Try these links to tweak OpenSUSE 12.3 and add multimedia capability
opensuse-community.org/Restricted_formats
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/new-user-how-faq-read-only/407184-multi-media-restricted-format-installation-guide.html#post2533652
http://www.tweakhound.com/2013/03/25/opensuse-12-3-tips-tricks-and-tweaks/
Monday, 2 December 2013
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Legendary Weapons
After completing my Legendary Weapon, I thought it would be useful to pass on any advice I've learnt along the way, to our readers. Below are 10 tips I'd readily advise people to follow.
Pick it and Stick
This might sound the most obvious, but deciding early what legendary weapon you’re aiming for and sticking to it is critical. If you enter into building a legendary weapon, you should be prepared to use that weapon for the foreseeable future. Flip flopping between weapon sets simply isn’t sensible when you’ve a legendary weapon sat there waiting to be used. When I set out to make the Kudzu it was on the basis that I loved the longbow and its playstyle and had absolutely nothing to do with the whether or not it was a good weapon or not.
Don’t Gamble
I’ve encountered plenty of players who have thrown a single set of 4 rare bows into the Mystic Forge and come out with a the Lover. The attraction of this mystical gamble paying off is fantasy and irrational. The probability of you succeeding in acquiring a pre-cursor from this method is absolutely miniscule and is an expensive (and ultimately pointless) endeavour. You are better served saving your money for the precursor you want and buying it outright instead of crossing your fingers and hoping for lady luck. As a small sample size, I’ve thrown in around 1,000 rare weapons into the Mystic Forge and never got a single precursor.
Don’t Grind Tier 6 Materials
I hear a lot of people who have made legendary weapons say that they farmed certain areas or monsters for the Tier 6 materials. Unfortunately this method is inefficient and ridiculously time consuming. The drop rates on Tier 6 materials are absolutely tiny. It is so much quicker to buy all the Tier 6 materials you need, as and when you can afford it. If you place buy orders it reduces the cost significantly, while running dungeons, fractals or event chains in Cursed Shore should see you earn around 2.5g per hour. This is more than sufficient to buy the materials at a good rate, and far quicker than simply grinding them.
Make Your Money
It’s surprisingly easy to earn money in Guild Wars 2 and yet many claim to be constantly poor. Whether you’re flipping items on the trading post (see our Black Lion Underground articles or Gold Wars 2) or running dungeons, they all provide a wealth of earning potential. The easiest method of a guaranteed income is to run a high level dungeon with Honor of the Waves, Ascalon Catacombs and Citadel of Flames particular favourites. Many paths in these dungeons have earning potential of around 2 gold per path it’s easy to begin to amass a good amount of funds.
Save, Save, Save!
When you start making money the best method of amassing it properly is to simply deposit the vast majority of it into your bank and forget about it. None of my characters ever have more than 50 silver on them at once as the rest is deposited. 50 silvers should see you have enough money to make a multitude of Waypoints and cover any repair costs. It’s surprising how quickly your money adds up when the temptation to spend what you have is removed.
Sell, Sell, Sell!
The only items I ever salvage are rares, everything else I simply vendor. This is partially because it’s time consuming weeding through your bags, but also because I know that 99.9% of all blues and greens aren’t worth listing on the Trading Post. Selling them to the vendor can often net you 1s or more per item which stacks up quickly after a couple of dungeon runs. When it comes to selling, you should also offload all your craftable materials on the Trading Post. With the exception of materials you know are needed for your legendary, don’t be afraid to sell the lot. It’s surprising how much money you can earn by liquidating in this way.
Beg and Borrow
I would be lying if I said that I earned every penny of my gold to build my legendary weapon. Due to market fluctuations on precursors I was keen to pick up my Leaf of Kudzu quickly; unfortunately I was a little short when its price was low having bought all my Tier 6 materials. Thankfully I had some great guildies and friends who were more than happy to lend me the money, which I repaid over several weeks. It’s nothing to be ashamed of to ask for help from friends in game.
Free First
A large percentage of a legendary weapon is free. Obsidian Shards, Blood Stone Shards, World Completion and Badges of Honor are all easily obtained just by investing time and obtaining them will chalk off a huge amount of work needed; everything else can then be bought with money as you earn it. It might seem like an up hill struggle to complete these big elements, but once they’re done and banked you’ll feel so much better, safe in the knowledge that a huge proportion of the weapon is complete.
Enjoy Yourself, But Focus
It’s very easy to get sucked into trying to rush a legendary weapon. Make no mistake, it’s very time consuming but most if not all of it can be completed just by playing. My approach was to target specific areas of the game that yielded the item I needed, before playing it until that item (or items) was completed. For several days I only played WvW for Badges of Honor or for several weeks I only ran events in Cursed Shore for Karma. While that might sound a little restrictive, all of it was elements of the game I enjoyed just focused into a single area of play, as to not spread myself too thinly during my play times.
Precursor
It really needs no other title. Without your precursor, a legendary isn’t possible. Don’t count on lucky drops or the mystic forge but instead save, borrow and save some more (as above!). Obtaining your precursor is the absolute priority over everything else so resist spending any money and stock pile all your gold. Once it is in your hands, the difference you feel is euphoric giving you the feeling that the battle is almost won.
My PC Specialist 11.6" Inferno Laptop
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Chassis & Display
Inferno Series: 11.6" Matte HD LED Widescreen (1366x768) |
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Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-3380M (2.90GHz) 3MB |
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Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB) |
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Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 650M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11 |
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Memory - Hard Disk
250GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD2500BEKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm) |
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Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo) |
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Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9) |
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Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack |
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Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH |
he textured rubber feel of the casing is very unique and prevents the laptop from slipping off surfaces or your lap. The smallish keys were fine to type on, even for my large hands. The Trackpad isn't brilliant, but I think it's more down to the included software. I'm sure I could probably find a third party solution to make the trackpad behave more like other notebooks.
Temperature-wise the machine will idle at the desktop at around 50c and reach a maximum of 80c (even when throttling is disabled). The machine doesn't have the cooling for the CPU to go into Turboboost mode, but that's to be expected. From all the tests I did the games were bottlenecked by the GPU and not the CPU.
Acoustics are silent when at the desktop, rising to a slight whisper when not on a flat surface or doing light work. During gaming the fan was no louder than my old desktop Nvidia GTX 560. I imagine quite a few people will use headphones, however the volume was loud enough to drown out the more than tolerable fan noise. Once gaming has finished the fans go all the way to silent again in under 15 seconds which is pretty remarkable.
Sound quality out of the box was average, however with some tweaking in the included THX utility I was able to get a much more acceptable sound. I put Surround to 40% (which basically just gives better stereo separation from the stereo speakers), and the "Speaker" setting (essentially bass as far as I could tell) to 90%. I turned off all other adjustments.
The screen is excellent. I much prefer the ever so slight "dusty" look you get with a matte screen compared to mass reflections on a glossy screen. The only minor point I will say is that out of the box the colours were rather dull and the gamma was a touch too high. I simply changed the Saturation to +10 and Gamma to 0.9 and the image was much more on par with my usual 24" gaming monitor. There was no input lag or ghosting.
Performance was fantastic for such a small and light device. I used Nvidia Inspector to force Adaptive Vsync since for some reason it's missing in the Nvidia control panel for the mobile 6xx series.
In Borderlands 2 with most settings on maximum I was getting highs of 60 and lows of 30 during intense firefights. I'd say at an average I get around 45fps. This is still much more than the consoles and looks much nicer.
Diablo 3 was always 60fps, never dropping.
Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed was always 60fps, never dropping.
Sadly I don't have a great camera, so I'll simply just include these photos that I think show how nice the build and screen are. This was taken in typical home lighting. Any glaring, over saturation and colour bleeding will be due to my poor camera. The screen looks much nicer than this in person.
Temperature-wise the machine will idle at the desktop at around 50c and reach a maximum of 80c (even when throttling is disabled). The machine doesn't have the cooling for the CPU to go into Turboboost mode, but that's to be expected. From all the tests I did the games were bottlenecked by the GPU and not the CPU.
Acoustics are silent when at the desktop, rising to a slight whisper when not on a flat surface or doing light work. During gaming the fan was no louder than my old desktop Nvidia GTX 560. I imagine quite a few people will use headphones, however the volume was loud enough to drown out the more than tolerable fan noise. Once gaming has finished the fans go all the way to silent again in under 15 seconds which is pretty remarkable.
Sound quality out of the box was average, however with some tweaking in the included THX utility I was able to get a much more acceptable sound. I put Surround to 40% (which basically just gives better stereo separation from the stereo speakers), and the "Speaker" setting (essentially bass as far as I could tell) to 90%. I turned off all other adjustments.
The screen is excellent. I much prefer the ever so slight "dusty" look you get with a matte screen compared to mass reflections on a glossy screen. The only minor point I will say is that out of the box the colours were rather dull and the gamma was a touch too high. I simply changed the Saturation to +10 and Gamma to 0.9 and the image was much more on par with my usual 24" gaming monitor. There was no input lag or ghosting.
Performance was fantastic for such a small and light device. I used Nvidia Inspector to force Adaptive Vsync since for some reason it's missing in the Nvidia control panel for the mobile 6xx series.
In Borderlands 2 with most settings on maximum I was getting highs of 60 and lows of 30 during intense firefights. I'd say at an average I get around 45fps. This is still much more than the consoles and looks much nicer.
Diablo 3 was always 60fps, never dropping.
Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed was always 60fps, never dropping.
Sadly I don't have a great camera, so I'll simply just include these photos that I think show how nice the build and screen are. This was taken in typical home lighting. Any glaring, over saturation and colour bleeding will be due to my poor camera. The screen looks much nicer than this in person.
Laptop case
The case it self is far beyond what i was expecting, its beauty is quite understated and i think it is one of the nicest looking small gaming laptops.
The case is very sturdy with no flex in the main body and very little in the middle of the keyboard (nothing you notice in use unless you like to poke in between your keys when your bored)
All the buttons have a really nice feeling, firm and responsive juts the way i like them, although the keyboard is very cramped even for my tiny hands iam already getting used to it. I can not do my attempt at touch typing but you can still mange to get a good rate on it.
The track pad is not my favorite, actually i hate track pads completely but i had used better, its sensitive enough but every now and then it comes up with one of the multi touch options, i could be me accidentally touching it but either way it dose annoy me
I also happily found the button to disable the track pad (fn + F1 ) This is a small understated feature that should be on every laptop and is implemented well.
Some of the other quick buttons are not as good i feel. The brightness and volume keys show no indication of the level unless you are on the desktop. Also i find that the brightness buttons work to quickly from low to high to be used that often.
The screen is sharp and pleasant to look at. The panel itself is very sturdy and although i would not do it, it could be picked up by the screen with out damaging it. Also the hinges are of fantastic quality and they look and feel sturdy.
Currently i have a white patch just left of center screen when the screen is showing black (windows loading screen, game loading screens, dark movies) Iam unsure of the cause but i will be getting i touch with customer service shortly to look into this.
All in all the case is 10/10, the screen is 9/10 due to the white patch.
Cooling
This laptop is fine desktop and media use on the lap with out to much heat, while gaming a mat or tray is needed, you could probably have it your lap, it dose not burn but the hot air coming out the exhaust vent is enough to tell you it dose not need the heat from your lap or extra effort required to pull cool air in. As long as the fan is not blocked i have no concerns about the heating, it preforms as well as the likes of alien ware but it also dose it quieter! I hate alien ware!
