Can this computer run RTW:BI & M2TW?

[Pelican Man]

Hey Guys,

Here's the skinny.
I'm married. 2 Kids (very young). I work 55 hrs a week. So this cancels out learning how to build a computer.

My question is this:
Can Medieval 2 Total war run on the new Alienware X51 basic setup or your recommendations to have all the highest settings?
Same goes with RTW - EB

link - http://www.dell.com/ca/p/alienware-x51/fs

I basically do not have the time to even play much (maybe twice a week), but I do want to enjoy it while I do get to play once in a while. My current computer barely runs it with horrible lag and I have dealt with it for a long time. I really do not want to hear that I should build a computer and save money. The time I spend learning (literally from scratch) how to build a computer will end up costing me theoretically much more then the PC itself. So please, give me a honest answer and keep in mind I do not want to build one.

I was redirected to this area to ask this question.

Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks everybody!!!

THE P-MAN

[Jaketh]

Its tough to find a benchmark for that GT545 but medieval 2 has little to no system requirements in comparison to the hardware today. Running Rome and Medieval 2 shouldnt be a problem but you may have issues with Empire and Shogun 2 total war where you will have to crank the settings down to low/medium.

[Pelican Man]

And if I went with the GTX 555 and the i5 processor?

[irishron]

For Rome and Medieval2, it comes down to dedicated graphics memory more than the chip.

The i5 can play both as is on low/medium settings. The 545 or 555, preferably the 555, 512mb minimum for high settings. If you are buyig from Dell or another company be sure this part is spelled out in the contract.

[Pelican Man]

What I do keep hearing is that Alienware is poo. What do you guys think?
I would get the i5 with the GTX 555 and 8 gb ram dual channel DDR3 and the video card is 1GB DDR5. But I still need to be sure I am not buying poo. lol

[irishron]

It's just overpriced but their quality has come up. If I had the money, I'd be tempted.

[Jaketh]

For Rome and Medieval2, it comes down to dedicated graphics memory more than the chip.

The i5 can play both as is on low/medium settings. The 545 or 555, preferably the 555, 512mb minimum for high settings. If you are buyig from Dell or another company be sure this part is spelled out in the contract.

From what i can tell the 545 has 1GB of VRAM. I would think it could max out Medieval 2 and Rome just fine and if a Core 2 Duo can run Medieval 2 an i3 could easily run it

[irishron]

It can. One was running Shogun2 on an i3 until he could afford a card. The problem with TW games is they are programmed to look for dedicated graphics memory only, nothing about shared memory but Intel has put enough into its series 4chipsets and newer, and in the sandybridge line to fool it enough for at least minimum. As much as I like AMD, they could learn from this.

[Dewy]

Alienware's website says 1GB is 1 billion bytes and 1 TB is 1 trillion bytes. So i'd watch out when they say their HDD capacity, it's probably less than what they say.

[irishron]

It looks like the old 8088 selling days when we were just dealing with kb and mb.

Yeah, it's still buyer, beware.

[craziii]

alienware is like sony, you pay like a $300-500 premium minimum for nothing. any laptop with a decent cpu and 550m gpu or better would max m2tw. if you want to play shogun, that would cost you min 1200$ if you wanna game on laptops.

I built my first desktop by reading the manuals that came with the parts. took 30 mins of reading. and about 1 hour of putting the part together. it is that easy. building a pc is like 100 times simpler than some lego models that I used to help my nephew build.

[Pelican Man]

I liked lego's.

Then that's it... I think I will take the time to build a computer. With a budget of roughly $800-$1000, could you guys help me out picking out some of the stuff? I plan on reading up on everything, but Atleast I know with your opinions whether or not it will turn out to be a decent investment.

THE P-MAN