Decent Laptop for RTS Gaming

Looking for a decent laptop that'll handle current crop of RTS games at high/full detail levels for when I'm out and about on my travels, holidays, sat on sofa etc. Not fussed about FPS's - they will be played on my desktop.

Games include:

Company of Heroes
Anno 1404
Football Manager 2010
Empire/Napoleon Total War
Supreme Commander 1 & 2
Dawn of War II
Civilization IV and V
Silent Hunter 4 and 5 (OK not RTS!)

Price up to £850, not too big ie max 15" screen. Not fussed about Blu-Ray drive.

Was looking at the Alienware M11x but not sure about CPU and screen size. Anyone had any first hand experience playing the above on an M11x

Cheers,

I've got an M11x on order, basically to play DoW2, FM2010 and a few others. It doesn't arrive for about 10 days (don't think they are properly out yet) but will let you know how it handles it.

Did you manage to get any deals walkinglimb? I cant find any alienware uk discount codes and they only discount I have found is either quidco or dells EPP?

Its a shame as it is so much more expensive here than the US

not sure how productive things will be on a 11" screen? i certainly wouldnt want to play COH on a 11" screen, id rather spend less and get a more powerful 15"

You can get much better power / performance ratio away from the M11x.

I know that Supcom for sure is incredibly CPU hungry and I believe that most other RTS games like a good processor. Also consider that RTS on an 11" screen would be awkward because of the scale and resolution available.

£850 Will buy you a laptop with a Core i5 processor and up to an ATI 5650 which will destroy the spec of the m11x

Models to look for are
Acer Aspire 5740G
Sony Vaio E Series
HP Pavillion DV6

I paid £850 for my m11x, Win7 Pro, 500gb HDD, 2gb RAM (bout 4gb from Ocuk for less than the Dell upgrade). No deals sadly.

Bigger laptops will be cheaper and more powerful - yes, that's 100% true... but they will also be bigger, have less battery life and be heavier.

Screen size doesn't bother me in the slightest, the resolution is okay and can be run very nicely by the 335m inside, a 15" notebook will also have a far higher resolution to push, a blessing and a curse IMO.

I am sorry to post a competitors link but please look at the spec for the 5740G.

I totally agree that the 15" will be heavier and possibly have a shorter battery life.

But the specs destroy the Alienware and its £150 less than you paid.
They also have the same resolution so there will be no hindered performance trying to display more pixels.

No doubt the Alienware has its benifits but they price / performance ratio just cant compete with other vendors

SnoozE said:

I am sorry to post a competitors link but please look at the spec for the 5740G.

I totally agree that the 15" will be heavier and possibly have a shorter battery life.

But the specs destroy the Alienware and its £150 less than you paid.
They also have the same resolution so there will be no hindered performance trying to display more pixels.

No doubt the Alienware has its benifits but they price / performance ratio just cant compete with other vendors

Click to expand...

I'll wait for one of the others to come along and go OMG competitor as personally I don't care, but have you checked out the Sony Vaio E series?

£630 for a 15.6" laptop with a ATI 5650 1gb card and the option for a full 1920 x 1080 screen (although personally I would go for the 720p size as it would run better in games).

I wouldn't buy an Acer if it was me, but that's just personal opinion.

Totality said:

I'll wait for one of the others to come along and go OMG competitor as personally I don't care, but have you checked out the Sony Vaio E series?

£630 for a 15.6" laptop with a ATI 5650 1gb card and the option for a full 1920 x 1080 screen (although personally I would go for the 720p size as it would run better in games).

I wouldn't buy an Acer if it was me, but that's just personal opinion.

Click to expand...

Agreed I posted the Sony E series in my first post. I linked only to the Acer because I was demonstrating the difference in the quality of the components between that and the Alienware. I didnt want to post links to all 3 laptops that I suggested because I dont want to fall foul of the Mods.

The 3 that I posted are all very similar in spec its just down to the personal preference of the OP if he has any favorite brands.

I think everyone will agree the 15" sony and acer would destroy the m11x. That being said, I have a 17" with ati 5650 and core i5. Whilst I love it I would not want to be carrying it everywhere and also the battery life is only 2-2.5 hours. I want an m11x to complement it. 7ish hours batt life, backlit keyboard, portable, still able to play most games at native.

As an experiment I locked my sony vaio cw's cpu to 1.6ghz (P9500) at this speed it will be very similar to the m11x. The CW also has a gt230m which I have overclocked to levels similar to that of a m11x's gt335.

