Star Wars: TOR Laptop Advice

I am looking to buy a new laptop, a purchase that is long overdue. Now, from my experience playing WoW the recommended specs are never enough if you want to do any real raiding.

What GFX card would I need to shoot for if I want to be a semi-casual gamer for TOR? Will a GT 540M cut it? 555? I do not need to play on the highest settings and 1366x768 res is what I will be on.

Or am I kidding myself and I will need to build a desktop (which I can do)?

 

A 555M should be suffice if you are looking at Medium at 1366x768 resolution. However at the same price point of getting a laptop with a 555M, you can do better with a custom desktop rig.

 

First question would be, what's your budget?

 

I would like to say max 999.99

Just like Star Forge suggested, I can put together a custom build for $600 that would play the game quite nicely, but I am trying to kill two birds with one stone since I need a new laptop anyway.

Flashpoints will be no problem on a 555?

 

A 555 will be more than fine for TOR. I was reading the M11X section (R3/540) and watched a YT video where the 540 was handling TOR at 40+FPS on low-medium if I'm not mistaken.

One of the cheapest 555 laptops I was able to find is the Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 for under 700$ (i5/555) ...saw it a few days ago, can't remember the site. If you're interested, I could backtrack through all my websites and see if I could find it for you.


Hell - Even a 450$ Asus K53TA can handle SW TOR perfectly fine (my brother was in BETA using this model) The game's requirements is similar to WoW's motto, where the intention is to make the game playable to the masses, as oppose to the minority with elite gaming rigs.

 

From my experience its all smooth sailing when you are by your lonesome killing fluffy bunnies in the wilderness, but as soon as you hit highly populated areas, or engage in battles in raids, those "recommended specs" don't even cut it.

I think my best option is do just build a $500 gaming desktop and buy a $500 laptop.

 

My $430 laptop with 6620G at first had issues but after some graphical tweaks I got it running better. I didn't realize shadows could be completely turned OFF and AF needs to be edited in ini to 0 (stuck at 16 no matter the settings) then OC the A8-3500m and I get decent FPS. Early Flashpoints haven't been much an issue I do get 20-50FPS depending on cities, pop and etc. I have a desktop rig though but the laptop has been great when I needed to use it. Ran a few FP and those heroic group quests and smooth sailing. So a 540M will be very good but a 555M even better. For $999 you can get a 560M can't you? In that case you will be super fine at medium to insure you get 30-60FPS easy.

 

A 540m should be capable of running the game just fine, during the beta I had every single detail maxed out @ 1900x1080 with 460m sli, dropping back to one 460m I just lowered aa and had smooth sailing again. At the $1000 price point you can get some pretty nice laptops now a days, plenty have a 560m or ati equivalent in them which is even more powerful than the 555m.

 

Greetings all,

I'm in the market for a new laptop and want to get a machine with a decent amount of power capable of running the old republic with no problems whatsoever. (If i could get one to run Crysis 2 that would be great as well.) The top contender right now is a gateway I found on amazon (specs below) but I’m not as familiar with AMD as I am with intel. Any insight as to whether this is would be a good choice?

15.6" HD Widescreen Ultrabright™ LED-backlit Display: (1366 x 768) resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio
AMD Quad-Core A8-3500M Accelerated Processor 1.5GHzwith Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.4GHz
Windows® 7 Home Premium
Microsoft® Office Starter 2010
640GB Hard Drive
6GB DDR3 Memory
AMD Radeon™ HD 6620G Graphics
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™
Built-in 1.3 Megapixel HD Webcam
4X Blu-ray Disc™/DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive
High-Definition Audio Support
Two built-in stereo speakers
3- USB 2.0 Ports
1- HDMI™ Port with HDCP suport
Gateway Social Networks Key
Gateway MyBackup Function Key
Multi-Gesture Touchpad
Dedicated Numeric Keypad
6-cell Li-ion Battery
5.7 lbs.| 2.6 kg(system unit only)

 

I have that laptop DRAD1S. It plays most games very well but with SWTOR it's only okay. You better be willing to OC your CPU also. I found out I can turn off shadows and everything else on low but it can be sluggish at the native resolution. Anywhere from 10FPS - 40FPS. Outdoors seem to do better. If you're fine with lows then you'll be okay. It looks like the game likes CPU power too and HD3000 with i5 are seeing similar results.

 

I'd suggest these, price is shipped to your door (no tax):

$800 - dv6-6180us from Amazon - 2670qm with 6770m
$954 - LOTUS configured to $954 (subtract hard drive size and ram) with 560M and 2670qm

 

They are currently looking into the low indoor fps issue in swtor. So hopefully soon they will patch this. Only time I noticed the game being sluggish was during pvp sessions. Other then that the game runs fine even on my 335m.

 

Good to know, yeah the indoor thing was perplexing considering it's usually outdoors with more crap to render that takes a FPS hit.

 

^ Those are good prices for your budget. The point is, what level of graphics can you stand? ToR even at low preset still has manageable details and doesn't really affect gameplay. PvP is another beast entirely and I think everyone struggles with it at some level since my high end desktop even had FPS inconsistencies during 6v6 little squabbles.

IF you want to save money. Get what he suggested or an Asus K53ta which is the only laptop with a dedicated video card in the AMD 66xx lineup thats under 600 dollars. Heck I've got mine up for sale but you'd have to go to NBR marketplace for that.

If you move around a lot or want to stay mobile - get a mid-range laptop. If you mainly stay in one place to game, build a PC and have better performance. You're choice.


Personal Experience: Quite a bit. I've tested The Old Republic on 7 different computers (Desktops and laptops) all with completely different hardware setups from high to low.