[Fireskull]

This is a Topic for laptop and notebook computers. The purpose is to provide a place for All Aircraft Arcade members to discuss the use of the laptop for IL-2 and how to increase the enjoyment.

The use of laptops for simulations is on the increase. I believe that the size of PC internal components will continue to shrink while the power will increase. As this Topic is being created, there are some gaming laptop PCs which outperform many gaming desktop PCs. The unique advantage of mobility, reduced costs, and convenient size is united with performance.

Online mobility

IL-2 has been played in my laptop using WiFi in public places such as libraries, coffee cafes, hotel lobby, and any place that has true broadband WiFi and at least a quiet and semi-secluded place to fly in IL-2, such as in the back. Added to this is the ability to be online using a laptop mobile card which uses the nearest cell tower to keep you connected to the InterNet. Later in 2010, both Sprint and AT&T will have the new super fast broadband 4G networks in place. With this is the ability to connect online anywhere there is a cell phone tower nearby.

Offline mobility

Enthusiasts can fly IL-2 using a laptop almost anywhere.

Many added advantages of a laptop

Laptops can be used to watch television-airwave, satellite, and InterNet TV. Listen to any of thousands of InterNet radio stations, some of which are local to you. People use laptops for business, schoolwork, and hobbies. IL-2 modders can have the huge advantate of mobility to create new mods.





If this interests you, then please feel free to participate. The IL-2 enthusiasts who fly IL-2 planes on a laptop would be much appreciated here. Everyone is welcome.

[FlyingShark]

Nice initiative, I play IL2 regularly on my labtop while at work (security guard).
Now, I have to say that it's a rather old labtop, about 3 years old. Acer (9000 series), nvidia go 7300, intel core duo at 1.67 GHZ, DDR2 RAM 2 Gig.
I must say that I turn everything low and only play missions and campaigns with not to many planes at once.
I use it primarly to try out new mods before putting them on my desktop in my IL2 there.
Maybe next year I'll buy a new labtop

~S~

[Fireskull]

Hi, FlyingShark, welcome, and thanks.

[Axial]

Well, gaming laptops are usually much more expensive than a desktop of equal or somewhat greater gaming potential. So I would say low cost has united with portability just yet. A laptop with a mobile Core i7 and a GTX280M will run you around $1700-$1800 (rough estimate). A laptop with a desktop i7 and a GTX280M will run you around $2100. Ok, fine. A laptop GTX280M, however, is nothing more than a die-shrunk, underclocked, and undervolted GeForce 8800GTS 512...a card from 2007. Hardly worth the "GTX280M" name that nVidia has been seen fit to grace it with in their infinite wisdom (read: arrogant stupidity).

Now, A desktop PC with an i7 920 (an original LGA1366 socket, not that LGA 1156 neutered crap) and a Radeon 5850 will run you about $1200. That is a very, very large boost in power; the GTX280M can't even compare to the power of the 5850. Don't like ATi? Fine. Same system but with an nVidia GTX285 is also around the same price (give or take $100 for both, through the ATi is a better deal). On top of the massive performance gap, you also get many more USB ports to plug your various pedals, TrackIRs, flight sticks, throttles, etc. into. And the average screen is much larger and clearer than most laptops (a clear screen is important more in flight sims than any other genre due to massive distances).

But I digress. You can always buy a large monitor and USB hub to plug into a laptop, and then anything with an nVidia or ATi mobile graphics chip should be able to handle IL-2 in some way. I myself will be buying a laptop to replace my aging rig, but not until Summer 2011 when there should be plenty of Crysis-capable ones on the market. I go to LANs a lot and play IL-2 co-op campaigns at them among other things, and dragging around a tower and 5.1 system is no fun at all.

In a nutshell: portability is good, the power is at an IL-2 capable level at a decent price point (have to watch your draw distance), but you still can't compare them to desktops. It's getting better, but the best laptop is medicore at best compared to the fastest desktop, or even your average gaming desktop.