I played:
COH - totally playable 8v8 skirmish
Forged Alliance - 2v2 isis totally playable
Dirt2 - totally playable
COH WAW - playable but a small amount of slowdown in multi on full server with lots of arty.
BF BC2 Beta - just playable on 32man servers fps 30 dropping to 18 in heavy firefights

So it seems to me most games are heavily gpu bound and will play well on a m11x

ninja2000 said:

I think everyone will agree the 15" sony and acer would destroy the m11x. That being said, I have a 17" with ati 5650 and core i5. Whilst I love it I would not want to be carrying it everywhere and also the battery life is only 2-2.5 hours. I want an m11x to complement it. 7ish hours batt life, backlit keyboard, portable, still able to play most games at native.

As an experiment I locked my sony vaio cw's cpu to 1.6ghz (P9500) at this speed it will be very similar to the m11x. The CW also has a gt230m which I have overclocked to levels similar to that of a m11x's gt335.

I played:
COH - totally playable 8v8 skirmish
Forged Alliance - 2v2 isis totally playable
Dirt2 - totally playable
COH WAW - playable but a small amount of slowdown in multi on full server with lots of arty.
BF BC2 Beta - just playable on 32man servers fps 30 dropping to 18 in heavy firefights

So it seems to me most games are heavily gpu bound and will play well on a m11x

Click to expand...

Why would you be looking to get the M11x out of interest if you have the Vaio CW? I am interested in the CW over the E series because it is smaller overall which is more what I am after. How do you find it? I still can't find out if an extended battery exists for it or not though! How do you find the standard battery life?

Also, what are you using to overclock the GPU?

I love the CW so will probably keep it I just love new toys

But in answer to your question:
Keyboard - amazing, best I have used, I love typing on it. Wish it was backlit though
Noise - amazingly quiet even whilst gaming
Heat - runs so cool you can even game on your lap, compared to all the other laptops I have owned this is the coolest running (I have owned a lot! )
Screen - is bright and good colours but viewing angles are poor.
Batt life - Approx 4 hours on low load

Negatives:
Battery drain! It loses about 7% per night whilst completely off or in hibernate. This is crazy, you cant shut it down leave it a couple of days and then have a usable amount of battery left All sony's seem to suffer from this issue
Drivers - You are forced to use sony drivers and they never seem to update them. Very frustrating. I want new nvidia drivers, I can modify drivers but then loose brightness control
Speakers - carp, enough said.

Overall a great package but as with all laptops it has negatives

I use nvidia system tools and overclock the card to 600/1320/900 and it still stays at 65c

Cheers! Looks like the CW it is then. Just waiting for anywhere in the UK to get them in stock! They are now saying March

Have you looked at getting a custom build? Thats how I got mine and it arrived in 2 weeks. Was much cheaper than buying from a sony store. Mine was £560 and it was 700 in store

SnoozE said:

I am sorry to post a competitors link but please look at the spec for the 5740G.

I totally agree that the 15" will be heavier and possibly have a shorter battery life.

But the specs destroy the Alienware and its £150 less than you paid.
They also have the same resolution so there will be no hindered performance trying to display more pixels.

No doubt the Alienware has its benifits but they price / performance ratio just cant compete with other vendors

Click to expand...

Build quality of Acer's will be a lot lower than the Alienware, you do get SOO much more for your money, you can't get a laptop anywhere near this size or performance anywhere else. You can't even get this performance in a 13" package...

Wakinglimb said:

Build quality of Acer's will be a lot lower than the Alienware, you do get SOO much more for your money, you can't get a laptop anywhere near this size or performance anywhere else. You can't even get this performance in a 13" package...

Click to expand...

Agreed about the Performance / Size ratio. The performance level for a netbook of this size is very very impressive.

My personal opinion from owning a 10 inch netbook is that the size (for me) is to small for gaming.....but each to their own. If it suits your needs and your happy with it who am I to critisize.

I do hope your happy with your purchase and I do wish you many hours of happy gaming on it. My own personal experience of Dell is not as positive as I would have liked it have been, however the more recent PCs and laptops that they have built do appear to have better build quality than some of their older units.

I bought a Pavilion DV6 the other week for £850. Core i7, 4GB RAM, GT230M, 500GB hard disk. It's now down to £799. Probably the most power you're going to get for that price.