Is this PC good?

[Kuvion]

I am going to buy a new laptop and I've been looking around quite a lot for a good one. I fuond this one, an HP Pavilion dv7-3199eo laptop. The system specifications looked very good, but then I heard the GPU (a NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M with 1 GB of dedicated vRAM and up to 2815 MB shared) was not good for gaming. So, my question is: Is it good or not? Will it be able to run Starcraft 2 on ultra?

EDIT:

I bought an MSI GX740, specs:

CPU: Intel Core i5 - 450m 2,4 GHz, Turbo 2.66 GHz, dual core, Hyper Threading
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1066 MHz
GPU: Ati Radeon HD 5870, 1 GB GDDR5
HDD: 500 GB 7200 rpm
Display: 17", 1680x1050

This runs Starcraft 2 (and also modern warfare 2) perfectly smooth with everything at ultra and 1680x1050 resolution.
These benchmarks (below) are obviously wrong saying 3 GHz is needed.

 

[Slapshot136]

it won't be able to run sc2 on ultra(at 1600 x 900), but very few laptops will be able to do that - it will run on low, maybe medium if you stay away from custom games with tons of units on the screen, but the 230 isn't really a gaming card (the 260/280 would be the gaming cards from that generation), and the i7 runs at 1.6 ghz - it won't turbo up that much, and considering sc2 only uses 2 cores/threads, it's a mismatch there

 

[tooltiperror]

If you want to be able to play games on high settings like that, don't go with a prebuilt computer. You're better off building one yourself to handle games like that. Also, if you really want to play games, why get a laptop? You're limiting how much customization you'll be able to do.

 

[Samuraid]

I am going to buy a new laptop and I've been looking around quite a lot for a good one. I fuond this one, an HP Pavilion dv7-3199eo laptop. The system specifications looked very good, but then I heard the GPU (a NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M with 1 GB of dedicated vRAM and up to 2815 MB shared) was not good for gaming. So, my question is: Is it good or not? Will it be able to run Starcraft 2 on ultra?

it won't be able to run sc2 on ultra(at 1600 x 900), but very few laptops will be able to do that - it will run on low, maybe medium if you stay away from custom games with tons of units on the screen, but the 230 isn't really a gaming card (the 260/280 would be the gaming cards from that generation), and the i7 runs at 1.6 ghz - it won't turbo up that much, and considering sc2 only uses 2 cores/threads, it's a mismatch there

Actually, the 720QM turbos up to 2.8GHz on a single thread (and 2.4GHz on 2 threads). That said, it probably makes more sense to invest in an i3 or i5 for gaming, since 4 cores would likely go idle most of the time.

Also, my 8600M GT runs SC2 perfectly in low quality, and moderately in medium (so long as the map isn't large/busy). I have a friend with a 130M who plays SC2 comfortably in higher quality settings. The 230M should handle SC2 reasonably well in medium quality. But I completely agree that Kuvion should consider something a bit better, like a 425M/340M or better.

 

[Ghan]

> GeForce GT 230M

Not the worst you can get, but there is better out there to be had.
I can't find a price for the one you linked so I don't know what your budget is, but you should get something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220695

 

[Slapshot136]

Actually, the 720QM turbos up to 2.8GHz on a single thread (and 2.4GHz on 2 threads). That said, it probably makes more sense to invest in an i3 or i5 for gaming, since 4 cores would likely go idle most of the time.

Also, my 8600M GT runs SC2 perfectly in low quality, and moderately in medium (so long as the map isn't large/busy). I have a friend with a 130M who plays SC2 comfortably in higher quality settings. The 230M should handle SC2 reasonably well in medium quality. But I completely agree that Kuvion should consider something a bit better, like a 425M/340M or better.

I think we might need to bring in some sc2 benchmarks and define the difference between "runs" and "runs well enough that I wouldn't want to lower the settings"

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728-6.html

those are desktop benchmarks, the desktop 240 gets almost 20 fps, which is where I would put the limit of "runs well", and toms seems to agree "The GeForce GT 240 delivers performance on the edge of what you might consider playable for a real-time strategy (RTS) title."

the laptop 230 is far below the desktop 240, so in any case your not looking at ultra graphics (not without sacrificing resolution)

and as for the cpu, from the next page in that article

"If you want to keep things playable during epic battles, we recommend at least a 3 GHz dual-core or a 2.8 GHz triple-core processor. We also suggest that you opt for a 3.4 GHz Phenom II or a Core i5-750 at the very least to ensure smooth gameplay at all times."

so even if it goes and disables 3 cores and runs only on 1, it's still not really the best fit (im not sure how sc2 handles hyper-threading, I know WOW doesn't like it)

 

[Samuraid]

I think we might need to bring in some sc2 benchmarks and define the difference between "runs" and "runs well enough that I wouldn't want to lower the settings"

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728-6.html

those are desktop benchmarks, the desktop 240 gets almost 20 fps, which is where I would put the limit of "runs well", and toms seems to agree "The GeForce GT 240 delivers performance on the edge of what you might consider playable for a real-time strategy (RTS) title."

the laptop 230 is far below the desktop 240, so in any case your not looking at ultra graphics (not without sacrificing resolution)

and as for the cpu, from the next page in that article

"If you want to keep things playable during epic battles, we recommend at least a 3 GHz dual-core or a 2.8 GHz triple-core processor. We also suggest that you opt for a 3.4 GHz Phenom II or a Core i5-750 at the very least to ensure smooth gameplay at all times."

so even if it goes and disables 3 cores and runs only on 1, it's still not really the best fit (im not sure how sc2 handles hyper-threading, I know WOW doesn't like it)

That's ultra details. I'm not talking about that. Please note the discussion of "medium quality" and "higher quality settings" mentioned in my post. Buying a laptop to play SC2 at max settings is not a very effective use of money, as you get diminishing returns at the ultra high end.

The 720QM ranges from 2.8 - 2.4GHz with a couple cores active, so as far as a mobile platform goes, it should give you all the performance you need for SC2. Finally, note that I also recommended getting a Core i5 in my post.

 

[Slapshot136]

That's ultra details. I'm not talking about that.

the OP is(talking about ultra settings), which is why I used ultra - I agree that you get you get diminishing returns as you get close to the best of what is available, but that would be what is required to play sc2 at ultra on a laptop

 

[Kuvion]

Thanks everyone for your help.

The reason why I want a laptop is that my parents are divorced and a laptop would be easy to move between their places.
And the budget: I can afford about 1500 dollars. Also consider the 25% sales tax, that means about 1200 dollars if you don't count the tax. Buying the laptop in another country could cause language problems (I live in Sweden), since I need the åäö characters on the keyboard.
I also thought about a HP Pavilion dv6 3046eo laptop. I don't think i'm going to buy it but I want to know what hardware is better and not. The bad cons are that the display is smaller and the HDD is slower (huw much is the difference between 5400 and 7200 rpm?). The RAM is probably oversized. I want to know if the CPU and graphics card are better and how the general performance would be compared to the first one.

 

[tooltiperror]

The second one has a better processor, so it should run smoother and lag less for computing reasons, I'm also pretty sure the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is better than the NVIDIA.

 

[Kuvion]

Never mind about the second one. I won't buy an HP because they have bad quality.