Need a new laptop for PWI

If you wanted the best of the best and wanted all the bells and whistles and crao like that, you could get something like alienware or something along those lines. However, if you just want something you can do normal stuff and play pwi, you could grab almost any standard off the shelf laptop from Wal-Mart for like 250-400 bucks. That's what I did and it runs just fine. Just so you know, my laptop is an hp basic laptop...nothing special for around 300

Sirkura - Raging Tide wrote: »

well mine is a fairly good comp it runs with a 2.8 ghz processor but can run up to 3.2. really depends on how much you want to spend. minimum, you will want at least 2ghz processor with at least 2 gigs of ram, i recomend at least 2.5 ghz and 4gigs or more ram. fortunately PWI doenst take much to run. its a pretty old game with dated tech.

The amount of GHz a CPU pretty much means nothing nowadays.
Or well, not as much as it used to mean.

Regardless, PWI doesn't need that much to run on modern day laptop/computers. Considering the engine doesn't use the GPU, and uses the CPU poorly anyway, it doesn't really matter much which laptop you buy for it.
Unless you buy an absolute toaster ofcourse.

wow pwi doesnt use the gpu? no wonder my cpu runs a little hot while playing and my gpu is cold >.< that is stupid design.

I use an i7 on my laptop and it doesn't overheat, but it does get hot while playing pwi. more so than most games pwi update yo stuff so i can run cool >:|

qilongk wrote: »

I would say maybe avoid i7 because it will overheat.
for pwi, you dont need high spec laptop.
if you want to use laptop longer, then find a laptop which does not overheat often.

Oh yah laptop.. lol Only if you can afford those 900 buck Alienware i7's. I gave up using a laptop for gaming. I was running my lil thing pretty hot, so I went with a desktop. I leave my laptop just for lil stuff like writing.

Yah that's my last tip, forget the laptop, get a desktop. Though I was playing games like... games I think I'm not supposed to say? You'll prolly be fine with PWI with anything newish.

Yah PWI doesn't take up much, i run it on i3 HP laptop 6gb RAM and 1GB dead graphics and I also run it on a dell desktop i3 8gb ram and intel shared graphics and it runs fine on both.

I'd tend to not go lower than an i3, i wouldn't go for an i7 for ur usage it would b such a waste of money and PC, you dont sound like you know a huge amount about pcs so upgrading and all the **** is probably lost on you. If u can find a reasonable priced AMD A10 then u will be fine (shouldnt be any more than £450)


Alienware are owned by Dell which mainly outsource to china (usually affecting quality) While HP are a good brand they tend to run hot and have fan issues 2 or 3 years in. Acer and Packard Bell are the same company and are usually reasonable priced but are considered a budget maker although they do have some gems.

Lenovo have done well in past couple of years to place themselves as one of the largest windows based pc companies but they can be poor quality if you go too cheap.

The recent bunch of Toshiba's seem to be nagged by poor keyboard and trackpad issues.

Stay away from Sony, overpriced and not even owned by Sony (owned by a Japanese investment company and made for them by ASUS) plus their aftersales is dreadful. That being said ASUS tend to make good laptops and you can usually get a good deal from them.

What i usually say to customers (i repair pcs/laptops) is maximise your CPU for ur budget, ram can be upgraded later if it starts to run slow but if u scrimp on the CPU then not much can be done if it starts to grind to a halt.

Bellicious - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Probably because your laptop was not designed for gaming, therefore having small heatsinks, heatpipes and weak fans.
Gaming laptops are awesome.

EDIT: Also, Alienware is **** now. Clevo is #1 for gaming laptops.

Yah that's pretty much what I was saying, and that gaming laptops are hella expensive (Clevo's run like 1 grand up)... and like was said an i7 might start to heat up on a lappy, but lesser so on a desktop. Sucker heats up, buy a cheap high watt power supply. Desktops are cooler. :P

Dude said he didn't need anything fancy, so I was thinking something in a normal person's budget.

XXxICExXx - Morai wrote: »

I'd tend to not go lower than an i3, i wouldn't go for an i7 for ur usage it would b such a waste of money and PC, you dont sound like you know a huge amount about pcs so upgrading and all the **** is probably lost on you. If u can find a reasonable priced AMD A10 then u will be fine (shouldnt be any more than £450)

What he said I might upgrade to an i5 in a couple years if I'm using other render heavy stuff more often, but I find the i3 pretty decent for now. Though we went different choices, my bro loves the **** out of his A10.

Don't know where you're from but newegg has some real gems sometimes.

Bellicious - Dreamweaver wrote: »

One major problem I have with low end units is that they come with 5400RPM HDD's that are slow as **.

RAM is not always the answer to a computer running slow.

The joy of a desktop is she can always stick in a SSD and slave off user data to standard HDD, yah sure u can get laptops with space for 2 drives but usually higher end ones and running a SSD on it own doesn't really give enough space. Although with clouds and externals being fairly cheap space isnt really that much of a concern anymore

UnbrokenWill - Archosaur wrote: »

Yah that's pretty much what I was saying, and that gaming laptops are hella expensive (Clevo's run like 1 grand up)... and like was said an i7 might start to heat up on a lappy, but lesser so on a desktop. Sucker heats up, buy a cheap high watt power supply. Desktops are cooler. :P

Dude said he didn't need anything fancy, so I was thinking something in a normal person's budget.

I have an i7 4810MQ in my machine and it doesn't run too hot at all. Sure, it heats up a little more than the previous ivy bridge CPU's but that's only because haswell is a blast furnace.



OP, if ALL you're concerned about is being able to run PWI, and not caring at all about graphical fidelity or performance; any cheapo $400 machine off the shelf will run it.

XXxICExXx - Morai wrote: »

The joy of a desktop is she can always stick in a SSD and slave off user data to standard HDD, yah sure u can get laptops with space for 2 drives but usually higher end ones and running a SSD on it own doesn't really give enough space. Although with clouds and externals being fairly cheap space isnt really that much of a concern anymore

If a user does not use their disc drive (Let's face it, we'll use it once every year, maybe once every 6 months if lucky) you can remove it and add a HDD caddy to run a mechanical drive as storage and the main drive bay for an SSD. (The reason for that setup is because the drive in the ODD bay would run at sata2 and a SSD would need the sata3 bay)

Anyone ever use iBuyPower? I mostly shop on newegg and other sites like that

Any modern half-decent laptop should run PWI without issues. My laptop is quite old but it will run PW fine for anything except TW (or a big NW battle.) Main issue with it is a really weak CPU. It runs a 1st-gen AMD A6 quad core that's only clocked at 1.6GHz, something like 2.2 in turbo? For that you have to be only using 1 core and the Graphics are also on the CPU so they take power away too. It's good for what I use it for; mostly just downloading/watching TV shows and general browsing. I used it for PW a bit last time I was sick and didn't wanna get out of bed. TW was a big no-no for it though.

I'd advise anyone to go with a desktop unless they actually need the portability of a laptop. Desktop is just more bang for your buck, in my opinion. For PWI, if you really want the laptop, I'd advise one with an Intel processor, the single-core performance is a lot better than AMD and PW will only use 1 core.