New Laptop Needed

So i am having an issue with my laptop graphics card. I have a MSI Dominator GT70 - 2PC with a GTX 870 as well as the integrated graphics that came with my I-7.

With FFXI being such an old game the GTX 870 wont recognize it and will only seem to play on my integrated card.

The GTX870 plays the game beautifully. The integrated card on the other hand plays the game like absolute sh*t! It can barely play the game on max settings without causing major lag issues that typically cause me to die/piss me off.

I have the game/pol/windower all selected to use the dedicated card. But it doesn't work. I have disabled the integrated card all together. That doesn't work either the game won;t even load up.

I have found a few work arounds so that the GTX 870 does plays it. One was DGVoodoo and it worked until I updated my drivers to play a different game and then it got all choppy. The other work around was using an external monitor. Kind of defeats the point of a laptop but I digress I do what I gotta do.

Well my wife is fed up with my external monitor as she said she
almost trips over it on daily basis and wants to get me a new laptop. Tried talking her into letting me just build a pc but we don't have room for a desk anywhere but the basement. Any recommendations for a new laptop? I am hoping to obviously not need to use the external monitor. What works for you guys?

Why not go all Ben Heck and build a PC into a suitcase/flight case?

Fun project and you can stash it away when your done.

Yes, that is a fun project but again unfortunately its larger than my laptop/external monitor combo which is the problem.

I need it to take up less space so the wife don't knock it over or trip trying to avoid it. Plus she wants to buy the laptop so I m not going to argue with her about that one. lol

Protip #1: MSI is garbage.
Protip #2: Never buy gaming laptops.
Protip #3: When buying graphic cards, just pay the twenty extra bucks for a brand that isn't going to suck.
Example: "Hey, I saved twenty bucks buying some older Radeons and SLI'd them! I sure hope they don't burn out in five months!"

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you're probably not buying the $400 Sam's Club starter kits. You'd be better off buying a corner desk and doing a little furniture rearrangement to throw down on a giant *** big boy PC instead of endlessly throwing thousands down the hole replacing your gaming laptops every other year. How long did that one last? Two or three years at best? lol

Or *** it and do whatever you want; it's not my money.

If you're going for a laptop for XI and you just want it to work (as Win10 will always force XI on the integrated instead of dedicated card, thanks M$) then I'd get a professional grade laptop and since your wife is apparently a klutz get the accidental damage protection.

I know the HP zBook 15g3 supports disabled the integrated card in the BIOS, so the OS doesn't even see it, you'll want something like that, that model also supports a lot of ram, can get a bunch of cpu options (even Xeons), and can take 2 NVMe ssd plus it has a 2.5" bay (granted you have to take a bunch of torx screws out to get to it, but hey).

There's other options that probably aren't as pricey too, but then again using a professional grade card in lieu of a gaming graphics card you may run into issues with other games.


This isn't something most should even think about doing, and to power a full PC any length of time you'd need basically a stack of batteries.

Thanks... pretty sure you didn't read the whole post before replying. This laptop works absolutely wonderfully and plays all other games great, only catch is the games need to actually register to the gpu. Which everything does just not ffxi. Its not pulling ffxi to the gpu and only running on integrated card which blows.
I would rather have a pc. I actually have one that will play the game but dont have anywhere to put it as we dont have room for a desk. Even a corner desk. Hence the laptop.

Thank you! that was most helpful

Alternative option: you could go back to Windows 7 on your current laptop and that should allow you to force it to use the dedicated card, no promises though.

I also read that Ashita forwards the directx calls to where you could use the dedicated as well.

I'll install XI on the laptop later and see how it runs, another option would be to create a virtual machine with vmware and run the game inside the VM, it's run rather decently for me in the virtualized environment, a lot of overhead mind you.

