Will My Sony VAIO VGN-AR390E Be Able to Play EQ2 Live (Velious)?

[ssor02]

Before I buy EQ2, I'd like to know whether Sony supports its VAIO computers for playing Sony games.  My question has to do mostly with the NVIDIA graphics.  NVIDIA does not support the upgrading of the GeForce Go 7600 GT graphics chip in the VAIO VGN-AR390E because Sony has modified it to perform other VAIO functions.  However, Sony's most recent upgrade for this chip occurred four years ago, in 2007.  So my question is Will my computer be able to play the Velious edition of EQ2 Live?  I haven't played EQ2 Live on this computer yet, so my plan was to download and install the entire new edition when it comes out in a week or so.  Can anyone help?  Thanks! 

[Lamatu]

Well you can test it yourself before you buy cause the game is free if you play on the extended service.

Goto http://www.everquest2.com/ and choose join to play for free.

Your performance on the free server will be the same on a live one.

[TSR-JoshuaM]

Looks like that Laptop meets the minimum and most of the recommended specs.  Laptop video devices usually have shared memory and very little dedicated.  That may be something you need to keep an eye on as I couldn't find information on how much dedicated memory that laptop has for video.

Required Specs

• Windows XP SP3
• Pentium 4 1.3Ghz or greater 
• 512MB RAM (1GM for Vista)
• DirectX 9 compatible video card, Pixel shader and Vertex shader compatible video card with 64MB of texture memory
• 56K internet connection

Recommended Specs

• Windows XP/Vista/7
• Intel core 2 2.4Ghz or greater
• 2GB RAM (XP) 4GB (Vista/Windows 7)
• DirectX 9 compatible video card, Nividia 8800 GTS, Pixel shader and Vertex shader compatible hardware with 512MB of texture memory or grreater
• DirectSound Compatible Audio Hardware
• Broadband Connection
• NOTE: System requirements subject to change as the game progresses.

[MurFalad]

That's essentially a 2Ghz Core 2 duo with a Nvidea 7600 Go videocard.

My laptop is a Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz (800Mhz frontside bus) with a ATI HD2600 graphics card, I run on high settings but shadows are off.  Before upgrading the CPU I had a T5250 which was 1.5Ghz with a 667Mhz frontside bus, I ran decently  one setting below balanced (high performance?).

(I'm assuming that the front side bus sped up to 800Mhz when I swapped the processor - windows says it did, and I have the Intel 965 chipset which supports up to 800Mhz front side bus.  This Sony has the Intel 945 which supports a 667Mhz frontside bus.  But there is a element of doubt there whether my system did speed up, I'm sure the ram was reported faster on the windows experience too though... ).

My GPU card is slightly quicker and the processor a little faster though, my guess is you'll be able to run at balanced with no shadows in most areas fine (some areas will slow you down, but they slow down on mine too).

Shader 3.0 and GPU shadows are defintely beyond that GPU to handle though.

If you feel like a challenge (and I'd recommend both finding a guide to how to dismantle the laptop and being also prepared to accept possibly breaking it, which while unlikely at least covers the worst happening) then you could swap the processor out here, probably anything up to a T7600 would fit in there, double check what maximum front side bus is supported, I believe your Sony is limited to 667Mhz.

Be warned though, the Toshiba P200-1EE I dismantled needed to be striped down to just the PCB (about 35 steps to follow!  I broke one plastic clip and consider it a success ), some laptops though are insanely easy, in this case its not likely you'll destroy anything (although you need to reapply the thermal grease properly in any case).

Edited to correct the frontside bus thing - I forgot mine was a Intel 965 chipset.

[ssor02]

Lamatu wrote:

Well you can test it yourself before you buy cause the game is free if you play on the extended service.

Goto http://www.everquest2.com/ and choose join to play for free.

Your performance on the free server will be the same on a live one.

Thanks.   I have been playing EQ2x.  Had a recurring intermittent graphics problem in New Halas, where I created my first character (see my recent posts in the EQ2x General Tech Support Forum).  However, I then created a character in Greater Faydark 2 (Kelethin) and have played it for more than seven hours with no issues.  I have had to make no adjustments to the automatic settings that EQ2X made when I created my character in Greater Faydark 2:  I don't run it under Window XP, SP2 simulation; it runs fine under Vista Home Premium 32 bit.  Other players have also had a similar graphics problem with the New Halas area, so I guess the graphics problem does not stem from my computer.  I thought that EQ2 Live and especially the Velious upgrade might be a problem for my computer, but since you say that EQ2 Live and EQ2X are the same, I guess I'll take a chance and buy the Velious edition.

And thanks, MurFalad and TSR JoshuaM, for your comments!