playing Alice:madness on TP W700 - not happy

hi guys

i have Thinkpad W700ds with the following spec: T9600(2.8ghz, dual-core), 2700m graphic card with 512 memory.

I've been playing Alice:madness returns for a few days and am NOT happy.

I play at 1280*800 with most of the settings on and physx at medium and it's playable in some scenes, gets very choppy in most other places...

I've been pondering some upgrade

1. 2700m ==> 3700m
2. 2700m ==> 3700m plus t9600 ==> qx9300
3. brand new PC with something like nvidia 4000m (thinking dell 6600m but
it's whopping $3000+ !!!

My question is, roughly speaking, how much of a performance gain can
i expect from each scenario? i'm talking ball-park figure of course and i won't blame anyone unless it's off by a factor of ten or something

for example, if i go with scenario 1, can i get at least 30% gain in frame rate? if i go with scenario 2, can i gain at least 50% gain? and so on?

and compare to my current setup, just how fast are the lastest notebook with sandy quadcore and nvidia 4000m? at least 100 or 150%?

again, i'm not looking for a precise numbers. i'm just trying to get some rough idea so that i can make an educated decision.

thanks for your help!

 

You are probably near bottom performance for the GPU for that game. Turn PhysX OFF, and turn all settings to LOW then you'll be able to possibly play with decent framerates, but wouldn't count on it. Also update your drivers. The Quadro cards aren't really designed for gaming in mind either, so drivers may not be optimized for it. I don't think the 3700m will significantly improve performance, but it has about a 25% improvement for 3DMark 06 and Vantage according to Notebookcheck.net. Unless you can get it cheap, it wouldn't be my first choice, and I wouldn't expect miracles.

Your CPU should be more than sufficient.

The latest commercial nVidia chips are 400 and 500 series. The Sandy Bridge CPU's are not going to be a problem for any game currently released or in the near future. Any decent discrete GPU you get like a nVidia 540m, 555m, 460m, or 560m will be phenomenal compared to what you're used to. Or AMD HD 6000 series, 6700 and up should be adequate as well.

Not sure why you're considering a $3000 machine, unless you really need the Quadro cards for 3D design work. There's lots of options under $1500 that are screaming fast machines for gaming that come with GTX 560m, i7-2630QM, 8GB DDR3, and 500GB 7200RPM HDD, with 1080p screen even.