[Fireskull]

Hi,

How about that GTX 285? It's got plenty of performance for IL-2, right? The main reason I prefer NVIDIA is the aftermarket and freeware support. I know that ATI stuff is on the increase, lately, too.

My goal is to find a laptop case maker and build one myself to make it veeeery affordable. I am thinking about an external monitor for home use and an external liquid radiator connected with tubing to allow enough room for internals and yet allow overclocking...

Nice comments by you, but what do you think of these apples??

[aaareg13]

Hi all, I play IL2 on a stock 08 sony vaio media laptop, and ive gotta say, im surprised how well its able to run il2.

ive had many different installs over the last year, including several custom installs, UI 1.1, 1.2, HSFX, UP and SAS, and i regularly get 30-35 fps with most mod packs, and only get fps drops from certain cloud mods. Other than that, im quite happy with the capability this laptop has.

[Axial]

Hi,

How about that GTX 285? It's got plenty of performance for IL-2, right? The main reason I prefer NVIDIA is the aftermarket and freeware support. I know that ATI stuff is on the increase, lately, too.

My goal is to find a laptop case maker and build one myself to make it veeeery affordable. I am thinking about an external monitor for home use and an external liquid radiator connected with tubing to allow enough room for internals and yet allow overclocking...

Nice comments by you, but what do you think of these apples??

Thanks! 8)

I wish you could build laptop rigs like you are suggesting, but the market isn't ready for that yet. It's slowly moving in that direction, but as of now we're only half-way there. What you can do, however, is find a boutique store that sells custom laptops from OEMs like Clevo, Compal, MSI, and ASUS. They give you a list of internals that are supported by the model and you can choose out of that list. Alternatively, you can buy a barebones laptop chassis from a company like OCZ that gives you the case, motherboard, and GPU, monitor, keyboard, trackpad, and battery. You buy the rest. It's essentially the same as buying from a boutique.

Gaming laptops also typically use the MXM3.0b interface for their graphics cards, meaning that if you can get a hold of a better MXM3.0b card later down the line and upgrade as long as it stays within the thermal and power tolerances of your laptop (TDW). As of now, I haven't seen any liquid cooling solutions at all for laptops.

The GTX285 from nVidia is old news. It's a slightly more powerful version of the GTX280. The ATi HD5850 can beat it without breaking a sweat, but the latter also has the advantage of being a newer card. The GTX285 is more than capable of playing IL-2 at its highest settings (can you say water=5? ), and because of IL-2's preference for nVidia, I recommend you get an nVidia card if that is your primary game. If you play a variety, then an ATi 58x0 is the way to go.

As far as laptop graphics, the GTX280M may not play as smoothly on maximum settings when you get into higher resolutions like 1920x1200 or 2560x1600. However, there are a couple of laptops that offer two GTX280Ms in SLI mode. These models are the Alienware M17x and the Clevo M980NU. They can power through just about anything short of Crysis right now. The new ATi Mobility HD5870 in the ASUS G73JH-A1 probably can, too (it's clocked at desktop HD4850 speeds with GDDR5 memory). But this is if you want to play at the highest settings. I'm a stickler for graphics, so I only play games at their highest settings or not at all. My small monitor makes that possible with my GeForce 7800GT and old Athlon 64 3200+. If you settle for good enough, than there are tons of affordable laptops which run nVidia GTX260Ms or GTS360Ms (the nVidia GTS300 series is a rebadged GTX200 series) that can do it for you. Or you can crank the details but at a lower resolution.

To be honest, I've not had much experience with IL-2 compared to most of you. It's a bit flaky when it comes to graphics. It doesn't appear like a graphically intense game, but its OpenGL implementation leaves it stuttering about unless you tweak it just right. I find it strange that my computer can play it better (with UP 2.0 and full details, water=3) than my friend's, and he has a GeForce 8500GT, which technically speaking from a specs standpoint should outrun my 7800GT. :-?

