Gaming laptop

[LeftEyeNine]

I have i7 processor of the same generation coupled with less RAM and a GTX 675M (as far as I've heard, it's refurbished GTX 580M) and, for example, Witcher 2 is playable at highest settings where only über-sampling is disabled.

Sleeping Dogs have the highest settings pumped in, maybe some degrees lowered in AA, that's all and it's playing well too.

I suspect your power management profile is restraining your rig to perform at its peak. You have to check those settings and choose the one that requires most power, hence yielding the highest performance.

Happy gaming with your monsta.

[SwordsMaster]

Hmmm, I'll check again, but it was set to 'performance' when I set it up the first time... Anything else? Any useless windows/antivirus stuff I can turn off? I'm using AVG free at the moment, and Sleeping dogs crashed a couple of times because I had to approve it for AVG...

Any recommendations on snagging up those extra crumbs of processing power?

[LeftEyeNine]

AVG is hardly considered a reputable antivirus solution these days -whereas "these days" have been spanning over for a couple of years now.

Bitdefender and KAV have gamer modes you expect to be enabled automatically or you could manually. I'm using Bitdefender as we speak. MSE has been left out of options after having seen that its detection rate is quite low to leave you vulnerable. Check this independent tester websites about AVs and decide on the one that would keep you clean and would inflict the least impact on your system : http://www.av-comparatives.org and http://www.av-test.org/en/home/

Razer Game Booster is a capable utility, although being in beta, that claims to be smartly removing load off your system when you launch a game. Although their effectiveness is disputable, it wouldn't hurt to give a try. Request for an open-beta here.

[SwordsMaster]

Thanks for the suggestions, LEN. Are there any good free AVs? Any other recommendations for keeping bloatware, malware, etc under control?

[Lemur]

I've been browsing happily with a combination of MSE and SuperAntiSpyware. I also keep an install of Malwarebytes for if/when things go kabloom. Works for me.

[LeftEyeNine]

I've been browsing happily with a combination of MSE and SuperAntiSpyware. I also keep an install of Malwarebytes for if/when things go kabloom. Works for me.

A few days ago, I installed USB stick that we knew being infected. MSE was able to spot unusual .exe files however that was that -it would only report those to see if they were malicious.

Having been deeply disappointed -I've been recommending MSE to people for a couple of years now- I checked aforemention sites above to see that MSE could score 2.5/6 when it comes to detection rates while BitDefender, KAV and a couple of others scored 4.5-5 about detection rates.

However, as gamers, that would not be our only concern. The system impact of such software is crucial in making the choice and seeing MSE and BitDefender both score 5.5/6, the obvious way to go was BitDefender.

I'm using the trial, it wouldn't hurt to pay a couple of bucks to an AV that would keep your system safe and secure.

ZoneAlarm Antivirus + Firewall is a free option that scores a lot better than MSE. Give it a try if you'd like to.

ZoneAlarm
Detection: 5.5
Repair: 5.5
Usability: 5

MSE
Detection: 2.5
Repair: 5.5
Usability: 5.5

[Husar]

ZoneAlarm is, or at least was, also the cause of a ton of problems and incompatibilities with other software, especially games.
I've been very happy with ESET and then switched to MSE for financial reasons. Next time I refresh my system I want to spend some money for ESET again though.

[LeftEyeNine]

ZoneAlarm is, or at least was, also the cause of a ton of problems and incompatibilities with other software, especially games.
I've been very happy with ESET and then switched to MSE for financial reasons. Next time I refresh my system I want to spend some money for ESET again though.

Hmm, I never tried it myself. I'm just speaking on the tests that website has implemented.

KAV 2013 1 year 1 PC is not really expensive: 35.95 TL ~= 20 USD. I'll try and see which one I'll like better.

[SwordsMaster]

Thanks for all the recommendations, gents. Went for MSE+ZoneAlarm trial for now. Memory consumption now is significantly lower than with AVG... Let's see how it goes.

[Lemur]

Any reaction to that sweet hybrid hard drive?

[SwordsMaster]

Any reaction to that sweet hybrid hard drive?

TBH, it's very hard to say which part of the performance improvement is due specifically to the HD. Start up is indeed faster, down to about 20 seconds from black screen to Windows password request. I also have about 4x as much RAM as before, so which is more reponsible is difficult to decide. File transfers are faster, and so is installation/uninstallation of large programs.

[Solstorm]

Hi folks,

this is my first post to this forum since i just bought the game. I am playing it on my MacBook Pro Retina with the following specs:

CPU: i7 2.6 Quad
GPU: Geforce 650m 1GB GDDR5
RAM: 16GB
HDD: 512 GB SSD
OS: Windows 7 Prof. 64bit

These are my game settings:

DX 11
1680 x 150


Particles: ultra
AA: 2x MSAA
AF: 8x
Textures: high
DoF: low
Shader: Model 5
Unit: Ultra
Buildings: High
Shadows: low
Unit Size: big
Fleet Size: big
Trees: Ultra
Grass: high
Water: high
Sky: high
Terrain: high

soft shadows: yes
heat blur: yes
Parkettierung: yes

When i run the benchmark with game settings i achieve 31.65 fps. I think that is pretty decent. Does anyone have any good tips on how to improve that even further without loosing too much eye candy?

Kind regards

Sol

p.s. I found the campaign card to be quite a demanding view. Anyone else, too?