new computer

[Carazycool]

I'm looking into buying a new computer from MAINGEAR. how do you think the following specs will handle CiV?

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 2720QM 2.2GHz/3.3GHz Turbo 6MB L3 Cache GT2

Memory: 8GB Patriot DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM (Dual Channel)

Graphics and GPGPU Accelerator: NVIDIA® GeForce™ GT 555M 2GB with Optimus Technology


i dont know much about hardware, but that is the system I am leaning toward.

 

[tokala]

Will do

 

[FeiLing]

What you want to hear:
Yes it will run the game perfectly fine at highest settings.

What you don't want to hear:

Spoiler :

It will be loud and the Laptop will suffer by being stressed so much for so long and die sooner than it should (especially since CiV isn't a game you play for only 1-2 hours but up to half a day without any real break^^). But I guess it's pointless to tell people that laptops are not made to play games.

Standard hint: Why do you people think the heatsinks in a gaming rig alone are usually similar in size to your whole damn multimedia laptop?

 

[Carazycool]

Ah. Well thanks for both the good news and the disconcerting news. I've always thought it would be great to have a laptop that can play civ. (just imagine how fast those bus rides/plane rides will seem!?)

Any tips on how to avoid damage to the computer from overstressing it? I suppose playing shorter periods of time would be a start. We'll see if that is possible or if the draw of CiV will override my willpower to give the computer a break :^)

Are there any ways to keep the computer cool? I would guess making sure that there is good airflow through the fan. Anything else?

 

[FeiLing]

Not much you can do for a laptop apart from putting it on a table rather than your legs.

For CiV specifically you might want to reduce the shader and shadow qualities by a bit and not use Anti-Aliasing. You can pretty much reduce them without noticing a difference - except that the fan will be so much less noisy (which correlates directly with the stress). You can also experiment with the leader scene settings (they're very demanding; however I don't think you can lower those to much without it becoming poor looking).