Performance
This laptop is quick in all respects, it boots fast, transfers files fast and the gaming i amazing for such a tiny laptop. ( i only wish i had put a SSD in)
I did a quick test using fraps to test it on Battlefield 3, if any one wants a specific game please ask, if i have it i will do it for you.
Battlefield 3
Campaign (fraps)
LOW HIGH AVERAGE
LOW 54 63 57
MEDIUM 41 62 54
HIGH 32 60 42
ULTRA 17 43 22
As seen this laptop will play on ultra, and except a couple of moments its actually playable. But you can just bump down to high and enjoy.
This is with v sync on and the normal screen res.
I will be updating this when i get a chance to put it onto a 1080p monitor to see how it handles it.
Other games again it handled really well and it is a joy to play.
Conclusion
All in all this laptop fulfilled all my expectations and stomped on any doubts i had.
I recommend this laptop not as a traveling laptop but as a gaming laptop!
I would rate this as 9/10 only because i feel with a ssd this laptop would have it all.
And just one more thank you you all the guys at PCS who have done an excellent job and provided a excellent service.
Also any other questions i will try to answer, and photos should be uploading!
The case it self is far beyond what i was expecting, its beauty is quite understated and i think it is one of the nicest looking small gaming laptops.
The case is very sturdy with no flex in the main body and very little in the middle of the keyboard (nothing you notice in use unless you like to poke in between your keys when your bored)
All the buttons have a really nice feeling, firm and responsive juts the way i like them, although the keyboard is very cramped even for my tiny hands iam already getting used to it. I can not do my attempt at touch typing but you can still mange to get a good rate on it.
The track pad is not my favorite, actually i hate track pads completely but i had used better, its sensitive enough but every now and then it comes up with one of the multi touch options, i could be me accidentally touching it but either way it dose annoy me
I also happily found the button to disable the track pad (fn + F1 ) This is a small understated feature that should be on every laptop and is implemented well.
Some of the other quick buttons are not as good i feel. The brightness and volume keys show no indication of the level unless you are on the desktop. Also i find that the brightness buttons work to quickly from low to high to be used that often.
The screen is sharp and pleasant to look at. The panel itself is very sturdy and although i would not do it, it could be picked up by the screen with out damaging it. Also the hinges are of fantastic quality and they look and feel sturdy.
Currently i have a white patch just left of center screen when the screen is showing black (windows loading screen, game loading screens, dark movies) Iam unsure of the cause but i will be getting i touch with customer service shortly to look into this.
All in all the case is 10/10, the screen is 9/10 due to the white patch.
Cooling
This laptop is fine desktop and media use on the lap with out to much heat, while gaming a mat or tray is needed, you could probably have it your lap, it dose not burn but the hot air coming out the exhaust vent is enough to tell you it dose not need the heat from your lap or extra effort required to pull cool air in. As long as the fan is not blocked i have no concerns about the heating, it preforms as well as the likes of alien ware but it also dose it quieter! I hate alien ware!
Performance
This laptop is quick in all respects, it boots fast, transfers files fast and the gaming i amazing for such a tiny laptop. ( i only wish i had put a SSD in)
I did a quick test using fraps to test it on Battlefield 3, if any one wants a specific game please ask, if i have it i will do it for you.
Battlefield 3
Campaign (fraps)
LOW HIGH AVERAGE
LOW 54 63 57
MEDIUM 41 62 54
HIGH 32 60 42
ULTRA 17 43 22
As seen this laptop will play on ultra, and except a couple of moments its actually playable. But you can just bump down to high and enjoy.
This is with v sync on and the normal screen res.
I will be updating this when i get a chance to put it onto a 1080p monitor to see how it handles it.
Other games again it handled really well and it is a joy to play.
Conclusion
All in all this laptop fulfilled all my expectations and stomped on any doubts i had.
I recommend this laptop not as a traveling laptop but as a gaming laptop!
I would rate this as 9/10 only because i feel with a ssd this laptop would have it all.
And just one more thank you you all the guys at PCS who have done an excellent job and provided a excellent service.
Also any other questions i will try to answer, and photos should be uploading!
GW2: What to do at 80,
So You’re Level 80: A Quick n’ Dirty Handbook to Endgame in Guild Wars 2
(in no particular order)
*1. Grind Ectoplasms!
WHAT: You must have ectoplasms. Ghost Busters! These ectoplasms are invaluable.HOW: Forging items in the Mystic Forge, and breaking them down with Master’s Salvage Kits … or even by purchasing them with cold, hard coins. The formula is below.
#a. sell 1-80 blues and 1-69 greens/yellows/exotics for cash;
#b. combine 70-80 greens for yellows or extra greens to save to try again;
#c. break down ANY 70-80 yellows,
and
#d. sell 70-80 exotics that sell for above 25s. Under 25-silver tends to make them more worthwhile to break down.
WHY: Ectoplasms help create the creme de la creme of GW2 gear: crafted, exotic level 80 gear—the top-tier stuff in the game comparable to any other 80 exotic-tier item in the game — I.E.: the Draconic heavy armor set — that you can craft yourself or hire a friend or guildy to create for you. The best jewelry and trinkets, weapons, armor, and upgrade components CAN be crafted and DO compete with the best gear available. Ectoplasms, and these gear pieces also sell for a pretty copper (and by ‘copper’ I mean ‘oodles of gold’), once you’re exotic’d out.
*2. Craft Legendaries!
WHAT: Crafting legendaries (red-tier items).HOW: Buy or farm materials, particularly the 80 exotics, the fine materials, and base materials and farm karma. There are many guides available online. Browse around!
WHY: Looks and the right to brag, mostly. They’re only comparable to all other 80 exotics in terms of stats, so beware!
*3. Map Completion!
WHAT: Complete the map, zone by zone.HOW: Run around the map, complete every heart / POI / Waypoint / Vista and Skill Challenge in each zone. Even the PvP zone.
WHY: Not only does each zone of the map give a LOT of coin (10-50 silver per, depending on the level range), it also gives two items (typically rare or exotic) and zone-level material rewards in a stack of 40, plus one rare item that you can usually only get from story steps or the Black Lion Trader, as well as a chunk of story experience. 100% Map Completion is a large sum of coins, XP, exotic items and a crafting material for a LEGENDARY item.
*4. Farm!
WHAT: Farm! Just farm! Farming involves the repeated slaughtering of innocent monsters such as the level cave trolls in Frostgorge Sound, or whatever you can handle. You still get level 80 items (greens, blues, yellows…) and any level materials relevant to your farming zone of choice.HOW: You pretty much just go kill anything in the world endlessly. As much as you want; magic find and gold find gear like Omnomberry Bars] will improve your farm rate. Magic Find Boosters are also a boon if you think you’ll be at it for, say, 45-60+ minutes!
WHY: You gain coins, items of all varieties/levels and tiers, materials and experience out the wazoo. This can help you acquire etoplasms and cash.
*5. Grind for Karma!
WHAT: Karma! It’s Karma! You should know this by now…HOW: Karma Boosters and completing hearts and events in lower level zones, and repeatable events in Orr!
WHY: Karma Items from karma vendors, Legendary materials, and other goodies you can only get with karma!
(edited about a year ago by Moderator)
about a year ago
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Runo.2759
*6. Acquire Skillpoints!
WHAT: Unlock skill points.HOW: Skill challenges on your map in zones, and XP post-80 goes towards a skill point anew.
WHY: Some legendary materials and other Mystic Forge items can be bought with skill points only.
*7. Grind for Gold & Gems!
WHAT: Gems can be used to buy things ONLY purchasable on the Black Lion Trading Company store.HOW: Commerce Panel (‘O’ key) -> Currency Exhange tab. Watch the exchange ratio like a hawk and strike when you can buy low and sell high. You can even get gold in a pinch by selling gems instead of buying them, however they were acquired.
WHY: You don’t ever have to spend a real dollar on gems on this game past the box fee if you do! You SHOULD. But you don’t HAVE to.
*8. Craft!
WHAT: Get one/both your primary and secondary crafting professions up to 400/400.HOW: Using materials from your 80 funds and farming, craft things you have and discover things you don’t. Crafting Boosters can help you or an alt plow through crafting and get a LOT of XP.
WHY: You can supply crafted goods like armor and weapons, boxes and trinkets, upgrade components and more — to yourself, your alts, your guildies, friends or.. even strangers!
*9. Achievement Points!
WHAT: Achievement Points are fun bragging rights.HOW: Hero Panel (‘H’ key) -> Achievements and start going down the list. Some are account-wide and others are class-specific or gameplay type-specific. Some are repeatable, too!
WHY: Tell your friends you’ve got the most achievements and points! They’re like Steam Achievements or Xbox Live Achievement Points. It also boosts influence for the guild you are representing at the time of the unlock!
BTW, I would recommend adding obtaining the commander titles for WvW so you can lead squads, helping to level up a guild for storage/buffs/area events (feast, banners), claiming keeps for your guild in WvW for the status, hunting down all of the puzzles in the game and getting the achievements for them. And since you have Orr and decent cash generation, play the trading post.
*10. World vs. World/sPvP!
WHAT: World vs. World does get marginally easier with higher-level gear, but it isn’t game-breaking. World versus World pops up from your ‘B’ key menu, and Structured PvP is accessed from your Hero panel (‘H’) key -> PvP tab -> “Go to the Heart of the Mists.” WvW has exquisite fine and crafting materials, PvE mobs to kill, players to fight against for the obvious added fun of player vs. player combat, structural damage and sieges, and guerrilla combat or mass warfare. The choice is yours! Structured PvP is fun and has unique rewards from Glory, which you can make great use of Glory/PvP Boosters, here. It also seperates your skills, gear and traits from WvW and PvE… it is its own game type! WvW even gives a lot of karma, and Badges of Honor (PvP currency).*11. Grind for Pact
(Vigil, Durmand Priory & Order of Whispers), Tier 1, 2 & 3 Cultural Gear!Cultural Armor & Weapons and Pact Armor & Weapons. You’ll need, in most cases, LOTS of gold. Some weapons can be bought with karma, but armor cannot… such is the price, as they are some of the coolest-looking items in the game and have 80 exotic stats for most of the items. It also gives you achievement points, one batch of points is given once for a single item from a race’s cultural armory (but only once, for example—get a sylvari shoulder, 5 achievement points for a piece of sylvari cultural. But you CANNOT unlock the Emperor’s New Wardrobe achievement with a full set of cultural gear from one race. It must be from all FIVE races.)
*12. Dungeon Exploration!
Dungeons have Story and Exploratory Modes. Some waypoints and Points of Interest are ONLY available in dungeons and their story or exploratory modes, and Exploratory Mode paths reward fantastic loot and tokens. Both modes have achievement points and XP (for skill points) rewarded en masse.Complete a Story Mode Dungeon, and/or go with friends who have completed Story Mode to run Exploratory Mode. Only one person has to complete Story Mode to unlock Exploratory Mode for all, but you must be at-level for Exploratory Mode regardless if your state of completion of its story (typically +5 to the story, as in Ascalanian Catacombs Story Mode is 30, while its exploratory mode is 35).
NOTE: Dungeon tokens can be used for rare, exotic armor and weapons you can transmute for appearance, or use for stats. Or both! Not to mention the XP (for skill points), item and currency rewards!
*13. Help People!
Helping people across the map and in WvW can net you karma, coins, XP, materials, a variety of items, notoriety (as in being known as a nice person!) Wander the maps. Run dungeons with guildies, friends and strangers. You can also get map completion done, earn currency and rewards, and more!about a year ago
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Blueroseknight.7954
I wish there was something to do in the endgame that involved something other than grinding or making a new character. Hopefully they add some high end dungeons like GW1 had.
about a year ago
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Runo.2759
*14. Work On an Alt!
