Witcher2 computer help
 

Years ago I use to be up todate on all things PC but it has been years….Well i really want to play the witcher two as DA2 on my ps3 was depressing at best…
So i ordered a Dell alien ware m17x 3hours ago and have 24 to change my mind…is the the laptop i should be buying to play this game….and other games in the near future…
System Color Alienware M17x Soft-Touch Stealth Black
Processor Intel® Core™ i7 2630QM 2.0GHz (2.8GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache)
Memory 6GB DDR3 at 1333MHz (2DIMMS)
A/C Adapter Alienware M17x 240W A/C Adapter
Display Panel 17.3-inch WideHD+ 1600 x 900 60Hz WLED
Video Card 1GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 6870M
Hard Drive 750GB 7,200RPM HDD

Sorry if i posted this in the worng area i just really need to know and any feed back wo uld be great before my wife finds out i just spent 2000.00 on this.

That should run The Witcher 2 pretty decently, but that's a lot of money.

Is it necessary that you buy a laptop?

Lap i can use for work and well play the game at work….lol…i did some reading on laptops for games and this was second on the list…the other one above it was about 800 more

You can get a laptop that will play TW2 and more very well for a lot cheaper. I helped my mother-in-law get my father-in-law a new laptop for gaming last Christmas and we ended up getting him an $800 one that could play TW2 very well. I tested Crysis on it and it ran well.

So… might want to shop around more and save some money.

Yeah, $2000 is a lot to fork over for a laptop.

Personally, I find it harder to get immersed in games on a laptop. Obviously you need the portability though.

I have bought 2 Dell laptops and would never buy another. They work fine, but their service is CRAP!!!! I waited 3 months for a new battery to arrive even though it was paid for over the phone. If you have to send it to them for a repair I hate to think how long it would take.

Yeah, my wife had a Dell that crapped out pretty quickly despite me taking care of it and service was a nightmare. I got my father-in-law a Samsung, so we'll see how that goes. My wife now has a Gateway, which is holding up alright.

I build my desktops.

You live in Australia dude. I'm not sure any us based company has great service to there.

Don't know Dell's services in other places but Dell Malaysia has great service here. They are fast to response, and exchange faulty products without much question. Only occasionally they dropped the ball in after sales services.

I know the US mail service is pretty poor, but 3 months to ship a battery. It also took them 3 months and several threatening phone calls to ship an Upgrade disc which was part of the original purchase deal. (It came with Vista loaded, but they offered free upgrade to Win 7).

That's an Alienware, it's suppose to be very expensive and to be good.
As far as I know and from what I read in another forums, it's support was very, very good, at least in the case of desktops. This is not a regular Dell.
If I had money, and wanted to buy a top notebook for gaming, I'd go for Alienware.

I find it funny that people claim it will run The Witcher 2 very well when the game haven't been released yet. The system requirements are the same as Metro 2033, you could try to find people who played Metro 2033 on the same laptop and see how well it went.

And despite being called a "gaming" laptop, it's still a laptop. When you think that the video card in my case emit heat like a dryer when I play demanding games, I don't want to think what happen inside of a laptop…

They do cpu stress tests with those beasties. Around 80 Cº. A bit hot, but they know what they are doing.
If that notebook doesn't run well Witcher 2, then a lot of desktops will have problems in running it.

I had that problem, so I just plug it into a 24" monitor at home and it's all fine again.

Heat (primarily from the graphics card) is the issue, and all computers and now coming up against a buffer here. Laptops more so, consoles very much so.

Desktops are still OK because you can do (on the surface of it) silly things like plug it into a water supply for cooling.

At the moment though, it's about price. Today's best lappy will have about -10% performance wise against the best desktop. But instead of costing $1300 like the desktop, it will cost you $2300. I personally go for this because I travel a lot, and prefer Shogun 2 or DA:O if it's raining or snowing and I'm stuck in a hotel room (whatever you may think of DA:O you'll agree it's a lot better than CNN or a hotel internet conncetion that costs $40 an hour).

@CelticFrost - I haven't checked the price of your system as maybe you have some deals etc. But I go for a lesser known 'manufacturer' (ODM) called Clevo, but they work off virtually the same hardware (Intel chipsets, Intel CPU, Nvidia graphics, realtek sound etc etc) for about $800 less than branded products. In fact, the little things are actually higher quality than the mainstream brands. The only thing you don't get is a nice brand sticker on your chassis, but that is a plus for me, because people never know what it is, and whether it's worth stealing. I'm on my second one now and would swear by them. They are OEM'ed by people like Sager in the US, Kobalt in the UK. At least check out this forum before you part with any cash.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/

My "office PC", which is how I call it now, was built by a computer shop after my wishs. It costed around 500 Euros and it was good for gaming for quite a while.


One point that is often overlooked are additional costs by the … what's the word ? Computers need current to run, and some modern graphics cards need insane amounts of it.
Over the years, this can add. These costs for the current, I mean. I think in business this is added like "total costs of ownership" (TCO) if I recall the term correctly.

And because of that I rather advise looking for a card that doesnt need too much current.

But in the end it's your personal choice, CelticFrost.


In my case, I explicitely wanted for my "office PC" a CPU and a graphics card that idn't need that much current. M coice was an AMD CPU with an "EE" label (Energy Efficient".

Wikipedia link towards it : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_management

Edit . Interestingly, the EE's of the AMD processors are seemingly only explicitely listed o the Germn Wikipedia page : http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_d…X2-Prozessoren
The English page lists an "energy efficient 'e' series" instead : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…icroprocessors and 'BE' is new to me.
Both lists are very different to on another, I don't know why.

Lots of desktops have problems running Metro 2033. It's the new Crisis. Metro 2033 have the exact same system requirements as The Witcher 2…

Alrik, you must be German. I never met any people so sensitive to the ecological matters as the Germans. :)
But in case of gaming computer, there's not much we can do if you want to max the settings. My "office" computer is also an "ecological" one. Doesn't even have a dedicated graphic card. I'm playing Baldur's Gate Trilogy with it. My gaming computer that's another matter. But then again I only used just for gaming a little.

@azarhal
Of course you're right, when you say that we don't know until we played it. But the gameplay videos doesn't seem to show that this will be a problem with this game. But who knows…..

Dell builds so many laptops that it's a crapshoot whether you'll get a good one or a piece of crap. The Alienware brand though, are made to a higher criteria and with better QA. You should be safe. I'd stick with the Alienware machine if the money isn't super important to you. I'm a Dell certified tech, that's worth about a dime btw, and I've fixed hundreds of Dells. Alienware components are much nicer and much better tested. Our company has 55,000 Dells and the repair rate is pretty high. I still buy Dells though, because in the States at least, the service is generally very good.