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Specifications / laptop

dazsindazsin
edited August 2010 in Tales of Monkey Island
Hi

I have Tales of Monkey Island on order, but need a new laptop first.

This isnt laziness...more me wanting a helping hand -

Can anyone recommend any decent laptops which would comfortably cope with the specifications needed to play TOMI..? Most laptops seem to be quite handy but have no graphics card.

Thanks in advance

Comments

  • OzzieMonkeyOzzieMonkey
    edited August 2010
    Yeah, laptops don't really do the job gamewise these days. You're better off getting a desktop, as they tend to be cheaper and you can upgrade parts a lot easier.
  • FriarFriar
    edited August 2010
    dazsin wrote: »
    Hi

    I have Tales of Monkey Island on order, but need a new laptop first.

    This isnt laziness...more me wanting a helping hand -

    Can anyone recommend any decent laptops which would comfortably cope with the specifications needed to play TOMI..? Most laptops seem to be quite handy but have no graphics card.

    Thanks in advance

    Well, whats your budget? I would recommend going for a vaio, but asking for it to be customised. For an extra £10 I doubled my specs (well, nearly), and added a blu-ray player. We just has to wait 2 weeks longer. I would avoid laptops bought in shops. Your best bet is to order online, or on the phone, direct to Sony, or whatever.
  • PolychromePolychrome
    edited August 2010
    My advice? If you need to run this game on the cheap, don't bother with a laptop. Cram some RAM and a decent video card into your desktop.

    I got my lappy for playing Aion, as it has a dual core processor and 3 gigs of RAM. (I guess my 'ol single core wasn't enough to run Aion at all, so I needed something that would run it on the cheap and wouldn't require me to replace my desktop's motherboard.) So the lappy runs Aion fine, since Aion's very processor-heavy, but when I tried to run Tales of Monkey Island, it crawled at a lovely 2 frames per second. (An oddly smooth 2 frames per second.) Turning down the graphical quality to the absolute minimum gave me *some* control of the mouse, and that was it.

    Wait, this was the same game that ran just fine on a Wii?

    Went over to my desktop, which has a modest single-core AMD 64 at 2.2 gigahertz, but the video card is an 8800 GT with 512 megs of RAM. System RAM is 3.5 gigs. The game ran screaming fast without a single frameskip. On top of that, I gained all the high-rez textures, and all the pretty and subtle special effects that really don't show in the Wii version.

    Laptops usually don't have interchangeable parts, and gaming laptops tend to be extremely expensive as desktop-grade video cards are rarely used in them. Just do as I say, and cram a good card and some RAM into your existing system. You'll spend a lot less.
  • xbskidxbskid
    edited August 2010
    Laptops that have discrete video RAM (They exist, but you have to look!) will run games just fine. The kind without discrete RAM don't do well at all because the video chips have to section out a chunk of system RAM, and accessing that memory through several different system buses is much, much slower than accessing its own dedicated memory chip. In many cases, the lack of discrete video RAM is a corner cut to save costs.
  • dazsindazsin
    edited August 2010
    Hmm. I'm still not sure which laptop would run it. I don't want to buy a new one only to find it doesnt work or is jerky etc.
  • xbskidxbskid
    edited August 2010
    dazsin wrote: »
    Hmm. I'm still not sure which laptop would run it. I don't want to buy a new one only to find it doesnt work or is jerky etc.

    If you're looking at some in a retail store, one way to find out whether or not they have discrete RAM is to check how much RAM the machine is advertised as having, then compare that to whatever the computer reports in System Properties (Assuming it's running Windows). If the amount of RAM listed in System Properties is 16/32/64/128MB less than what's physically in the box, then the video chip does not have discrete RAM. On the flip side, if System Properties reports the full amount, the graphics chip most likely has its own RAM and should be sufficient for light gaming.
  • Chyron8472Chyron8472
    edited August 2010
    dazsin wrote: »
    Can anyone recommend any decent laptops which would comfortably cope with the specifications needed to play TOMI..? Most laptops seem to be quite handy but have no graphics card.

    Thanks in advance

    Which graphics quality level are you going for to run ToMI at?

    My laptop runs ToMI just fine, though it likes the quality to be at level 4 (any higher and the mouse starts to lag.) But, my laptop only cost me $400 and I bought it over a year ago.
  • dazsindazsin
    edited August 2010
    Chyron8472 wrote: »
    Which graphics quality level are you going for to run ToMI at?

    My laptop runs ToMI just fine, though it likes the quality to be at level 4 (any higher and the mouse starts to lag.) But, my laptop only cost me $400 and I bought it over a year ago.

    I'm not sure, a good quality i would like to think.

    I might just get a PS3 instead
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