Jer Pierson

garey Solo wrote: The laptop looks great but is this really the best gamers laptop. Idealy I would prefer to have a laptop rather than desktop. But I heard that there arent any out there that will run sl effectively in ultra. Is the asus really the best laptop for the job or are there better models available that i should be looking at. My budget is between 500-1000gbp. Oh, I promise you that this laptop will run SL "effectively". These laptops can play games demanding games like Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 at high settings flawlessly. I had another laptop before I bought this one (an HP DV8T to be specific), and it definitely ran SL for me without problems (except with shadows) and it wasn't even considered a gaming laptop. In my opinion, ASUS is one of the best companies out there when it comes to gaming. The G series might not be "THE BEST" gaming laptop out there, but it's definitely one of the best when it comes to gaming. I suggest you log into SL on your current system, and check out your FPS with shadows and without on ultra/high, and compare them to the ones I provided. The higher the FPS, the smoother your SL feels and performs. I consider myself a very tech savvy kind of person, and a performance guy. I wouldn't recommend you something I wouldn't get myself. But like I said, go check your FPS at those settings and compare them to the ones I provided. As far as your budget, I got my G74 from tigerdirect for about $1300 USD which is about 815gbp (I looked up gbp and I saw it meant British pounds)

Hi Garey. I run SL from my ASUS G74SX gaming Laptop. It runs SL very well on Ultra without shadows (anywhere from 45 - 100FPS depending on where I am in SL) I even get decent performance on Ultra with Deferred Rendering (shadows) + Ambient Occlusion on ( any where from 20-50FPS) Here are my laptop specs: G74Sx - XT1 Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit Nvidia GTX 560M 3gig Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM CPU 12GB RAM The cooling system is awesome on this laptop as well - one of the best I've seen in my opinion, So overheating will never be an issue with this notebook. I purchased mine a couple months back from tigerdirect. They're sold on amazon, at best buy, exoticpc, etc. ASUS released their newer versions of my laptop a couple weeks ago (The G75 and G55) that come equipped with intel's newest generation processors, and even better graphics cards . If you really want a laptop, I recommend going with one of ASUS's G series notebooks. You can check them out at this link, along with other versions of the G series

@Saskia - I think that laptop will run sl very well, you could probably even play with shadows on at not too low FPS. That's just my opinion based on the benchmarks of the 630M card. My old laptop's 230M card is much less powerful than the 630M, and it ran SL very well for me without the shadows, so that one should do just fine in my opinion.

Hi Saskia, I posted this response to a thread similar to yours. Hopefully it will help you decide. The best advice I have for you , is to try do some research on some other notebook Graphics cards if you insist on getting a laptop. This site is a good reference http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html and it pretty much has most of the notebook GPUs out there with benchmarks/performance. The list I linked is sorted from highest ranked graphics card performance to lowest, so you can use that as I guide. I'm pretty sure you will find both those cards some where in that list and you can see the type of performance it has compared to the rest (if you dont see it you can use search, or use CTRL F and find it that way on the page). I would go with the Dell, since the benchmarks are a little better than the AMD HP's card. It should run sl well even on high/ultra settings (going off experience because my previous notebook had a nvidia geforce gt 230m, and I ran sl on high/ultra at good fps without shadows). the 525M is better than the 230M so I would assume you'd have better performance. If you're planning on using shadows as well, well I'm not sure about how sl would perform. My current laptop has a gtx 560M card and I can run sl between 60-90fps without shadows on high/ultra settings. with shadows on and get 30 FPS at a high altitude, aroud 20-25 if I turn ambient occlusion on. With DOF on and ambient Occlusion, it will drop down into the teens.

@16 - The NVIDIA GeForce 310M Graphics is NOT better than the 230M. Refer to this for the 310M link and this link for the 230M to compare benchmarks. The 230M is clearly better than the 310M by a long shot. @shaneethepain based on the benchmarks of that video card, I don't think it wouldn't even run SL on low at playable FPS. I think I responded to one of your other posts where you had a question regarding another laptop. Like I said there, if you prefer a laptop, I suggest you take a look at this link - this website has tonns of notebook graphic cards and benchmarks, so you can compare them there and from there you can do some searching with one your satisfied with.

@ Nickel - I'd have to disagree with that assessment, as I run SL on my Notebook with a gt230M nvidia graphics card and I get anywhere from 25-50fps on high settings, depending on where I am in sl. I do run into problems though when I try to run shadows though. That simply degrades my performance dramatically (fps drop to like 5), pretty much making it unplayable, so I choose to play without shadows. I am upgrading to an Asus G74sx (a notebook as well) with a GTX 560M card though which should run sl flawlessly and run it ALOT better with shadows. It all depends on the type of graphics card and processor you have in your computer - whether desktop or notebook. I've had my hp Dv8T for probably a little over 2 years with the 230M and it has ran SL and continues to runSL at good framerates without the shadows. @shaneethepain - The best advice I have for you , is to try do some research on some other notebook Graphics cards if you insist on getting a laptop. This site is a good reference http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html and it pretty much has most of the notebook GPUs out there with benchmarks/performance. The list I linked is sorted from highest ranked performance to lowest, so you can use that as I guide. I'm pretty sure you will find the gt220M some where in that list and you can see the type of performance it has compared to the rest (if you dont see it you can use search, or use CTRL F and find it that way on the page). Then when you finally find a card you like, do a search on google and see if you can find a notebook with that particular model. Price may be a factor for you, but there are always sales out there so I'm almost sure you could find a notebook with a better card and better specs for maybe a little more than the $330. Oh, and try to go with a laptop with a nvidia gpu, as the ati cards tend to have more issues with SL (picked that up from what I've read) Hope This helps you

Thats Awesome Liphx! That's exactly what I was/am looking for Ordered a G74sx tonight Thanks alot for your help Liphx

Thanks for all the responses guys. I appreciate the feedback. I think I will go ahead an get the g74sx. I think It'll be enough to run the shadows. Any other feedback is welcome:)

Not sure if this is the right area of the forums for this, but I was wondering if there is anyone that runs SL with shadows on a GTX 560M (laptop graphics card not to be confused with the desktop version). If so, how does it perform? I am planning on buying an ASUS Republic of Gamers G74SX Laptop soon with this card and just want to know how it would run. Feedback appreciated:)