Thinking about saving up for a new laptop, one with "gaming" capabilities (that means it comes with a video card, I...
Thinking about saving up for a new laptop, one with "gaming" capabilities (that means it comes with a video card, I guess?) Say...$700 or under (preferably under). What should I be looking at for specs that will let me run middle-of-the-road games?
Current laptop pictured.
If it were possible to sit around the pool all day drinking mimosas and playing M.U.L.E. I would do that.
ReplyDeleteFrom my experience a gaming laptop is going to cost quiet a bit more than that to be effective. You're going to need one with a separate Video chip and at least 8 Gig (Preferably more) of Ram and probably a terrabyte HD these days.
ReplyDeleteSo you're talking in the $1300 range or better generally, running Windows (Macs generally don't work well as gaming machines as there just aren't enough games ported to the operating system, as I found out the hard way some years back).
Dell and HP will try to convince you they produce gaming machines, they don't. Part of the trick with a gaming laptop is the importance of the cooling system - and both have produced machines in the past that were just too likely to overheat when pushed in a high graphics high response graphics kind of way.
Seconding Joseph Teller's advice. If you want to keep at least semi-up-to-date, you'll need to put in a bit more than $700. You can get a really reasonable laptop for around that price range, but gaming capability is going to push it up.
ReplyDeleteI think Acer makes some decent gamer laptops?
This is relevant to my interests! Sigged.
ReplyDeleteI'm never going to be playing a Triple A or whatever game. Like, my laptop runs Darkest Dungeon but they walk slow. I bought Brigador because the requirements seemed really low, but it still needs a video card. So I'm looking at like an i5 dual core with 8GB RAM and a 2GB video card. I can't imagine playing anything that needed more than that.
ReplyDeletenot that I keep up with this stuff, but from what I understand, external video cards connected via usb-c is either a thing now or it's going to be shortly. so if you could focus on a decent processor and stay with intel integrated graphics if you like the external video card idea, or see what AMD has to offer in terms of integrated graphics chips, though AMD tends to be slower than intel by a little bit. all that miniaturization costs money and battery life.
ReplyDeletepcmag.com - The Best Gaming Laptops of 2017
there's a dell for $750 in that pcmag article. If you want to do the external GPU, your laptop would need to support thunderbolt v3 over usb-c, that would allow you to purchase a cheaper or more portable laptop.
ReplyDeleteI know more are coming that are designed for laptops, but Razer Core and Alienware Graphics Amplifier are some possibilities. Razer also makes an ultrabook laptop (blade stealth) that's possibly the gaming/workhorse laptop to beat for portables that's near your price range, starting at $899.
probably the last post, you'll want a capable SSD for your hard drive if you want to do AAA titles. loading all of those textures takes time and power for the hard drive spindles to spin, seek, read, and write. An SSD hard drive will make that go a lot quicker, it's one of the best upgrades you can do to a laptop, though they tend to be more expensive and not have as much storage as a spindle hard drive.
ReplyDeleteI would go SSD no matter what I got. 256GB is still nearly bottomless for me.
ReplyDelete256 GB fills up fast with some games. 30-50 GB for many games is standard, and you want swap space for update/patch dloading and installs.
ReplyDeleteWorld of Warcraft - 45 Gig Minimum for the game
Starcraft 2 - 30 Gig
Overwatch - 30 Gig
Fallout 4 - 30 Gig
Elder Scrolls online - 60 Gig
so that means (presuming a Windows op system (which uses 20 to 40 Gig of space)) you are only going to get 6-9 games onto that hard drive at best, presuming you don't put some big non-gaming Apps in or actually store non-game data (like music of videos) on the system.
Oh and SSDs can degrade faster than normal hard drives when running things like games on them. Games keep writing onto the drive while running, and that makes a lot of wear. Don't expect an SSD to be working perfectly well 3 years out (my wife has one on her desktop, but thats where the OPs system resides not her games, they are on a separate mechanical drive just because of this problem.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any games on Steam more than 2GB and I've got Mordheim on my wishlist which is 8GB. That's the type of games I play.
ReplyDeleteAh so you're not running computer "rpgs" (like the Witcher series) or big strategy games like Civ then. You can probably make due with a lighter duty graphics card then I was thinking, I was figuring you were trying to do real time MMO kind of things not standalones and lower graphics needing games.
ReplyDeleteI like The Wirecutter for consumer electronic reviews. Even if I don't get their pick, the review educates me on the important differentiators.
ReplyDeleteWe ended up looking at more of a budget business laptop for Sweetie, which has integrated graphics but they're okay, and it's in that price range. He's just been playing Spiderweb games on it, though, and those are incredibly resource light, so I don't know if integrated graphics are up to Brigador. (I played the Spiderweb games easily on a laptop that groaned under KOTOR over a decade ago, so yeah, not a bit resource intensive.)
the recommended budget gaming laptop from wire cutter appears to be the same dell from that pcmag article. the wirecutter is a great site.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Dell looks about perfect.
ReplyDeleteAre you looking for a laptop or a desktop. Desktops will be cheaper for more power. Laptops generally add +$500 for the same machine.
ReplyDeleteDigital Storm has a desktop that would do what you want for about $900 but thats as cheap as they go.
http://www.digitalstorm.com/vanquish-5.asp
Laptop. I'm keeping an eye on this Dell for now.
ReplyDeletehttps://goo.gl/Jgn0hc