WHAT: Level your >80 alternate characters for extra coins, Achievement Points, and even more. As for how, that should be obvious… I’d hope. How’d you get to 80 on THIS toon? This option gives you extra coins, Achievement Points, and materials and more!*15. Finish Your Personal Storyline!
Your personal story has an end to it. Wanna know a secret about the end of the storyline that you’ll wanna know before you run Arah?Your final story mission has you actually go to kill Zhaitan. You MUST get to this final story step before running Arah or you will have to run Arah Story Mode again to receive your final reward.
There are five or so level 80 story missions to proceed through as per normal.
The spoiler text I noted? It gives CRAZY GOOD rewards (typically). *BAGS MAY POTENTIALLY STILL BE BUGGED AT THE TIME BEING, but ANet is undoubtedly working on a fix as soon as possible. (Thanks, Critwrench!)
*16. Roleplay!
WHAT: …role…play? You probably know what this is. ;PHOW: Act in-character in a roleplaying situation!
WHY: It’s fun! You don’t even have to be good at it—you just have to enjoy it!
*17. World Bosses
There are tougher things in the world than the champion mobs that can be taken down by a good group.*18. 20 Slot Bags
Are you a bad enough dude to pay 10+ gold in materials to get your space? Multiply it by 4! It’s no secret; storage on a single toon is expensive, and you’re not end-game until you’re swimming in space.*19. Commander Title
Being on the map makes you the star of the show, no matter where you go, because you are the kind of badkitten that accumulates 100 gold and windmill slams it into a vendor. (Thanks, Futbot!)*20. Boost your Magic Find!
You can buy Adventurer gear, but these are expensive and you get less of the other stats because the +MF is the primary attribute.The best is to get 6 runes to raise your MF to 60% passive. (you can still eath omnomberry bars on top of this)
You can do so be getting 5 Superior Runes of the Pirate and 1 Superior Rune of the Traveler (or vice versa).
However the Pirate runes are currently worth 50% of the Traveler runes so 5 Pirates is a much better idea. (Awesome guide here. Thanks, Keops!)
*21. Exotic Up!
Every single item in your Hero Panel can be made exotic (with the exception of your backpiece, which only goes up to ‘Rare’ from the guild armorsmith vendor). Work towards a full set, or even TWO full sets, of exotic armor packed with Superior Runes; get some exotic trinkets with top-tier jewels, and get the best weapons to fill your weapon slots stacked with the hottest Superior Sigils.As you can see, the game is just as fresh and awesome as soon as you reach level cap and there’s more to do even over what I’ve just listed. There is a LOT to do—more than just this list of reasons! You could even hang out and chat—it’s a free to play MMO world with free reigns.
I don’t always powerlevel to endgame…
…but when I do, I make sure it’s in a game where there’s actually stuff to do.
Stay 80, my friends.
###
I have been lvl 80 for two weeks and still find that when I log in I have multiple things to do. My biggest challenge is figuring out what I want to do that night. Found a fun guild so its a) hang out with guildies, b) finish another step in my personal story (nope have not finished it yet), c) go into WvW solo or with guild, d) finally do SPVP (nope have not had one match yet. have not had time), d) work on map completion of a zone, e) do a dungeon run, f) craft, g) and so on.
Endgame things:
LEVEL UP multiple characters (1 of each class/race)
WvWvW
sPvP/tPvP
FRACTALS!!!
Guild Missions
Legendary Weapons
Ascended Armor
Dungeon Weapons
Dungeon Armor
Exotic Weapons
Exotic Armour
Find your perfect build
Become a Polymock Master (pokemon in gw2)
COMPLETE Personal Story
COMPLETE All Dungeons
COMPLETE 100% World Exploration
COLLECT ALL Mini pets
COLLECT ALL Dyes
MAX OUT ALL Titles
MAX OUT ALL Achievements
MAX OUT ALL skills and utilities
MAX OUT ALL Guild upgrades
MAX OUT ALL classes (warrior, guardian etc.)
MAX OUT ALL crafting Professions
AND MOST OF ALL: Help other players and Guild members.
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80 Things to Do At Level 80
- Complete your personal story
- Defeat Zhaitan
- Unlock all available skills for your profession / race
- Raise your crafting disciplines to skill level 400
- Earn enough gold to purchase a racial armor set
- Earn enough karma to purchase an exotic armor set
- Play through all dungeons in story mode
- Complete all dungeons in explorable mode
- Complete all 33 possible explorable mode dungeon paths
- Earn enough dungeon tokens to purchase a set of armor
- Collect a set of armor from each dungeon in the game
- Start a petition to make the Undead Orrian Chicken a new necro minion
- Earn enough karma to purchase a racial weapon
- Craft an exotic weapon for your character
- Craft an exotic armor set for your character
- Purchase a Dragon’s Deep weapon
- Earn all possible PvE titles
- Experiment with new builds for your profession
- Discover all possible recipes for your crafting disciplines
- Master all crafting disciplines
- Experiment with the Mystic Forge
- Create a Mystic weapon in the Mystic Forge
- Craft a legendary weapon in the Mystic Forge
- Explore all areas in the game
- Find and use a vial of black dye
- Find a vial of black dye and give it to a friend
- Create or purchase a full set of 20 slot bags
- Give Logan a wedgie
- Participate in the Norn Keg Brawl
- Unlock all Keg Brawl achievements
- Create a new character to experience a different profession / race
- Participate in structured PvP
- Raise your sPvP rank
- Achieve the rank of Ascendant in sPvP
- Complete your favorite sPvP cosmetic armor set
- Collect new cosmetic weapon skins for sPvP
- Unlock all possible cosmetic weapon and armor skins in sPvP
- Earn all sPvP titles
- Find and complete all 31 jumping puzzles
- Complete the current Monthly achievements
- Help your guild earn influence to unlock additional perks
- Outrun a centaur
- Charm all possible pets as a Ranger
- Create an all-ranger guild called Team Rocket, lose constantly in sPvP
- Collect all 101 types of cooking materials
- Fill every collection slot in the bank with at least one item
- Participate in World versus World
- Help your world win in WvW
- Defeat enough enemy players in WvW to complete the medal
- Complete the awesome Yakslapper achievement in WvW
- Complete all WvW achievements
- Build and use all siege weapon types in WvW
- Earn all possible WvW Titles
- Play the organ in Caledon forest, and party with the Quaggan
- Earn enough gold to purchase a Commander Tome
- Visit the monument to Killeen and pay your respects
- Defeat the Shatterer
- Defeat the Claw of Jormag
- Defeat Tequatl the Sunless
- Add new friends to your friend’s list
- Organize an in-game event for your guild
- Complete every map in the game
- Participate in meta events
- Discover and participate in new dynamic events
- Collect stacks of butter and butter prank your friends
- Learn the ins and outs of the Trading Post
- Get rich selling Globs of Ectoplasm
- Buy a Box o’ Fun and throw a party in Lion’s Arch
- Complete an armor set for your character’s Order
- Read all of the books in Divinity's Reach
- Read the story of how Ebonhawke was founded
- Complete all possible weapon achievements for your character
- Defeat the Champion of Grenth and purchase the exotic armor set
- Write about your level 80 experience, have it published on GW2Hub
- Purchase a set of armor from the guild armorsmith
- Purchase a set of weapons from the guild weaponsmith
- Complete all Slayer achievements
- Complete the Lifetime Survivor achievement
- Go skydiving in Arah after defeating Zhaitan
- Have fun!
* Comments
http://surlygamer.net/2012/06/05/raiding-sucks-why-guild-wars-2-doesnt-n...http://imgur.com/RofvZ
"If you're trying to grind, I hate to say this, but - You're playing the game wrong."
Sure that goes for levelling, but once you hit 80 and get 100% map completion, this is about all you can do. And explorables are not equivalent to raids, atleast not until they put worthwhile items to drop from bosses, right now, you run through picking up crap loot that you're either going to vendor or salvage to pick up your 20-30 tokens. Here is the grind, you need what, 8-10 runs of an instance to get a single piece of gear? 56 runs, if you do them 1 per day, more if you do multiple runs, to get a full set, including weapons..How is 56 runs of the same dungeon not a grind?
The lack of a skin locker (similar to the pvp one) is also disturbing, I do my 56 runs of COF and get my full set, then a month or 2 later I get bored of the exact same look, so I do my 56 runs of HoTW. Now I have 2 choices, transmute my hard-earned COF set to look like the HoTW set,loosing the skin, or go and farm/buy/make another full set of exotics to transmute while my COF set takes up 6-7 bank slots, just incase I feel like wearing it again.
Mid level content is great, but it is not a suitable substitute for proper endgame..simply because they aren't challenging. 60+ people hitting on a stationary boss is pathetic, and you can't say what people do in other MMOs, that after the initial rush the zerg will thin..because it won't, level 80s have nothing better to do, so they still come back and beat on the lvl50 bosses.
Don't get me wrong, the game is good, for me, it was perfect until about Orr(Which is why I'm going to give the game another couple of months while I level 1 from each race to 45 just to see all the beautifully crafted Personal Stories (Until it stops being about my character) but without structured content and a carrot at the end of the stick, the game will suffer for it.
Most MMOs have a gear progression required to attain the next phase to get the next level of gear. Since GW2 has the same gear available through all channels it means there is no real gear progression and everyone will have the same gear eventually doing what they want to do (wvwvw, farming gold, dungeons etc). This obviously does not include Ascended Gear through Fractals, or gear skins.
You imply it in a number of the points, but I am a recent 80 learning the game still and I had a hard time piecing this together even after reading your post. Once I got my first exotic piece, I realized that all exotics are the same (if the prefix is the same). At that point, it started to make sense the end game design here.
(Or If I am wrong, correct me since I am a new 80 and still learning)
Please take this as nothing more than constructive criticism. If people have concerns about lack of end game, it’s because there is. Much of what is listed here is either common sense, or it is indeed a grind. You can accomplish much of this here from any old MMORPG free or paid that you pick off the shelf or a website.
Keywords like Endgame are code-name for grind fests. Most MMOs out there are grind fests so this isn’t a knock on GW2 specifucally at all. I was a big GW1 fanboy, primarily for it’s PvP and primarily for RA/HA. In my opinion, GW1’s PvP was ground breaking, unmatched til this very day. GW2 sadly is a different story.
GW2 is BEAUTIFUL I am blown away by the graphics, however, there’s no soul to it, no purpose. What are you supposed to do after you “grind”, “farm”, “achieve” and “acquire” yourself all out?(these are your own words)
Here in GW2, its reasonably easy to get close to ‘max stats’ within a few hours of hitting 80. You wont quite have max stats, but you’ll be close enough to do most of the dungeons.
However, you’re still going to get one shot by abilities in those dungeons. Why? Because this is a skill based game. You need to dodge important abilities, combo with each other, use your heal at the right time etc.
Im level 80 all in rares, and working on exotics, and i went and ran AC with a bunch of my lower level mates, and it was tough, and i loved it.
Awesome topic and advices. I’ve been level 80 for like 10 days now and I was lucky enough to fill my Hero Tab with level 80 exotic gear
So now, I’m concentrated on crafting legendaries! More spesificially, my first legendary greatsword, which would be Sunrise!