Ashita itself doesn't directly format the calls, but there is a direct3d proxy designed to work with Ashita written by Atomos that does it. It's basically dgvoodoo lite, converts calls to a later version of directx so that you can use your GPU while avoiding almost all of the side effects(positive and negative) associated with dgvoodoo.

Have you considered that your wife is being a bit unreasonable? Expecting you to get rid of a monitor because she trips over it sounds ridiculous. Are you playing on the floor? Could you do better cable management? Is she worth it?

The simplest solution is to keep the laptop you're using and try adjusting drivers or swapping to Ashita. This isn't anything that requires new hardware.

Thank you guys! I would prefer to keep my current laptop. I have upgraded the crap out of it and it's pretty much a monster. I think I tried to install Windows 7 on it originally and it wouldn't allow me to do anything less than 8 (it came with 8)for some reason.
I will try Ashita. Is this something easy I can just find on google?

The real problem is we have a 1 year old who has a very large play area fenced in our living room. So that leaves limited walking space. Damn kids! lol
My cable management is top notch lol and all tucked in under the couch and isn't pulled out unless I am using it. Yes, she is worth it. I figure its worth address if she is willing to drop 1k+ to fix the issue lol.

http://ashita.atom0s.com/

It's an alternative to windower. This means none of your lua scripts will work and you'll have to adjust to having a different set of plugins if you are heavily into windower. Note that essentially everything windower has and more is available on ashita, just different.

I literally lol'd at this.

If your laptop is a 6th gen or older icore series you can install 7 on it, you just have to know how. Some built in devices may not function properly, however.

4th gen
https://www.msi.com/Laptop/gt70-2pc-dominator.html

Just tossing in that while this is possible, it's certainly not something you want to dive into if you aren't already technologically inclined. If it's Skylake, you need to integrate drivers, which is not horrible to a knowledgable user, but pretty difficult for someone with no experience. Anything later than that and it's a potential nightmare. Earlier should be pretty simple.

I know what I'm doing for the most part, and I still refuse to upgrade past Skylake until I'm ready to let them **** me in the *** with W10.

Still another option. If you have the performance you need at the moment, it's pretty likely the simplest solution is trying different drivers until you find one that's effective for all the games you play. Swapping to Ashita is a pretty large job if you're heavily configured into windower already.

This is a headache all together. I know exactly what you are talking about. I wanted to install Windows 7 on a laptop that had Win8 and I had a terrible time trying to get it to install. You have to google it and mess with the BIOS, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you like to deal with frustration and blank screens and maybe hard resets. (it is possible though)

This was a few years ago and if my memory serves me correctly. I think I tried fresh installs as well as clones of my other HD that had 7 on it. None of which took. I didn't mess with the BIOS though but that does sound awful.

Node 338

Phenomenal! LOL
Briefcase is free with purchase right? =)

dammit should have put free in there >.<.. well im changing it XD

But it's lolAcer. May as well flush your money.

and for 9k I could have a custom mounted pc/monitor that comes out of the ceiling when I want to game... Ha!

Looking at upgrading my laptop and considering getting either a laptop with I7 7700HQ and GTX 1070 or the ryzen 7 Radeon 580 asus laptop. Anyone have a laptop with either of these cpu/gpu combos and if they have any problems playing the game with them?

I have an MSI laptop with a gtx 1060 in it and cannot get it to play FFXI. You would think in the year 2018 something like this would be a "you're joking, right?" kind of deal, but I fell for the MSI meme because I love my desktop and I have an MSI motherboard.

I think I tried the voodoo thing but I might be too dumb to figure it out or couldn't get it to work anyway.

Is there any way I can get this thing to run FFXI or am I better off selling and getting something that can actually play the game with no workarounds?

You try enabling DirectPlay? 9/10 thats the issue. Win10 requires you to enable DirectPlay to play some older games like XI. There's tons of videos out there on how to fo it too.

I think I have tried it, but I will double check and try again in case I didn't. I don't use my laptop much, especially since FFXI wouldn't work, so I don't remember. Thanks.