Dear Lazyweb, I need a new Computer
I was right, poker is nowhere in the forseeable future:
While not exactly maniacal and not “I’m on the verge of losing my job”, 11 hours of WoW and 9 of SL so far this week is an average of 4 hours a day or so of doing “stuff”. Of course, I’m not watching TV, and I’m spending time with friends, so it’s all good in my book.
I have to admit, WoW is pretty fun. My wife and I are more or less on the same page in terms of how we want to play it, although I think she may be into it more than I am. Last night on the way home I called home to try to ask my son something and my wife answered saying she just walked in the door. Less than 10 minutes later when I got home, where was she? Playing WoW 
Our little group made some headway last night, finally getting the teamwork down a bit and playing our roles better which made things a lot easier.
All of this gameplay has led me to realize I need (yes, need) a new computer. Second Life is much more intensive than WoW due to the dynamic nature but both need more than the 32MB card I have in my laptop. So now I’m looking to get a new computer. So the big question is: Build or buy?
So, Lazyweb, help me out on a good computer. I’m not opposed to building my own, but in that case it would help in terms of model numbers and such. Intel or AMD is fine, but I want dual core to prep for future things. I will be getting a Nvidia 7900GTX as the video, so there is no discussion on that. Pretty much everything else is up in the air, but I want to move semi-quickly.
April 21st, 2006 at 9:12 am
WOW is playable on a laptop with a crap video card as long as you overload on RAM and don’t mind truly craptacular framerates. Right now I’ve got 768 MB of RAM (probably could stand to bump that up to at least 1 gig) and an integrated video card on a 3yo laptop that probably wasn’t even all that high end when I bought it. My outdoor frame rates are a whopping 3-5fps. Indoors is better (less shit to load I suppose), usually between 12-15fps.
Is it kludgy? Hell yes. But is it playable? Sure.
April 21st, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Yeah, I’m sure I could play it on the laptop. It’s got a GeForce 2Go 5200 (32MB) and it can play Second Life. SL is much more intensive video wise than WoW so I’m sure it’d be “OK”.
Even so, it is work’s laptop. And the performance, while usable, leaves a lot to be desired. Ug.
April 21st, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Do yourself a favor and just buy (rather than build). Something reasonable in the performance dept that won’t cause major bleeding can be picked up from Dell. Personally, I’m a build it type but as time becomes more precious I’m less concerned with the tweaking and gadgetry and more interested in doing the things I bought the damn computer for in the first place.
April 21st, 2006 at 6:05 pm
Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Time is a big thing. I just want things to work. I don’t need software support, but if something in hardware goes, then it’s a different story. At least if I buy from Dell I can call somebody and get some resolution. If I build, I’m stuck finding a place to repair it and I’ll be down for 5 days and end up paying half of what the thing is worth to get it fixed.
Great point, thanks.
April 24th, 2006 at 8:57 am
I told you not to get sucked into WoW. Let me know how you feel about the game after capping the leveling.
May 13th, 2006 at 2:40 am
had the same issue with Battlefield 2 – sucked away over 100 hrs easy – I could tell you if I looked up my stats –
I’ve claymored a lot of bastards who deserved it tho
RB
July 20th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Hey, where u at, Chris Dahl?