My world completion is at 83% and I have two necessary crafting professions for Sunrise leveled up to 400, armorsmithing and weaponsmithing. I also have 200 skill points, you know for what haha
I’ll take this month exploring Tyria up to 100% and then…FARMING! I’ll farm for 150-200 golds and it will take a month I think, I must finish farming before my exams start
Magic Find:
You can buy Adventurer gear, but these are expensive and you get less of the other stats because the +MF is the primary attribute.The best is to get 6 runes to raise your MF to 60% passive. (you can still eath omnomberry bars on top of this)
You can do so be getting 5 Superior Runes of the Pirate and 1 Superior Rune of the Traveler (or vice versa).
However the Pirate runes are currently worth 50% of the Traveler runes so 5 Pirates is a much better idea.
about a year ago
Conclusion
There is so much stuff you could do at 80 that does not include grinding, it’s not even funny, but the OP barely takes “the FUN question” into consideration. This is not a guide for players who’ve just hit 80, it’s a guide for people that had 80 in their sights long before reaching it, and have just ran through the lower levels like they’re just “trash levels.”Explore, do the same stuff you’ve been skipping over on your route to 80. Just, play. There isn’t anything holding you back anymore, and in fact now that you don’t have to worry about outleveling your gear, it becomes so much less frustrating, less time-consuming. Sooner or later there will be the desire to look upon this list of “endgame items” and realize that there’s still more that could be done. That all comes, basically, after you’re done exploring, wide-eyed, wondering at all the sights.
You’re not committing yourself to a grind simply by hitting level 80, as this thread seems to be suggesting. I suggest you update this thread to be more friendly.
Thursday, 26 September 2013
Guild Wars 2 Laptop Guide
<b>Guild Wars 2 Laptop Guide v3.0</b><br />
Now that GW2 has been released, it’s time for an update to this guide. This is not the final version yet, as it doesn’t include laptop recommendations yet if I ever get around to doing it.
Also, preferably ask your questions on the forums, I don’t always check my private messages, I don’t know the answer to everything either so you will get a reply faster if you post in the forum. Also, your experience might be invaluable to others who will encounter the same situation as you.
This guide is meant to help you decide which laptop to get, but in the end, you know best what you need and you will also have to do your own research for certain details.
A few important facts
For now I don’t have a whole lot of actual data on mobile GPUs so some of the recommendations are still educated guesses, if you want to post results for your average framerate with a laptop, feel free to do so in this thread.
The first thing everyone should know is that there is no way for a laptop to be better than a desktop in terms of price/performance and that high end desktop hardware is faster than high end laptop hardware. There is no getting around that fact. The main reasons for wanting a laptop are the portability and lack of desk space.
Laptops being so small also mean that the components tend to run hotter than their desktop counterparts. There is a section on thermals later on in this guide that includes what should be considered dangerous temperatures and what should not.
The size of a laptop has a big impact on the performance of the components that can be put inside it. That means that there is no way to fit gaming laptop grade hardware in an ultrabook. In short, you’ll have to compromise on size for more performance or compromise on performance for a smaller laptop. There are some pretty balance laptops out there in terms of size and performance though.
Laptops also have the huge drawback of very limited upgradeability. There are very few laptops where you can upgrade the video card. I’ll get to those in the section about upgrades. The most commonly upgradeable components are the RAM and hard drive. Be warned though, some laptops, especially ultrabooks have the RAM soldered to the motherboard and may use a proprietary hard drive form factor and/or connector which severely limit upgradeability. You can go with the rule that the smaller and thinner it is, the less likely it’s going to be self-upgradeable. It is something to check for and to take into account since when your laptop is going to be a tad old; you’ll have to replace it altogether rather than upgrading it.
A little bit on Apple laptops since macbooks are popular. The first thing you should know is that if you want to run GW2 on a mac, you’ll want to bootcamp into Windows, there is no mac version of GW2 and running windows through a VM like Parallels or using an emulator like wine will result in a performance hit. There are still some macbooks that pack decent hardware like the Macbook Pro Retina as long as you run the game at a resolution of 1920x1200 or lower. Forget about running GW2 at the native resolution of the MBPr. Also be warned that the thermal design of macbooks isn’t very good, so your macbook will run hot. The MBPr gets a special mention here because Apple has improved the thermals somewhat, it still runs hot, but it’s not as outrageous as it used to be.
Where can I find reviews of laptops
There are many laptop review sites, my own two favorites are Anandtech and notebookreview. Those aren’t the only ones, but I prefer the reviews from those two. If it’s user reviews you want, you can check for short reviews on newegg for example, but if you want more in depth reviews, there are quite a few on the notebookreview forums. Hardware Canucks also gets a mention from me, I don’t like their reviews as much but they’re good nonetheless.
Recommendations Roundup
CPU: core i7 (preferable) or core i5
HDD: 7200RPM of the capacity you need or better
RAM: 8GB
GPU by resolution for medium-high or better:
1366x768 nVidia: GT540m, GT630m, GT640m LE
1366x768 AMD: HD5670m, GHD6670m, HD7670m
1600x900 nVidia: GT555m, GT640m
1600x900 AMD: HD5770m, HDHD6770m, HD7750m
1920x1080 nVidia: GTX460m, GTX470m, GTX485m, GTX560m, GTX570m, GTX580m, GT650m (GDDR5), GTX660m, GTX670m, GTX675m, GTX680m
1920x1080 AMD: HD5870m, HD6870m, HD6970m, HD6990m, HD7850m, HD7870m, HD7970m
Note that less powerful GPUs will run the game just fine depending on your resolution, but you will have to sacrifice settings in order to get a playable framerate.
List of laptops
This list is a work in progress and the laptops listed here aren't the only options.
Top Mobile Gaming Performance
Alienware m18x: It has an aluminum chassis, sports dual GPUs and is enormous. Given the right configuration it is a very strong performer albeit an expensive one.
Sager NP9370: Another dual GPU monster, this one is at 17"
Sager NP9170: At 17", it isn't small, but you can pack a GTX680m in it as well as a quad core making it s strong contender if you're after performance rather than size.
Alienware m17x: Isn't made of aluminum like it's bigger brother and it screams gamer, but it packs the same punch as the NP9170 depending on the configuration
Sager NP9150: The 15" brother of the NP9170, can also be configured with top of the line mobile GPUs.
MSI GT70: I don't really like the looks of that one, but you can't argue with some configurations, it's a 17"
MSI GT60: Essentially the little 15" brother of the GT70.
High End Mobile Gaming Performance
Sager NP9130
Sager NP6370
Sager NP6350
Asus G75
Asus G55
Lenovo Y580
MSI GE70
MSI GE60
Macbook Pro retina (it's GT650m is overclocked to 660m levels)
Mid-Range Gaming Performance
HP Envy 17
HP Envy 15
HP DV-6T
Sager NP6175
Sager NP6165
Asus N76Vz
Asus N56Vz
Asus U500
Sony SVS15
Alienware m14x
Small and Thin and Light
Sager NP6110
Sony SVS13
Alienware m11x
Gigabyte U2442N
Business Notebooks
Like i mention in the guide, professional GPUs aren't meant for gaming, but you can still game on them so if you want a mobile workstation that can game, here they are.
Lenovo Thinkpad W530
HP Elitebook 8570w
HP Elitebook 8770w
Dell Precision M4700
Dell Precision M6700
Hardware Components
Now on to the hardware components that you will need to run GW2, I will break them down by category and also break down the GPUs by resolution. You can also refer to dhatcher1’s chart here: http://www.guildwars...nd-resolution/. Note that it hasn’t been updated since launch so it’s a good guesstimate.
Central Processing Units (CPUs or Processors)
At this point, it’s no secret that GW2 likes quad cores, dual cores are still fine, but a quad core is preferred and an Intel quad core at that.
Why Intel, the answer is simple, if you though that AMD had a lackluster desktop offering, you haven’t seen their laptop offerings aside from Llano and Trinity which have found their niche in the bang for the buck. Other mobile AMD CPUs aren’t even worth considering for gaming and you won’t see many notebooks using them anyways.
Some naming conventions from Intel:
Pentium: The lowest of the low end of Intel’s line with no Turbo Boost or Hyperthreading
Core i3: Entry dual core with Hyperthreading and no Turbo Boost
Core i5: Mid to high end dual core with Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading
Core i7: High end dual core and quad cores with turbo boost and Hyperthreading
CPU models ending in m: dual core CPUs
CPU models ending in qm: quad core CPUs
CPU models ending in xm: extreme edition quad cores, super expensive, but they come with unlocked multipliers and can even match desktop CPUs given adequate cooling.
ULV: Ultra Low Voltage, in short, you don’t want those for gaming.
Core i#-###: First generation of Core i CPUs (Arrandale and clarksfield), 2010 tech
Core i#-2###: Second generation of core i CPUs (Sandy Bridge), 2011 tech
Core i#-3###: Third generation of core i CPUs (Ivy Bridge), 2012 tech, aka the ones you want.
Now that I’ve thrown features like Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading your way, read the spoiler to know what those are exactly. I should add that GW2 does take advantage of Hyperthreading somewhat.
Spoiler
First turbo boost. I'll take the i7-720qm as an example to explain since it's the one in my G73JH and i know the clock speeds without having to look all over the net. You'll see clock speed specifications for this processor like this: 1.6-2.8GHz. This doesn't mean that the CPU will always run at 2.8GHz, the higher the clock speed on a given processor, the more heat is generated and obviously Intel designs their processor so that laptops will be able to keep them cool. The numbers mean that the i7-720qm when using all 4 cores will be clocked at 1.6GHz in order to avoid generating too much heat for the laptop to handle. However if you aren't doing something CPU intensive or that is multi-threaded you don't need 4 cores. Let's say that you are only using firefox, for that one core is more than enough. Turbo boost will "shut down" the other three cores and raise the clock speed of the core being used up to 2.8GHz, on 2 cores the 720qm will run at 2.4GHz, and still stay within the manufacturer's design specifications in terms of heat generated. Of course, Turbo boost isn't perfect but it will still increase performance when using less cores and is a neat feature. Here's a link explaining it more in detail: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2832/4.
Now on hyperthreading (HT). Hyperthreading basically meant that per core you can send 2 threads to the execution unit (the part of the core that executes the instructions). Now since you have two threads and only one execution unit you won't be able to process the instructions for the two threads at the same. Let's say that you are processing thread 1 needs information that isn't immediately available, thread 1 will stall the execution will switch to thread 2 until thread 1 has the information it needs to continue or it stalls. This doesn't result in the performance on 8 cores even if you see 8 cores in the task manager. It's even possible that you won't see an increase in performance depending on what you are doing. HT very rarely results in a loss of performance and a minimal one at that if it happens so that it won't affect you. Here are few links on HT for those interested in more details: http://www.makeuseof...logy-explained/ http://www.anandtech.com/show/2542/4 http://www.overclock...-explained.html.
I’ll conclude the CPU chapter with a small section on AMD Llano and Trinity. Trinity is basically the Llano refresh for those of you who don’t keep up with tech news. Llano won’t beat an Intel CPU with a good dedicated GPU, but Llano CPUs overclock very easily and safely at that making them a great budget option for gaming on a laptop. Anandtech’s thoughs on Llano: : http://www.anandtech...-apu-a8-3500m/1 and on Trinity: http://www.anandtech...600m-a-new-hope. Asymmetric crossfire also deserves a mention here since it allows you to use an AMD mobile GPU along with the integrated graphics on Llano and Trinity for better gaming performance. The last time I checked, drivers still needed work, but that was a couple of months ago so I expect that right now (September 2012) it’s better.
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
If you plan on gaming on a laptop, the most important part will be the GPU, the processor also plays it’s part obviously, but the GPU will be the bottleneck in most cases. I will list the GPUs required for med-high or better at the most commonly used resolutions. Sorry guys, 16:10 is dying so I won’t list those, I will list them by the three main 16:9 resolution. Also, always assume equivalent or better. You can also check: http://www.notebookc...ards.130.0.html. It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s the best we’ve got.
1366x768 nVidia: GT540m, GT630m, GT640m LE
1366x768 AMD: HD5670m, GHD6670m, HD7670m
1600x900 nVidia: GT555m, GT640m
1600x900 AMD: HD5770m, HDHD6770m, HD7750m
1920x1080 nVidia: GTX460m, GTX470m, GTX485m, GTX560m, GTX570m, GTX580m, GT650m (GDDR5), GTX660m, GTX670m, GTX675m, GTX680m
1920x1080 AMD: HD5870m, HD6870m, HD6970m, HD6990m, HD7850m, HD7870m, HD7970m
I want to max the game, can I do it on a laptop?
Short of getting a laptop with dual GPUs, no you can’t. Even a single 680m will take a major performance hit with supersampling, it’ll probably cut it with a decent overclock, but barely. There aren’t that many laptops that can run dual GPUs either, right now there is the Alienware m18x and Clevo will offer something eventually too, they had to delay the launch of their dual GPU model because of a motherboard design problem, but they’ll get it to market eventually if they haven’t yet.
I have a laptop with integrated graphics, can I run the game?
If you have an HD3000 or better on the Intel side, it won’t be pretty, but it will run at low resolutions and the lowest settings.
If you happen to have a Llano or Trinity laptop (AMD A6, A8, A10), the situation is better, at low resolutions and with an overclock to the CPU (the lower end Llanos are a bit weak in terms of CPU performance) you’ll be able to get somewhere around medium at low resolutions.
Is there anything else I should know about GPUs?
As a matter of fact there is, it’s not as critical as know which GPU gives what kind of performance, but there are technicalities that could come to bite you in the rear so I will cover those.
The first thing you should know is that AMD is having issues with Enduro (their answer to nVidia’s Optimus) meaning that performance for the 7970m and other HD7000m GPUs suffers a bit with Enduro enabled. They are working on it and I expect they’ll fix it eventually, but it is something to be aware of. Alienware laptops like the m17x allow you to disable Enduro though which will take care of the performance problem at the cost of battery life.
Video memory or VRAM is also an important factor. Currently, you will see video cards with GDDR3 or GDDR5 VRAM. The difference is rather important, GDDR5 has twice the bandwidth of GDDR3, this doesn’t make that much of a difference with lower end GPUs, but it is actually important with higher end GPUs like the GT650m. The GDDR5 650m will perform faster than its GDDR3 counterpart.
Next is memory bus width, the bus width (128-bit, 192-bit, 256-bit, etc.) will have an impact on how fast the GPU can send and receive data to the VRAM and that is also important with higher end GPUs. For the current generation of mobile GPUs, there isn’t any bus bandwidth fiasco like the previous generations as far as I’m aware. In the previous generation, the GTX560m for example came with a 128-bit bus or a 192-bit bus depending on the amount of VRAM and again the 192-bit version performed better than the 128-bit one. If you’re buying a new laptop, this won’t be a concern though, but I’ll still mention it in case nvidia and AMD decide to make a mess of things sometime in the future.
The amount of memory is no longer an issue now either, even Apple saw the light and decided to use decent amounts of VRAM on their GPUs (1GB finally) so you won’t have to worry about not having enough VRAM. You should know though that, aside from the very high end mobile GPUs, 1GB is enough since the GPU isn’t fast enough to use more than 1GB efficiently. Unless there is a difference in bus width, you won’t really see a difference between 1GB or more VRAM.
I’ll also mention clock speeds, there are some laptops where the GPU is either underclocked or overclocked. An underclocked GPU is usually the result of poor thermal design because the notebook can’t handle the heat from the GPU at stock clocks. There aren’t that many factory overclocked GPUs in laptops, but the Macbook Pro Retina deserves a mention here, its GT650m is overclocked to the point where it performs just like a GTX660m.
Finally, the professional GPUs like the AMD firepro and nVidia quadro. Those aren’t meant for gaming in the sense that their drivers are optimized for CAD work. You can still game on them, but expect a small performance hit compared to their gaming counterparts. This means for example that a Quadro K5000m will perform a tad slower than a GTX680m in games, not to mention that the K5000m costs over 1000$. Yep, pro grade GPUs are expensive due to multiple factors which I won’t discuss.
RAM
There isn’t much to say about RAM aside that I personally recommend 6GB or more, but that 4GB is enough for GW2 if you don’t go nuts with other programs at the same time.
Hard Drives (HDD) and SSDs
Again, not much to say here aside that if you go for a HDD instead of a SSD go for a 7200RPM drive if possible, access times are better than a 5400RPM drive.
If you want a SSD, well all SSDs are 2.5mm drives so unless you have a laptop that requires a 7mm height drive, any SSD will fit in your laptop easily.
There is a SSD form factor that is becoming more popular for laptops: mSATA. A mSATA SSD is very small and can allow even smaller notebooks to have dual drives either in the form of a SSD cache and a HDD or two separate drives. A mSATA SSD has the same form factor as a full-height mPCI-E card, but the pin layout is different so don’t think you can use a mSATA SSD in a mPCI-E connector.
Wireless Adapters
Some of you might be wondering why I’m mentioning this because every laptop now comes with one. Let me put it bluntly, most wireless adapters you see in laptops are either crap or average. The amount of crappy low end Atheros adapters you find in notebooks is staggering. If you have the option, got for a high end Intel adapter (Intel 6200 or better) a high end Atheros (yep, the high end ones are actually good) or a Bigfoot adapter (actually a high end Atheros in disguise). Now if the Intel adapter upgrade is 20$ and the bigfoot is 60$, do yourself a favor and get the Intel, the bigfoots aren’t 60$ good. Sometimes it’s impossible to configure the wireless adapter though and you’re stuck with whatever comes by default.
LCD Panel
I’m dedicating a section to the LCD panels this time simply almost every 1366x768 laptop panel out there is junk. By junk I don’t mean black and white era or that it’ll fail after a few months, but in terms of color and image quality, you can’t really go lower than that. Now you’re pretty much stuck with one on low budgets and they’re usable. 1600x900 and 1920x1080 TN panels vary in quality but are usually good. They are no e-IPs or IPS displays, but the colors and color accuracy are better. Read Anandtech reviews of laptops if you’re interested in a good breakdown of displays. You don’t need a 300$ RGB LED IPS panel to get a good image, but the bottom of the barrel panels are still disappointing.
Other Hardware
There are other hardware components that I haven’t mentioned like touchpad, keyboard, LAN adapter. Those are pretty variable from notebook to notebook and are better left to full-fledged reviews.
Size, Weight, Noise and Battery Life
This one gets its own section because since a laptop is meant for portability (or transportability in some cases), weight and battery life deserve their own section separate from hardware. The size, weight and battery life of a laptop are directly related to its hardware configuration. Higher end components, larger screens all contribute to a higher power consumption which in turns means lower battery life. GPUs are one of the main factors of battery life and the faster ones are real battery vampires. On the bright side, switchable graphics came to the rescue, switchable graphics (Optimus or Enduro) will switch to the IGP when you’re not doing anything intensive thus saving battery live and switch to the GPU when you’re doing something that requires more graphic performance, the switch should be automatic. Not all laptops have switchable graphics though; the Asus G series for example doesn’t have Optimus contrarily to Alienware and Clevo.
If you are wondering what hardware configuration has to do with size and weight: everything. The larger the laptop, the more materials it will have which means increased weight. The other main reason for increased weight is the cooling system; the cooling system on a laptop is made of metals like copper and aluminium. You can’t cool a GTX680m and a core i7 with a small heatsink, most laptops with those components use two separate ones, one for the GPU and one for the CPU as a matter of fact. If you want high end performance you have to be willing to sacrifice size and weight in order to accommodate the components and the cooling system.
Finally, noise, that one is pretty variable too. You can have a laptop packing high end hardware that has low noise levels and a laptop with much weaker hardware that sounds like a jet engine. That is something that is better left to reviews as well. Some laptops are engineered with noise in mind, others not.
Thermals and Maintenance
I’ll start the part on thermals by saying that the belief of laptops overheating because laptops overheat in general is a complete myth. Laptops overheat because of improper maintenance, improper use, something broken or bad thermal design. I’ll get to those three shortly, but before, I will give a list of various components and general rules of thumb as to what are safe temperatures and when you should worry. Temperatures will be listed in Celsius, if you want them Fahrenheit, you’ll have to do the conversion yourself.
CPU: 70C to 80C or below is considered safe, 80C to 90C is in the you should worry and anything above 90C means do something now. Current Intel CPUs are rated for up to 100C
GPU: 80C to 90C or below is in general just fine, 100C is where you know there is something wrong. Note that specs may vary more per GPU, but those temps apply to most of the ones currently available in notebooks.
HDD: Anything below 40C is perfectly acceptable, once you are nearing 50C, it’s time to worry and 60C will be harmful to your HDD
The rest doesn’t usually have temperature sensors and isn’t prone to overheating anyways. You might want to keep an eye on the chipset temperature, but that’s usually the last thing that will overheat.
So now that you have an idea of what’s dangerous and what isn’t, you want to keep an eye on your laptop’s thermals. Fear not, here is a list of utilities that you can use:
HWmonitor
HWiNFO
GPU-Z
CrystalDiskInfo
Now, I’ll discuss the various factors that cause overheating. First on the list is bad thermal design, that one is a total screw up on the manufacturer’s part and is a textbook example of a badly designed product. Bad thermal design is the only thing you can’t do something about it aside from returning the laptop or claiming the warranty. This illustrates the importance of looking for reviews and user experiences.
Improper use that will cause overheating is usually because of insufficient airflow. Putting a laptop that has its fan intakes on the bottom on the bed or couch is a good way to cause heat related problems. Some notebooks take their air from the top or side which means that it isn’t as much of a problem, but I still don’t recommend it.
Improper maintenance is obviously not taking care of your laptop. You don’t have to baby it, but you still have to make sure the heatsink(s) is(are) clean. The easiest way to do this will cost you 0$ and take a whopping 5 minutes. Get a can of compressed gas meant for dusting electronics, they are easy to find too, and simply blow short bursts through the air intake. If you’re worried about the fan bearings, you can use something like a paperclip to make sure it doesn’t spin. You should do this every few months; notebooks gather dust faster than desktops. If you smoke or have pets like dogs and cats, you’ll want to do that monthly instead. None of my notebooks have overheated because I am taking care of them. Below, you can see a log of the average CPU temperature for all 4 cores on my laptop on a period of a little over a year.
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Here is what your heatsink may look like if you do not take care of it. Don't be a sucker and dust that thing before it becomes that bad. Credit for these pictures goes to Gentech PC, i just borrowed them. :o
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If you want to take maintenance to the next level, it’s going to require a little bit more skills. You can remove the laptop’s back panel and remove the fan is possible to dust the fan and heatsink separately. Make sure the battery is removed and the laptop is unplugged if you do this. You can also go further with the disassembly and completely remove the heatsink to clean it, but I that is something reserved only for the more tech savvy owners. If you feel uncomfortable about doing this, then don’t do it and just use aircans like I first described. The difficulty of disassembly varies from laptop to laptop, my G73Jh is probably the best example of an overly complicated disassembly if you want to get to the heatsinks.
Finally, defective components are the last possible source of overheating. If your fan breaks, you’ll need to have it replaced, same with thermal paste that degrades or broken heatpipes. Those cases are pretty rare, but can happen. If your laptop is under warranty, claim it. If you’re out of warranty, you can order the parts do it yourself which again is for power users or have a technician do it for you. It will cost you money to have a technician do it, but a technician knows what he’s doing.
Upgrades
So, you want to upgrade your laptop or want to know what you can upgrade. There are some components that are easy to upgrade and others that aren’t. I’ll go through both starting with the easy ones. There are always rare cases where the usually easy upgrades aren’t easy though. Also don’t forget that the level of upgradeability varies from laptop to laptop.
HDD and SSD
This is one of the most straightforward upgrade for most laptops. The procedure boils down to open the laptop’s back panel, remove the old drive and replace it with the new one. You will of course have to either clone your old drive to the new one or reinstall windows and your programs. Most laptop manufacturers provide instructions on how to do this and this won’t void your warranty.
RAM
Upgrading your RAM is as straightforward as upgrading the hard drive. Remove the access panel, remove the old RAM and pop the new one back in. That procedure should once again be detailed by the manufacturer or their tech support should be able to provide it. Upgrading the RAM won’t void the warranty either.
Wireless Adapter
Upgrading the wireless adapter can be very easy, tricky or downright impossible. If the adapter is easily accessible, it boils down to delicately unplugging the antennas, removing two screws, doing the swap, screwing the new adapter back in place and plugging the antennas on the new adapter. There are two form factors for wireless adapters, full-height which you won’t find in any recent notebook (it pretty much died in 2009) and half-height which is the one in use right now.
CPU
That one will void your warranty, so attempt it at your own risks. Upgrading the CPU is possible in most notebooks, but often requires a hefty disassembly. If you ever want to attempt it, you will have to find a disassembly guide on your own. This is something I do not recommend to others. I’ve done it, I wouldn’t mind doing it again, but I’m crazy and know that this is something only the most tech savvy users can do safely.
GPU
GPUs aren’t upgradeable in probably over 99% of all available laptops. Notable exceptions include Alienware, Clevo, MSI and mobile workstations are notable exceptions. If you have one of those laptops, they use either MXM type A or MXM type B GPUs. Note that you won’t be able to upgrade to anything, your bios has to support the new GPU and the heatsink also needs to fit. Only when those conditions are met will you be able to upgrade the GPU. Below, you can see a non-standard Asus MXM type B HD5870m (green PCB) and a Clevo HD6970m (cyan PCB) which follows the standard MXM 3.0 type B layout. If you want to upgrade your GPU because your laptop has a MXM connector, it’s best to inquire as to what you can upgrade to. The upgrade won’t be cheap either, currently a GTX680m runs in the 500$ range.
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Other Components
There are a few other components that can be upgraded like the LCD panel under the right circumstances. I won’t detail those; you’ll have to look on your own if you’re interested in doing that.
FAQ
Q: Your previous guide included gaming laptop recommendations and the new one doesn’t, why not?
A: I might get around to it eventually, the recommendations were outdated and had to go anyways.
Q: I saw Clevo mentioned a few times, but I never head of them, where can I get a Clevo notebook?
A: Clevo doesn’t sell their laptops directly; they sell them to resellers and builders that sell them under their own brand name. Sager is an example of a Clevo builder and reseller. If you see a configurable gaming laptop that isn’t an alienware, it’s usually a Clevo
Q: There is no section on overclocking in this version, why not?
A: I decided not to give it a section in this guide because overclocking can be dangerous, I may add one at a later date though, but I need to think of how I’m gonna phrase the whole thing before I even think of adding one.
Q: If I have a laptop related question, where can I post it?
A: Anywhere in the technical support forum, but keeping everything in this thread might make things easier to find in the future.
Q: I noticed other smaller sections of the previous guide aren’t present either, what aren’t they there?
A: They weren’t as detailed as I would have liked and there are better guides on how to handle that on the Internet or even here on GW2Guru.
Q: Will you update this guide periodically?
A: I don’t plan to update it on a regular schedule, but I do plan to update it. You might see some sections make their return, if there is any important news; I will update the guide as well. I may eventually include a list of recommended laptops.
Q: I preferred the old version of this guide; can you revert back to it?
A: No, I won’t revert back to the previous version, but leave a post in this thread as to what you’d like to see make a return. I do have a backup of the old version so I still have access to everything that was previously present so I can always put some info back by popular demand.
Now that GW2 has been released, it’s time for an update to this guide. This is not the final version yet, as it doesn’t include laptop recommendations yet if I ever get around to doing it.
Also, preferably ask your questions on the forums, I don’t always check my private messages, I don’t know the answer to everything either so you will get a reply faster if you post in the forum. Also, your experience might be invaluable to others who will encounter the same situation as you.
This guide is meant to help you decide which laptop to get, but in the end, you know best what you need and you will also have to do your own research for certain details.
A few important facts
For now I don’t have a whole lot of actual data on mobile GPUs so some of the recommendations are still educated guesses, if you want to post results for your average framerate with a laptop, feel free to do so in this thread.
The first thing everyone should know is that there is no way for a laptop to be better than a desktop in terms of price/performance and that high end desktop hardware is faster than high end laptop hardware. There is no getting around that fact. The main reasons for wanting a laptop are the portability and lack of desk space.
Laptops being so small also mean that the components tend to run hotter than their desktop counterparts. There is a section on thermals later on in this guide that includes what should be considered dangerous temperatures and what should not.
The size of a laptop has a big impact on the performance of the components that can be put inside it. That means that there is no way to fit gaming laptop grade hardware in an ultrabook. In short, you’ll have to compromise on size for more performance or compromise on performance for a smaller laptop. There are some pretty balance laptops out there in terms of size and performance though.
Laptops also have the huge drawback of very limited upgradeability. There are very few laptops where you can upgrade the video card. I’ll get to those in the section about upgrades. The most commonly upgradeable components are the RAM and hard drive. Be warned though, some laptops, especially ultrabooks have the RAM soldered to the motherboard and may use a proprietary hard drive form factor and/or connector which severely limit upgradeability. You can go with the rule that the smaller and thinner it is, the less likely it’s going to be self-upgradeable. It is something to check for and to take into account since when your laptop is going to be a tad old; you’ll have to replace it altogether rather than upgrading it.
A little bit on Apple laptops since macbooks are popular. The first thing you should know is that if you want to run GW2 on a mac, you’ll want to bootcamp into Windows, there is no mac version of GW2 and running windows through a VM like Parallels or using an emulator like wine will result in a performance hit. There are still some macbooks that pack decent hardware like the Macbook Pro Retina as long as you run the game at a resolution of 1920x1200 or lower. Forget about running GW2 at the native resolution of the MBPr. Also be warned that the thermal design of macbooks isn’t very good, so your macbook will run hot. The MBPr gets a special mention here because Apple has improved the thermals somewhat, it still runs hot, but it’s not as outrageous as it used to be.
Where can I find reviews of laptops
There are many laptop review sites, my own two favorites are Anandtech and notebookreview. Those aren’t the only ones, but I prefer the reviews from those two. If it’s user reviews you want, you can check for short reviews on newegg for example, but if you want more in depth reviews, there are quite a few on the notebookreview forums. Hardware Canucks also gets a mention from me, I don’t like their reviews as much but they’re good nonetheless.
Recommendations Roundup
CPU: core i7 (preferable) or core i5
HDD: 7200RPM of the capacity you need or better
RAM: 8GB
GPU by resolution for medium-high or better:
1366x768 nVidia: GT540m, GT630m, GT640m LE
1366x768 AMD: HD5670m, GHD6670m, HD7670m
1600x900 nVidia: GT555m, GT640m
1600x900 AMD: HD5770m, HDHD6770m, HD7750m
1920x1080 nVidia: GTX460m, GTX470m, GTX485m, GTX560m, GTX570m, GTX580m, GT650m (GDDR5), GTX660m, GTX670m, GTX675m, GTX680m
1920x1080 AMD: HD5870m, HD6870m, HD6970m, HD6990m, HD7850m, HD7870m, HD7970m
Note that less powerful GPUs will run the game just fine depending on your resolution, but you will have to sacrifice settings in order to get a playable framerate.
List of laptops
This list is a work in progress and the laptops listed here aren't the only options.
Top Mobile Gaming Performance
Alienware m18x: It has an aluminum chassis, sports dual GPUs and is enormous. Given the right configuration it is a very strong performer albeit an expensive one.
Sager NP9370: Another dual GPU monster, this one is at 17"
Sager NP9170: At 17", it isn't small, but you can pack a GTX680m in it as well as a quad core making it s strong contender if you're after performance rather than size.
Alienware m17x: Isn't made of aluminum like it's bigger brother and it screams gamer, but it packs the same punch as the NP9170 depending on the configuration
Sager NP9150: The 15" brother of the NP9170, can also be configured with top of the line mobile GPUs.
MSI GT70: I don't really like the looks of that one, but you can't argue with some configurations, it's a 17"
MSI GT60: Essentially the little 15" brother of the GT70.
High End Mobile Gaming Performance
Sager NP9130
Sager NP6370
Sager NP6350
Asus G75
Asus G55
Lenovo Y580
MSI GE70
MSI GE60
Macbook Pro retina (it's GT650m is overclocked to 660m levels)
Mid-Range Gaming Performance
HP Envy 17
HP Envy 15
HP DV-6T
Sager NP6175
Sager NP6165
Asus N76Vz
Asus N56Vz
Asus U500
Sony SVS15
Alienware m14x
Small and Thin and Light
Sager NP6110
Sony SVS13
Alienware m11x
Gigabyte U2442N
Business Notebooks
Like i mention in the guide, professional GPUs aren't meant for gaming, but you can still game on them so if you want a mobile workstation that can game, here they are.
Lenovo Thinkpad W530
HP Elitebook 8570w
HP Elitebook 8770w
Dell Precision M4700
Dell Precision M6700
Hardware Components
Now on to the hardware components that you will need to run GW2, I will break them down by category and also break down the GPUs by resolution. You can also refer to dhatcher1’s chart here: http://www.guildwars...nd-resolution/. Note that it hasn’t been updated since launch so it’s a good guesstimate.
Central Processing Units (CPUs or Processors)
At this point, it’s no secret that GW2 likes quad cores, dual cores are still fine, but a quad core is preferred and an Intel quad core at that.
Why Intel, the answer is simple, if you though that AMD had a lackluster desktop offering, you haven’t seen their laptop offerings aside from Llano and Trinity which have found their niche in the bang for the buck. Other mobile AMD CPUs aren’t even worth considering for gaming and you won’t see many notebooks using them anyways.
Some naming conventions from Intel:
Pentium: The lowest of the low end of Intel’s line with no Turbo Boost or Hyperthreading
Core i3: Entry dual core with Hyperthreading and no Turbo Boost
Core i5: Mid to high end dual core with Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading
Core i7: High end dual core and quad cores with turbo boost and Hyperthreading
CPU models ending in m: dual core CPUs
CPU models ending in qm: quad core CPUs
CPU models ending in xm: extreme edition quad cores, super expensive, but they come with unlocked multipliers and can even match desktop CPUs given adequate cooling.
ULV: Ultra Low Voltage, in short, you don’t want those for gaming.
Core i#-###: First generation of Core i CPUs (Arrandale and clarksfield), 2010 tech
Core i#-2###: Second generation of core i CPUs (Sandy Bridge), 2011 tech
Core i#-3###: Third generation of core i CPUs (Ivy Bridge), 2012 tech, aka the ones you want.
Now that I’ve thrown features like Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading your way, read the spoiler to know what those are exactly. I should add that GW2 does take advantage of Hyperthreading somewhat.
Spoiler
First turbo boost. I'll take the i7-720qm as an example to explain since it's the one in my G73JH and i know the clock speeds without having to look all over the net. You'll see clock speed specifications for this processor like this: 1.6-2.8GHz. This doesn't mean that the CPU will always run at 2.8GHz, the higher the clock speed on a given processor, the more heat is generated and obviously Intel designs their processor so that laptops will be able to keep them cool. The numbers mean that the i7-720qm when using all 4 cores will be clocked at 1.6GHz in order to avoid generating too much heat for the laptop to handle. However if you aren't doing something CPU intensive or that is multi-threaded you don't need 4 cores. Let's say that you are only using firefox, for that one core is more than enough. Turbo boost will "shut down" the other three cores and raise the clock speed of the core being used up to 2.8GHz, on 2 cores the 720qm will run at 2.4GHz, and still stay within the manufacturer's design specifications in terms of heat generated. Of course, Turbo boost isn't perfect but it will still increase performance when using less cores and is a neat feature. Here's a link explaining it more in detail: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2832/4.
Now on hyperthreading (HT). Hyperthreading basically meant that per core you can send 2 threads to the execution unit (the part of the core that executes the instructions). Now since you have two threads and only one execution unit you won't be able to process the instructions for the two threads at the same. Let's say that you are processing thread 1 needs information that isn't immediately available, thread 1 will stall the execution will switch to thread 2 until thread 1 has the information it needs to continue or it stalls. This doesn't result in the performance on 8 cores even if you see 8 cores in the task manager. It's even possible that you won't see an increase in performance depending on what you are doing. HT very rarely results in a loss of performance and a minimal one at that if it happens so that it won't affect you. Here are few links on HT for those interested in more details: http://www.makeuseof...logy-explained/ http://www.anandtech.com/show/2542/4 http://www.overclock...-explained.html.
I’ll conclude the CPU chapter with a small section on AMD Llano and Trinity. Trinity is basically the Llano refresh for those of you who don’t keep up with tech news. Llano won’t beat an Intel CPU with a good dedicated GPU, but Llano CPUs overclock very easily and safely at that making them a great budget option for gaming on a laptop. Anandtech’s thoughs on Llano: : http://www.anandtech...-apu-a8-3500m/1 and on Trinity: http://www.anandtech...600m-a-new-hope. Asymmetric crossfire also deserves a mention here since it allows you to use an AMD mobile GPU along with the integrated graphics on Llano and Trinity for better gaming performance. The last time I checked, drivers still needed work, but that was a couple of months ago so I expect that right now (September 2012) it’s better.
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)
If you plan on gaming on a laptop, the most important part will be the GPU, the processor also plays it’s part obviously, but the GPU will be the bottleneck in most cases. I will list the GPUs required for med-high or better at the most commonly used resolutions. Sorry guys, 16:10 is dying so I won’t list those, I will list them by the three main 16:9 resolution. Also, always assume equivalent or better. You can also check: http://www.notebookc...ards.130.0.html. It’s not entirely accurate, but it’s the best we’ve got.
1366x768 nVidia: GT540m, GT630m, GT640m LE
1366x768 AMD: HD5670m, GHD6670m, HD7670m
1600x900 nVidia: GT555m, GT640m
1600x900 AMD: HD5770m, HDHD6770m, HD7750m
1920x1080 nVidia: GTX460m, GTX470m, GTX485m, GTX560m, GTX570m, GTX580m, GT650m (GDDR5), GTX660m, GTX670m, GTX675m, GTX680m
1920x1080 AMD: HD5870m, HD6870m, HD6970m, HD6990m, HD7850m, HD7870m, HD7970m
I want to max the game, can I do it on a laptop?
Short of getting a laptop with dual GPUs, no you can’t. Even a single 680m will take a major performance hit with supersampling, it’ll probably cut it with a decent overclock, but barely. There aren’t that many laptops that can run dual GPUs either, right now there is the Alienware m18x and Clevo will offer something eventually too, they had to delay the launch of their dual GPU model because of a motherboard design problem, but they’ll get it to market eventually if they haven’t yet.
I have a laptop with integrated graphics, can I run the game?
If you have an HD3000 or better on the Intel side, it won’t be pretty, but it will run at low resolutions and the lowest settings.
If you happen to have a Llano or Trinity laptop (AMD A6, A8, A10), the situation is better, at low resolutions and with an overclock to the CPU (the lower end Llanos are a bit weak in terms of CPU performance) you’ll be able to get somewhere around medium at low resolutions.
Is there anything else I should know about GPUs?
As a matter of fact there is, it’s not as critical as know which GPU gives what kind of performance, but there are technicalities that could come to bite you in the rear so I will cover those.
The first thing you should know is that AMD is having issues with Enduro (their answer to nVidia’s Optimus) meaning that performance for the 7970m and other HD7000m GPUs suffers a bit with Enduro enabled. They are working on it and I expect they’ll fix it eventually, but it is something to be aware of. Alienware laptops like the m17x allow you to disable Enduro though which will take care of the performance problem at the cost of battery life.
Video memory or VRAM is also an important factor. Currently, you will see video cards with GDDR3 or GDDR5 VRAM. The difference is rather important, GDDR5 has twice the bandwidth of GDDR3, this doesn’t make that much of a difference with lower end GPUs, but it is actually important with higher end GPUs like the GT650m. The GDDR5 650m will perform faster than its GDDR3 counterpart.
Next is memory bus width, the bus width (128-bit, 192-bit, 256-bit, etc.) will have an impact on how fast the GPU can send and receive data to the VRAM and that is also important with higher end GPUs. For the current generation of mobile GPUs, there isn’t any bus bandwidth fiasco like the previous generations as far as I’m aware. In the previous generation, the GTX560m for example came with a 128-bit bus or a 192-bit bus depending on the amount of VRAM and again the 192-bit version performed better than the 128-bit one. If you’re buying a new laptop, this won’t be a concern though, but I’ll still mention it in case nvidia and AMD decide to make a mess of things sometime in the future.
The amount of memory is no longer an issue now either, even Apple saw the light and decided to use decent amounts of VRAM on their GPUs (1GB finally) so you won’t have to worry about not having enough VRAM. You should know though that, aside from the very high end mobile GPUs, 1GB is enough since the GPU isn’t fast enough to use more than 1GB efficiently. Unless there is a difference in bus width, you won’t really see a difference between 1GB or more VRAM.
I’ll also mention clock speeds, there are some laptops where the GPU is either underclocked or overclocked. An underclocked GPU is usually the result of poor thermal design because the notebook can’t handle the heat from the GPU at stock clocks. There aren’t that many factory overclocked GPUs in laptops, but the Macbook Pro Retina deserves a mention here, its GT650m is overclocked to the point where it performs just like a GTX660m.
Finally, the professional GPUs like the AMD firepro and nVidia quadro. Those aren’t meant for gaming in the sense that their drivers are optimized for CAD work. You can still game on them, but expect a small performance hit compared to their gaming counterparts. This means for example that a Quadro K5000m will perform a tad slower than a GTX680m in games, not to mention that the K5000m costs over 1000$. Yep, pro grade GPUs are expensive due to multiple factors which I won’t discuss.
RAM
There isn’t much to say about RAM aside that I personally recommend 6GB or more, but that 4GB is enough for GW2 if you don’t go nuts with other programs at the same time.
Hard Drives (HDD) and SSDs
Again, not much to say here aside that if you go for a HDD instead of a SSD go for a 7200RPM drive if possible, access times are better than a 5400RPM drive.
If you want a SSD, well all SSDs are 2.5mm drives so unless you have a laptop that requires a 7mm height drive, any SSD will fit in your laptop easily.
There is a SSD form factor that is becoming more popular for laptops: mSATA. A mSATA SSD is very small and can allow even smaller notebooks to have dual drives either in the form of a SSD cache and a HDD or two separate drives. A mSATA SSD has the same form factor as a full-height mPCI-E card, but the pin layout is different so don’t think you can use a mSATA SSD in a mPCI-E connector.
Wireless Adapters
Some of you might be wondering why I’m mentioning this because every laptop now comes with one. Let me put it bluntly, most wireless adapters you see in laptops are either crap or average. The amount of crappy low end Atheros adapters you find in notebooks is staggering. If you have the option, got for a high end Intel adapter (Intel 6200 or better) a high end Atheros (yep, the high end ones are actually good) or a Bigfoot adapter (actually a high end Atheros in disguise). Now if the Intel adapter upgrade is 20$ and the bigfoot is 60$, do yourself a favor and get the Intel, the bigfoots aren’t 60$ good. Sometimes it’s impossible to configure the wireless adapter though and you’re stuck with whatever comes by default.
LCD Panel
I’m dedicating a section to the LCD panels this time simply almost every 1366x768 laptop panel out there is junk. By junk I don’t mean black and white era or that it’ll fail after a few months, but in terms of color and image quality, you can’t really go lower than that. Now you’re pretty much stuck with one on low budgets and they’re usable. 1600x900 and 1920x1080 TN panels vary in quality but are usually good. They are no e-IPs or IPS displays, but the colors and color accuracy are better. Read Anandtech reviews of laptops if you’re interested in a good breakdown of displays. You don’t need a 300$ RGB LED IPS panel to get a good image, but the bottom of the barrel panels are still disappointing.
Other Hardware
There are other hardware components that I haven’t mentioned like touchpad, keyboard, LAN adapter. Those are pretty variable from notebook to notebook and are better left to full-fledged reviews.
Size, Weight, Noise and Battery Life
This one gets its own section because since a laptop is meant for portability (or transportability in some cases), weight and battery life deserve their own section separate from hardware. The size, weight and battery life of a laptop are directly related to its hardware configuration. Higher end components, larger screens all contribute to a higher power consumption which in turns means lower battery life. GPUs are one of the main factors of battery life and the faster ones are real battery vampires. On the bright side, switchable graphics came to the rescue, switchable graphics (Optimus or Enduro) will switch to the IGP when you’re not doing anything intensive thus saving battery live and switch to the GPU when you’re doing something that requires more graphic performance, the switch should be automatic. Not all laptops have switchable graphics though; the Asus G series for example doesn’t have Optimus contrarily to Alienware and Clevo.
If you are wondering what hardware configuration has to do with size and weight: everything. The larger the laptop, the more materials it will have which means increased weight. The other main reason for increased weight is the cooling system; the cooling system on a laptop is made of metals like copper and aluminium. You can’t cool a GTX680m and a core i7 with a small heatsink, most laptops with those components use two separate ones, one for the GPU and one for the CPU as a matter of fact. If you want high end performance you have to be willing to sacrifice size and weight in order to accommodate the components and the cooling system.
Finally, noise, that one is pretty variable too. You can have a laptop packing high end hardware that has low noise levels and a laptop with much weaker hardware that sounds like a jet engine. That is something that is better left to reviews as well. Some laptops are engineered with noise in mind, others not.
