should be fine.
If you're not in a rush, consider waiting for the new "Ivy Bridge" CPUs and their Intel HD 4000 GPUs to come in a month or so. Early testing suggests the HD 4000 is about 40% faster than the HD 3000. This would allow you to get a cheaper / lighter laptop for the same amount of money as you might spend today.
Also consider AMD. Their "APU"s offer decent CPU performance and better integrated GPUs than Intel has now or on the horizon.
Sort of in a rush - unless new intel chips come out ~May 10 or sooner without major cost increases might be a no-go.
On a semi related note has any beta player verified compatibility with the a NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M? Looking at bnet forums, it appears folks concurred this should function OK but nobody explicity verified through demonstration running the beta
http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1798038&CatId=4938
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Other Comp I may buy
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215261
Summary: