Laptop for playing WoW

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RockGuitarDude

Senior member
Apr 15, 2004
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The new alienware laptops seem really nice...

Obviously I would be going with 1gig of ram and the 6800 go vid card.

Main question...
What would be a good processor to get for this purpose? Would I notice any difference from the 1.7GHz to the 2.0GHz?
 
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slackwarelinux

Senior member
Sep 22, 2004
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Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
The new alienware laptops seem really nice...

Obviously I would be going with 1gig of ram and the 6800 go vid card.

Main question...
What would be a good processor to get for this purpose? Would I notice any difference from the 1.7GHz to the 2.0GHz?
Click to expand...

No. I don't think you would see a difference between a 1.73GHz and a 2.0GHz processor, and it is definetly not worth the money to upgrade.
Think about it, if that extra 270MHz is worth $300, then go ahead and upgrade, I personally can't justify it.

Oh, and on to Alienware bashing :D
People seem to think that Alienware laptops are overpriced. For the most part, they are right.
High end laptop manufacturers often do not manufacture their own equpiment. Alienware buys their laptops from a company named Clevo, then they repaint them and repackage them with added tech support.

Many other companies also repackage Clevo laptops, including Sager Notebooks, and a good reseller of Sager Notebooks is PC Torque. This will give you an Alienware laptop for quite a bit cheaper, without paying for the paint job.

Sager's 5720 seems to be one of the better gaming notebooks, and with a 7800GTX and a gigabyte of ram, it is under $2,000. (Alienware's MJ-12 is Sager's 9890-C). A great resource for Sager notebooks, and notebooks in general can be found at NotebookForums.

There are also cheaper options to getting a 5720/9890-C, I have been eying the 3880. It has a 15.4' (as opposed to a 17') screen and comes with a Nvidia 6600, which should be more then enough for WoW if you max out the ram. It should also be much more portable.

If the paint job/better tech support is worth it to you, then go ahead and buy an Alienware. If you feel like saving money, go with Sager or some other company that also uses Clevo as their OEM.
 
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cruiser1338

Golden Member
Jan 22, 2005
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If you are hellbent on a Windows laptop, then by all means his post is correct. However, I suggest a Mac. I'm hugely biased, but my 1ghz iBook plays WoW very nicely. Plus you get all the perks of OSX, and the coolness associated with a Mac. It's about $1000 for an iBook, and $1500 for a Powerbook. Don't make a descision without looking at these. Good luck!
 
erikistired

erikistired

Diamond Member
Sep 27, 2000
9,739
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Originally posted by: cruiser1338
If you are hellbent on a Windows laptop, then by all means his post is correct. However, I suggest a Mac. I'm hugely biased, but my 1ghz iBook plays WoW very nicely. Plus you get all the perks of OSX, and the coolness associated with a Mac. It's about $1000 for an iBook, and $1500 for a Powerbook. Don't make a descision without looking at these. Good luck!
Click to expand...

unless you use ventrilo for your WoW guild, then you are SOL at the moment, altho it's coming along apparently (they released a mac beta with the speex codec i think). anyway, just something else to think of.

i play it on my dell inspiron 6000 but if i was doing it over i'd get more video horsepower, it plays fine but every so often it lags a little and the only thing i can attribute it to is the video (heck it might be the hdd for all i know).
 
Scouzer

Scouzer

Lifer
Jun 3, 2001
10,358
5
0
Originally posted by: cruiser1338
If you are hellbent on a Windows laptop, then by all means his post is correct. However, I suggest a Mac. I'm hugely biased, but my 1ghz iBook plays WoW very nicely. Plus you get all the perks of OSX, and the coolness associated with a Mac. It's about $1000 for an iBook, and $1500 for a Powerbook. Don't make a descision without looking at these. Good luck!
Click to expand...

you had a decent argument until you said "the coolness associated with a Mac"

WTF?
 
G

Grabo

Senior member
Apr 5, 2005
251
56
101
Originally posted by: Scouzer
Originally posted by: cruiser1338
If you are hellbent on a Windows laptop, then by all means his post is correct. However, I suggest a Mac. I'm hugely biased, but my 1ghz iBook plays WoW very nicely. Plus you get all the perks of OSX, and the coolness associated with a Mac. It's about $1000 for an iBook, and $1500 for a Powerbook. Don't make a descision without looking at these. Good luck!
Click to expand...

you had a decent argument until you said "the coolness associated with a Mac"

WTF?
Click to expand...

Apple marketing - end result.
 
I

IlllI

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2002
4,927
11
81
Originally posted by: fisher

i play it on my dell inspiron 6000 but if i was doing it over i'd get more video horsepower, it plays fine but every so often it lags a little and the only thing i can attribute it to is the video (heck it might be the hdd for all i know).
Click to expand...


it might be ram related. i remember having some lag too when i was playing with 512mb ram, but when i bumped that up to 1g it ran much smoother.
 
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Wall7486

Senior member
Sep 29, 2004
475
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0
I don't think you should for an alienware laptop. Simply the price and the 6800go is only slightly better than the 6600go and x700. In my opinion you should get a z70va refresh notebook. That notebook comes with a x700 and is around the 6 pound zone, so you can lug it around conveinently.

edit* You can get something nice by configuring it to around 1500-1600 as oppose to a 2-3k laptop in alienware which offer none or slightly better performance.
 
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makken

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2004
1,476
0
76
WoW really isn't that demanding of a game, and will probably be playable on most mainstream laptops.

I play regularly on my lappy , and it runs fine at 1280x768 widescreen 24bit 2xAA, medium settings with 'full screen glow' thing off. frames bounce between 35 and 60 (i have vsync on) and borders on 60 a good 25% of the time.

IF is smooth after the inital shock of suddenly drawing 500 player models.

The specs that matter are:
Pentium M 1.86Ghz
1.5GB DDR2 ram
64MB ATi X600 video card

most mainstream laptops today will meet these.
 
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RockGuitarDude

Senior member
Apr 15, 2004
695
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yeah, I currently run it on an home built Athlon 64 2800+ 1gig ram machine with a Geforce 4 MX440. I usually get 30 fps or so at 1280x1024. I get a 1 second lag spike after I kill anything and go out of combat for some reason... it happens every time without fail... obviously i dont get all the nifty directx9 effects but it still looks nice
 
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RockGuitarDude

Senior member
Apr 15, 2004
695
0
0
oh sorry one more question, do the pentium M's require matched sticks sticks of ram in the same way Pentium 4's do? aka could I put a 1gig stick with a 512 mb stick?
 
Hacp

Hacp

Lifer
Jun 8, 2005
13,923
2
81
Acer Travel mate, Turion version at newegg. Has an X700 which is 8 pipes. More than enough to play wow.
 
Pens1566

Pens1566

Lifer
Oct 11, 2005
13,320
10,730
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Dell 9300 w/6800. Big sucker, but if you can get it with a % off coupon it would be a good deal.
 
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hwan

Member
Oct 13, 2004
147
0
76
Another vote for the Dell 9300. I play WoW at 1920x1200 and it runs smoothly.
 
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slackwarelinux

Senior member
Sep 22, 2004
540
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Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
oh sorry one more question, do the pentium M's require matched sticks sticks of ram in the same way Pentium 4's do? aka could I put a 1gig stick with a 512 mb stick?
Click to expand...

No, they don't need to have matched sticks.
 
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