Thermals and Maintenance
I’ll start the part on thermals by saying that the belief of laptops overheating because laptops overheat in general is a complete myth. Laptops overheat because of improper maintenance, improper use, something broken or bad thermal design. I’ll get to those three shortly, but before, I will give a list of various components and general rules of thumb as to what are safe temperatures and when you should worry. Temperatures will be listed in Celsius, if you want them Fahrenheit, you’ll have to do the conversion yourself.
CPU: 70C to 80C or below is considered safe, 80C to 90C is in the you should worry and anything above 90C means do something now. Current Intel CPUs are rated for up to 100C
GPU: 80C to 90C or below is in general just fine, 100C is where you know there is something wrong. Note that specs may vary more per GPU, but those temps apply to most of the ones currently available in notebooks.
HDD: Anything below 40C is perfectly acceptable, once you are nearing 50C, it’s time to worry and 60C will be harmful to your HDD
The rest doesn’t usually have temperature sensors and isn’t prone to overheating anyways. You might want to keep an eye on the chipset temperature, but that’s usually the last thing that will overheat.
So now that you have an idea of what’s dangerous and what isn’t, you want to keep an eye on your laptop’s thermals. Fear not, here is a list of utilities that you can use:
HWmonitor
HWiNFO
GPU-Z
CrystalDiskInfo
Now, I’ll discuss the various factors that cause overheating. First on the list is bad thermal design, that one is a total screw up on the manufacturer’s part and is a textbook example of a badly designed product. Bad thermal design is the only thing you can’t do something about it aside from returning the laptop or claiming the warranty. This illustrates the importance of looking for reviews and user experiences.
Improper use that will cause overheating is usually because of insufficient airflow. Putting a laptop that has its fan intakes on the bottom on the bed or couch is a good way to cause heat related problems. Some notebooks take their air from the top or side which means that it isn’t as much of a problem, but I still don’t recommend it.
Improper maintenance is obviously not taking care of your laptop. You don’t have to baby it, but you still have to make sure the heatsink(s) is(are) clean. The easiest way to do this will cost you 0$ and take a whopping 5 minutes. Get a can of compressed gas meant for dusting electronics, they are easy to find too, and simply blow short bursts through the air intake. If you’re worried about the fan bearings, you can use something like a paperclip to make sure it doesn’t spin. You should do this every few months; notebooks gather dust faster than desktops. If you smoke or have pets like dogs and cats, you’ll want to do that monthly instead. None of my notebooks have overheated because I am taking care of them. Below, you can see a log of the average CPU temperature for all 4 cores on my laptop on a period of a little over a year.
Attached File July_2012_CPU.png 272.58K 32 downloads
Here is what your heatsink may look like if you do not take care of it. Don't be a sucker and dust that thing before it becomes that bad. Credit for these pictures goes to Gentech PC, i just borrowed them. :o
Attached File GT780RMA-1.JPG 114.73K 59 downloadsAttached File GT780RMA-2.JPG 75.02K 59 downloads
If you want to take maintenance to the next level, it’s going to require a little bit more skills. You can remove the laptop’s back panel and remove the fan is possible to dust the fan and heatsink separately. Make sure the battery is removed and the laptop is unplugged if you do this. You can also go further with the disassembly and completely remove the heatsink to clean it, but I that is something reserved only for the more tech savvy owners. If you feel uncomfortable about doing this, then don’t do it and just use aircans like I first described. The difficulty of disassembly varies from laptop to laptop, my G73Jh is probably the best example of an overly complicated disassembly if you want to get to the heatsinks.
Finally, defective components are the last possible source of overheating. If your fan breaks, you’ll need to have it replaced, same with thermal paste that degrades or broken heatpipes. Those cases are pretty rare, but can happen. If your laptop is under warranty, claim it. If you’re out of warranty, you can order the parts do it yourself which again is for power users or have a technician do it for you. It will cost you money to have a technician do it, but a technician knows what he’s doing.
Upgrades
So, you want to upgrade your laptop or want to know what you can upgrade. There are some components that are easy to upgrade and others that aren’t. I’ll go through both starting with the easy ones. There are always rare cases where the usually easy upgrades aren’t easy though. Also don’t forget that the level of upgradeability varies from laptop to laptop.
HDD and SSD
This is one of the most straightforward upgrade for most laptops. The procedure boils down to open the laptop’s back panel, remove the old drive and replace it with the new one. You will of course have to either clone your old drive to the new one or reinstall windows and your programs. Most laptop manufacturers provide instructions on how to do this and this won’t void your warranty.
RAM
Upgrading your RAM is as straightforward as upgrading the hard drive. Remove the access panel, remove the old RAM and pop the new one back in. That procedure should once again be detailed by the manufacturer or their tech support should be able to provide it. Upgrading the RAM won’t void the warranty either.
Wireless Adapter
Upgrading the wireless adapter can be very easy, tricky or downright impossible. If the adapter is easily accessible, it boils down to delicately unplugging the antennas, removing two screws, doing the swap, screwing the new adapter back in place and plugging the antennas on the new adapter. There are two form factors for wireless adapters, full-height which you won’t find in any recent notebook (it pretty much died in 2009) and half-height which is the one in use right now.
CPU
That one will void your warranty, so attempt it at your own risks. Upgrading the CPU is possible in most notebooks, but often requires a hefty disassembly. If you ever want to attempt it, you will have to find a disassembly guide on your own. This is something I do not recommend to others. I’ve done it, I wouldn’t mind doing it again, but I’m crazy and know that this is something only the most tech savvy users can do safely.
GPU
GPUs aren’t upgradeable in probably over 99% of all available laptops. Notable exceptions include Alienware, Clevo, MSI and mobile workstations are notable exceptions. If you have one of those laptops, they use either MXM type A or MXM type B GPUs. Note that you won’t be able to upgrade to anything, your bios has to support the new GPU and the heatsink also needs to fit. Only when those conditions are met will you be able to upgrade the GPU. Below, you can see a non-standard Asus MXM type B HD5870m (green PCB) and a Clevo HD6970m (cyan PCB) which follows the standard MXM 3.0 type B layout. If you want to upgrade your GPU because your laptop has a MXM connector, it’s best to inquire as to what you can upgrade to. The upgrade won’t be cheap either, currently a GTX680m runs in the 500$ range.
Attached File SANY0051.JPG 175.57K 33 downloads
Other Components
There are a few other components that can be upgraded like the LCD panel under the right circumstances. I won’t detail those; you’ll have to look on your own if you’re interested in doing that.
FAQ
Q: Your previous guide included gaming laptop recommendations and the new one doesn’t, why not?
A: I might get around to it eventually, the recommendations were outdated and had to go anyways.
Q: I saw Clevo mentioned a few times, but I never head of them, where can I get a Clevo notebook?
A: Clevo doesn’t sell their laptops directly; they sell them to resellers and builders that sell them under their own brand name. Sager is an example of a Clevo builder and reseller. If you see a configurable gaming laptop that isn’t an alienware, it’s usually a Clevo
Q: There is no section on overclocking in this version, why not?
A: I decided not to give it a section in this guide because overclocking can be dangerous, I may add one at a later date though, but I need to think of how I’m gonna phrase the whole thing before I even think of adding one.
Q: If I have a laptop related question, where can I post it?
A: Anywhere in the technical support forum, but keeping everything in this thread might make things easier to find in the future.
Q: I noticed other smaller sections of the previous guide aren’t present either, what aren’t they there?
A: They weren’t as detailed as I would have liked and there are better guides on how to handle that on the Internet or even here on GW2Guru.
Q: Will you update this guide periodically?
A: I don’t plan to update it on a regular schedule, but I do plan to update it. You might see some sections make their return, if there is any important news; I will update the guide as well. I may eventually include a list of recommended laptops.
Q: I preferred the old version of this guide; can you revert back to it?
A: No, I won’t revert back to the previous version, but leave a post in this thread as to what you’d like to see make a return. I do have a backup of the old version so I still have access to everything that was previously present so I can always put some info back by popular demand.
Thursday, 16 May 2013
Running GW2 on Linux
(NOTE.. To be updated for SUSE 12.3)
In any case, this article is for those of you, who like me, like their games on Linux. Or those of you who are curious about gaming on Linux, but never took the leap.
Getting Started
First of all, here is what I had to work with.
Hardware
- CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz
- Memory: 12 GB SDRAM 1333MHz (six 2GB units)
- Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 570 (Driver version 295.40)
- Hard Drive: SSD drives
- Internet connection: 100MB.
Software
- Wine 1.5.3 (this is the latest version. 1.4 stable should also work),
- Emulating Windows 7
- Allowing the windows manager to capture the window
- No other special settings
- System running Pulseaudio, with ALSA drivers for Wine
- Linux 3.3.3-1-ARCH
I started my journey like the rest of you, by downloading the client. The downloader launches and looks good. The only thing is that the transparent edges do not integrate with my desktop, so I get a black frame, but that is of no consequence.
Obstacle one. For some reason, the client download for Linux crashes on regular intervals. I tried to troubleshoot this, and the closest I got was that there is a memory buffer that is filled. Anyway, I just re-launched the client over and over until the full 12.8GB Gw2.dat file was sitting snugly on my computer.
Moment of Truth
Minor graphical bug in Linux - hairline in front
I launch the now fully downloaded client…. success! The Guild Wars 2 login screen greets me in all its glory. I got sound, I got the options tab (max graphics all the way baby), I got my contacts, and I got the login window. I now know that this will work. I might get some artifacts, but the game runs. I enter my (Guild Wars 1) login details.. and is greeted by the character creation screen. Oh joy! I choose to make a human lady engieer. Everything looks great, except that the edge of her hair shows also at the front of her neck. Only a minor glitch, and nothing that makes me worried.
I make my choices, her personal story plays beautifully, and I am in the game. I take a tentative look around. Everything looks normal. I can move and I can open windows. FPS is fine, considering (I later did a test and got about 30-50 FPS in medium busy places. 10-20 in LA at it’s most busy). I can shoot off skills, and I can whisper Lady Rhonwyn to get an invite to the freshly formed GWOnline Alliance Guild. I can join the guild. Only thing I cannot do is chat in the guild or access the gem store, but that is not a problem caused by Linux. (The chat fixed itself after a re-rog-in, I never could access the store though.)
Taking it All In
Then I took a closer look at things I know are a little iffy when playing Guild Wars 1 through Wine. After all Guild Wars 2 is based on the same engine, so it might suffer from the same issues right? Much to my delight even those were nonexistent. Shadows are fine. Reloading textures by changing into town clothes or dyeing armor works without a hitch. No going bald while submerged in water, which would have been a total bummer considering all the underwater content in Guild Wars 2. And no random mouse pointer dissapperance! (A long-standing problem when playing Guild Wars 1 through Wine, patched up a few versions back now).
TL;DR
In conclusion, the game runs as good as on Windows in every imaginable way, and the only major bugs I found were known issues also afflicting the part of the community playing on Windows.
Disclaimers
- Just because it worked for me does not mean it will work for you the same way. Running programs through Wine is a very hardware-dependent exercise. Some suppliers have great Linux native drivers, whereas others do not. And among those who do not, they can work better or worse with the generic ones. For instance, the NVIDIA graphic card drivers are very good for Linux, whereas the AMD/Ati drivers are typically not so great for Wine.
- The game is still un-optimized and is using CPU a lot to render. So while the game runs great right now on systems with good CPUs, there is actually a small chance that it will run worse once ArenaNet optimizes the game to utilize the graphics card fully. Which would be more than a little ironic. Lets all hope it wont come to that.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_on_Wine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZQHO7IbvOA using PlayonLinux
USE 1.5.12 32bit but you can use 1.5.15
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