[Stratodog]

Hello,

I have always used a laptop for Il-2, in fact I have never tried the game on a desktop. My first Il-2 rig was a Dell XPS 1710. 17" screen. It was perfectly suitable for most missions and maps although it was a very expensive box when I bought it new in Jan. 2006. In the spring of 2009, the video card died and it was surprisingly only a little more money to replace the entire computer with a new ASUS G71 gaming laptop. (less than $1000) It has a lot more capability and I can run any mission or map that I've found with no problems. It also has a 17" screen although there's a little less screen resolution than the XPS had, it's a much more capable rig and it allows me to have a completely portable gaming situation. I can set up or take down the whole thing in about 10 to 15 minutes, including CH fighterstick, rudder pedals, a basic throttle quadrant, trakir and headset. Works great. Highly recommended for the traveling gamer.

[Axial]

The ASUS G71 series or G51 series are essentially what I was referring to when I mentioned the GTX260M laptops for "good enough." Nice pick, probably the best you could possibly do in that range of performance! :thumbsup: Only GTX260M laptop I know of that performs better is the Sager M8662 (Clevo M860), but you loose the fancy keyboard and a lot of other options for that extra juice.

Me, I drag my tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and 5.1 system with me. Takes about 15-20 minutes to set it all up. It's not so much the time it takes that bothers me as much as it is the clunkiness. I'm in university right now, attending a "community college", so I intend to get a killer laptop when I finally go off to a real school because dragging this cro-magnon of a PC with me is a ridiculous proposition.

[KG64_Cnopicilin]

I should have taken Asus instead of Acer a few years ago. My old laptop destroyed its GPU three times until acer sent me my current laptop. Working well and I have way higher specs now

[jt189]

I use a HP 5330 with 2 p4 extreme chips 4gig ram xp 32 bit ATI Mobility radeon 9000/9100 family. The rig is 5 years old and still il2 acts like new. and yes I do fly at work when bored.

[J99Eingehirner]

I only use my laptop computer to play IL2. It's not even a high-end gaming computer, rather a working device (Thinkpad R60, 2GB RAM, 128 MB graphics card, dual core 1.6GHz) but it runs fine. Not with all the details at Perfect, but it gives framerates around 20-50 (depending on the terrain). You have to adjust your conf.ini accordingly and should not use AA > 4x. I will post the relevant parts of my conf.ini as soon as I get home...

[gage]

Great topic Fireskull.
I was reading many of your "tweak" post here on AAA and I think it would be great if you can make some summary. I know, that you can do it very nice and well-arranged.
I will post some my discovered advices later. And I would like to ask you some questions about running Sturmovik in DX mode.
So, see you later people. Lets find out the best performance/tweak solutions for ours notebooks.

[aviatorsneah]

used to run it on a Dell Inspiron 9200....128MB video card...2GB RAM...2.4 gHz single core celeron.

Ran alright, but nothing like the 120+ FPS I get on my current Desktop rig.

I like the desktop better IMHO...if a component blows out, go throw another one in for relatively cheap. I went through HELL trying to keep that laptop running for the 5 years I had it. Bought it for $1200 at the time...sold it for $200 when it became a paper weight. 8)

[Fireskull]

used to run it on a Dell Inspiron 9200....128MB video card...2GB RAM...2.4 gHz single core celeron.

Ran alright, but nothing like the 120+ FPS I get on my current Desktop rig.

I like the desktop better IMHO...if a component blows out, go throw another one in for relatively cheap. I went through HELL trying to keep that laptop running for the 5 years I had it. Bought it for $1200 at the time...sold it for $200 when it became a paper weight. 8)

Thanks, aviatorsneah

I get only a hair shy of 100 FPS on my laptop. This is more than I need, actually. This is what I have:

HP Pavilion dv6815nr Notebook
AMD Turion64 X2 Dual Core, 2.0 Ghz (slightly above that with overclock), 3GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M, 1071 MB shared video memory

A future project of mine is to build my own laptop. One of the advantages will be that I will be able to easily and cheaply replace or upgrade components.