Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Sorry if this doesn't belong here, but it was the best spot I could find. I'm looking for a best bang-for-your-buck laptop option that can run NWN2. I've been doing a lot of traveling for work, and I'd love to be able to play when I'm bored in hotels and the like while I'm away from my home desktop. My laptop is a Mac, and it is possible to install NWN2 on a Mac but it has been mostly unusable on mine, so I'm looking for something very basic that meets the requirements but isn't crazy expensive (I don't want to spend >$200 on what will basically just be a NWN machine). I'm not opposed to used or refurbished, and I'm fine with running the game at the lowest possible settings.

The big problem is figuring out what laptops have a video card is capable of meeting the pixel shader requirements. Most laptops in a low price range just use the basic Intel Graphics integrated card, so figuring out whether they have the right pixel shader version has been challenging, especially when looking at older models.

I just got a dell inspiron with a dual core i5 from Amazon for around $429 (US) and it works just fine on medium graphics settings. I did a LOT of research due to the same situation as you (work travel) and this is the only one I found under $500 that has a dedicated video card (nvidia 820m). Not spectacular but it gets the job done!

Here is a link, it's currently available for $410. I will say that I went and bought an 8 GM RAM stick to replace the 4 that it comes with (it's only a single, but still seems to do fine). I eventually think I am going to replace the 500GB HHD with a Solid State Drive, but going to wait for a really good sale so I can get as close to the 500 GB as possible without breaking the bank! Best Buy and Microcenter both had the same laptop available, but it was about $40-60 more expensive.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018IN ... ge_o03_s00