towards the optimal laptop

I have seen some questions in other forums asking about a the ability of a certain laptop to play Empire: Total War, and I was curious to see that game and to test it on my laptop, so I promptly launched Steam and downloaded the demo.

The graphics card of my laptop is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 (256 MB DDR2) and the processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 (2.0 GHz). More details in my Dell Studio 1537 review.

I set the resolution to 1280×800 and Low graphics. Gameplay was OK, with framerates of 23-26 FPS most of the time, that occasionally dropped to around 15 when looking closely at a battle, but nothing that could difficult the control of you units. So I have to say that, at least in the battle conditions of the demo, the game is playable.

The problem is that Empire: Total War is plain ugly at Low settings. Please look at this screenshot, and notice the blurry mounted units at left and the soldiers at right.

This does not happen at Medium settings, but my laptop gets 8-14 FPS even at 800×600 and with AA off (Medium settings include a x2 AA).

You can expect similar playability with other low-end graphics cards: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410, 3430, 3470 and Nvidia GeForce 9200M GS and 9300M GS. Newer low-end graphics cards such as an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 or the Nvidia GeForce G 105M should perform better, but not dramatically. If I were looking for a laptop to play Empire: Total War, I’d pick at least an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 (but a 4530 or 4570 would probably be OK), Nvidia GeForce 9600M, GT 120M or similar. With an ATI 3200 it could be playable at 1024×768, but I have my doubts about an Intel GMA 4500MHD, even at 800×600.

Empire: Total War is known to be very processor-intensive and, while I think the slowdowns I have experienced are related to the graphics card, it’s quite possible than in battles larger than the ones seen in the demo a slow processor could be a bottleneck. So a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 or Pentium Dual Core T4200 (or a 2.4 GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra ZM-86) are OK, but a faster processor (such as an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26 GHz or better) is a safer bet. Probably any current dual core processor is OK in most situations.

To summarize, if you don’t mind graphical quality, you would be probably OK with any laptop with a low-end dedicated graphics card and a dual core processor, but in my opinion a faster graphics card is a must to really enjoy the game.