Quick Thoughts on Setup? Not sure if this laptop will work for D3...

[JFMFT]

I checked the supported video card thread and didn't see my video card. I also couldn't get canirunit.com to show my video card because I have a switchable graphics setup (HP laptop) and the website didn't recognize my dedicated GPU, instead it only saw the on-board intel graphics which are weak and slow. The site said I should be way more than fine running D3 at high settings on every aspect of my PC's hardware except video card, but again, the site wouldn't recognize my dedicated card, only the onboard discrete graphics which I wouldn't be using when playing D3.

So this is my question... can anyone comment on whether my laptop would be able to run D3 in at least 720p resolution on close to high settings?

I have an HP dv6t quad edition laptop. In my everyday experience it's pretty fast... I've had zero hiccups anywhere on anything. It runs Windows 7 home premium, has 8GB RAM, a quad-core core i7-2630qm with turbo boost (sandy bridge), switchable graphics with a Radeon 6770m 2GB GDDR5 GPU, and a 1920x1080 native resolution screen. I hook it up to a full 1080p 24" monitor usually, but don't mind running my games at ~720p resolution for better performance if that's what it takes. I'd love to run Diablo 3 at full native resolution if I could.

Do you think D3 would be playable, and if so, any guesses at what kind of settings? I didn't get in on the beta, so I of course haven't been able to test it. I perused many different forums and didn't see a question like this, so this shouldn't be a repeat post...

Given that I couldn't find answers in the video card thread or on canirunit.com, I am posting here. Thanks for any input anyone can provide - I'm fairly well versed with computers, both with software and hardware, but I've not done much with them in many years due to graduate school and other stuff, so a lot of the more current technologies in terms of how powerful they are relative to everything that's out there are unfamiliar to me. I know the sandy bridge 2nd gen core processors are beastly... I'm just not sure how confident I can be in the Radeon 6770m 2GB GDDR5 card I have. At least it's GDDR5 and not DDR3...

Again, thanks!

[Maurish]

At 1080p I'd probably say you'd be pretty good with medium settings but even high should give you reasonable frames per second (around 30 I'd assume). That would be my educated guess, it might run even better but I honestly doubt it will be worse than that.

[JFMFT]

At 1080p I'd probably say you'd be pretty good with medium settings but even high should give you reasonable frames per second (around 30 I'd assume). That would be my educated guess, it might run even better but I honestly doubt it will be worse than that.

Thanks for your thoughts. I don't know that I've necessarily answered my own question (would still appreciate other thoughts, perhaps from anyone who has a similar laptop or video card?), but I updated my BIOS and found a new feature this morning: I can enable fixed switchable graphics as opposed to dynamic. Now I can just click a button and force my PC to use the dedicated GPU. After hitting that, I went back to canirunit.com and it says I passed the test with more than necessary specs for the "Recommended Settings."

Looks good to me... I'm hoping it ends up great.

	CPU Recommended: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz You Have: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz		PASS
	CPU Speed Recommended: Info You Have: 2.0 GHz
	Bios Name Recommended: Info You Have: Name: InsydeH2O Version 03.60.48F.1A Version: Hewlett-Packard F.1A		Click here for the latest BIOS updates.
	RAM Recommended: 2 GB You Have: 8.0 GB		PASS
	OS Recommended: Windows Vista/Windows 7 (Latest Service Packs) You Have: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit		PASS Click here for the latest Windows drivers.
	Video Card Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce 260 or ATI Radeon HD 4870 or better You Have: Radeon (TM) HD 6770M		PASS Click here for the latest Video drivers.
Features: Recommended attributes of your Video Card Required You Have Video RAM 512 MB 1.7 GB Pixel Shader version 4.0 5.0 Vertex Shader version 4.0 5.0
	Free Disk Space Recommended: 12 GB You Have: 399.4 GB		PASS

[Tilitoon]

You will most likely be able to play the game at High setting @ 1080p. The 6770m is a high end video card in the notebook world. Seems like this HP DV6T has good specs. Is the screen 15.6" ? If you can ouput it to a 1080p 24" monitor then it's great. Do you mind if I ask how much did it cost ?

[JFMFT]

Hey Tilitoon, thanks for your feedback, I appreciate it a lot!

The scren is 15.6", that's correct. It's not the most ergonomic or stylish (or lightweight... but also not too heavy) laptop ever, and most mac fanboys with macbook airs would laugh at me by the sheer heft of my laptop, but the performance, and especially for the price, is really incredible.

When on-the-go I just use the screen of course, but when I need to do some work in excel (and sometimes word or google docs/calendar - since I spend half of my work time using google services) I use windows snap feature and plug in to my big 24" 1080p monitor in my office at home. It works really great, actually. I'm a graduate student and we do a lot of video tape watching/editing for videos where we see clients and have to go back and edit out snippets to use in supervision, so I wanted a laptop that could easily run the proprietary video software we use (which is coded pretty crappily... so having a PC that overcompensates is super helpful). This laptop has been everything and more I could need. It's a true quad-core despite being a mobile chip, so it's really been great at running a lot of programs simultaneously.

Regarding price, I got a surprisingly good deal, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve. I chose a quick-ship model because I needed the PC pretty fast - I found out the first day of school in August last year that I needed a laptop by the 3rd week of school... so I had to get something fast. I ordered online direct from HP's website. I initially logged in with my student email address for a student discount, but the order page refreshed on me (I think I hit F5 without realizing it or something), and it asked me to re-log in. I wanted to check on the price that I'd get through my spouse's work discount through Verizon Wireless, so I went ahead and signed in with his work email address... and extremely surprisingly it added his work discount on top of my student discount. I think I ended up paying $850 total for a laptop that was originally close to $1300 or more... and I got a free 4GB Xbox 360 from Microsoft for ordering when I ordered. I sold the Xbox for $150 and so this laptop ended up costing me $700. It was the most amazing deal I could have ever asked for.

Sorry that was such a long explanation, but that's how it happened. Again, thanks for your input. I'm glad to hear I have a (relatively) good GPU considering I have a laptop. Woot.

[Tilitoon]

That is awesome ! Yea I think you got a pretty good deal. I'm sure you'll enjoy playing DIII on that