Sugesstions for budget gaming laptops.

Weird_Nev

Shall we get this thread back on topic and see if there are actually any budget laptops capable of light gaming out there for the OP?

For what it's worth, I've been playing Deus EX Human Revolution and some War Thunder, and Civ 5 on my new Dell Inspiron 7000.

i7 4500U
8Gb Ram
Nvidia GT 750m Gfx with 2Gb GDDR5 Ram
Full HD IPS Touch screen (which works really well for Civ 5 surprisingly!)

And I'm more than pleased with the results from a £700 laptop. I'm sure the Desktop gaming croud will sneer at the ULC processor and paltry graphics performance, and itching to tell me what I could have bought for £700 in desktop horsepower, but the salient point is this:

For my needs, It's more than sufficient. It looks lovely, plays smoothly, and is stable and above all FUN. I get 60Fps in high @ 1080p in War thunder and about 50Fps in HIgh settings on Deus Ex:HR. Civ 5 in particular runs very very smoothly and with great detail, although I'm aware it is now a very old game.

I expect to get about 3 years casual gamaing out of this laptop, after which it'll still be a very capable machine for general use.


Can anyone comment on how integrated Intel HD Gfx chipsets cope? I've heard that they can actually do a decent job on some older games and minecraft and things. Anyone got direct experience?

GunJack

dunno about integratd intel stuff, but certainly the AMD APU family perform very well, just don't know if you can find a laptop using them 'coz I've never looked....but for reference, if you can find a lappy with an A10 or A8, with 7560D or 7660D gfx, it'll play CoD:Ghosts on at least Medium res.

just had a very quick look round, something like this should do the OP:-

http://www.very.co.uk/lenovo-z585-amd-a10-processor-8gb-ram-1tb-hard-drive-156-inch-laptop-with-2gb-dedicated-graphics-metal/1281650682.prd

GunJack

...and around £140 under budget

prowla

Weird_Nev wrote: »

Shall we get this thread back on topic and see if there are actually any budget laptops capable of light gaming out there for the OP?

For what it's worth, I've been playing Deus EX Human Revolution and some War Thunder, and Civ 5 on my new Dell Inspiron 7000.

i7 4500U
8Gb Ram
Nvidia GT 750m Gfx with 2Gb GDDR5 Ram
Full HD IPS Touch screen (which works really well for Civ 5 surprisingly!)

And I'm more than pleased with the results from a £700 laptop. I'm sure the Desktop gaming croud will sneer at the ULC processor and paltry graphics performance, and itching to tell me what I could have bought for £700 in desktop horsepower, but the salient point is this:

For my needs, It's more than sufficient. It looks lovely, plays smoothly, and is stable and above all FUN. I get 60Fps in high @ 1080p in War thunder and about 50Fps in HIgh settings on Deus Ex:HR. Civ 5 in particular runs very very smoothly and with great detail, although I'm aware it is now a very old game.

I expect to get about 3 years casual gamaing out of this laptop, after which it'll still be a very capable machine for general use.


Can anyone comment on how integrated Intel HD Gfx chipsets cope? I've heard that they can actually do a decent job on some older games and minecraft and things. Anyone got direct experience?

If you're taking the budget up a notch, then this HP is rather good: http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/hp-envy-17-j053ea-17-laptop-silver-21492783-pdt.html

And back to the actual budget, I previously mentioned Novatech, eg. http://www.novatech.co.uk/laptop/range/novatechnspiren1561.html

Key Features

4th Gen Intel Core i5 Processor

8GB Memory

500GB Hybrid SSD Hard Drive

NVIDIA GT745M Graphics Card




Screen

Size : 15.6"

Resolution : 1366x768

Description : 15.6" Matte Anti-Glare HD Screen


Processor

Description : Intel Dual Core I5 4200M 3.10GHz


Cache : 3 MB


Clockspeed : 2.5 GHz


Manufacturer : Intel


No. of Cores : 2


Memory

Description : 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Memory


Harddrive

Description : Seagate SSHD 500GB Hybrid Drive


Optical Drives

Description : SATA DVD Writer


Graphics

Description : NVIDIA GT 745M 2GB Graphics


Chassis

Description : Novatech 15" nSpire Black Edition Shark Bay Chassis


Audio In : Audio Combo


Audio Out : Audio Combo


Bluetooth : 4.0


Dimensions : 388 (W) x 265 (L) x 24.3-25.3 (H) mm


Optical : 9.5mm Super Multi


External Monitor : VGA x1


Graphics : GT-745M (N14P-GS) 2GB


Battery : 4 cell 3000mah


Memory Capacity : SODIMM DDR3L 1600 DRAM, expandable up to 8GB


Memory Slots : x2


LAN : RJ45 x1


OS Compliance : Windows 7, Windows 8.1


Speakers : x2


TV Out : HDMI x1


USB : USB 2.0 x2; USB 3.0 x2 (one w/ sleeping charger)


Webcam : HD, 720p w/ 30 fps


Weight : 2.3 kg


Screen : 15" Anti-Glare HD Screen 16:9


Card Reader : Multi-in-1: MMC, SD, SDHC, SDXC


Wireless : 802.11 bgn, 1x1


Chipset : HM87

GunJack

http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-g505s-laptop-amd-a10-5750m-processor-8gb-ram-1tb-8gb-sshd-15-6-black/p611680

or this with faster processor, but need to check which gfx version is in it..

Timalay

Check the original post, I linked to that one.

Cisco001

According to notebookcheck.net

A10-5750M ~ i3 2230M
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-A-Series-A10-5750M-Notebook-Processor.92882.0.html

8650G ~ GT630m
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8650G.87916.0.html

So, Lenovo Z500 with i3 & GT635m @ £435, make that A10 machine not good value.

Also, for gaming, it would be best to get better GPU than CPU as it would be more often that GPU bottleneck CPU

JasX

Timalay wrote: »

Can 8mb of ram still run any games?

Of course it can... They are quite basic/dated and you need to load them from a large stack of 3 1/2" floppy disks

Timalay

Slight bumping here. But looking at some by cyberpower. How do they fair as a company?

jaydeeuk1

Timalay wrote: »

1st one looks pretty good for the money (2nd is good, but out of my budget). Only small problem with it is 6GB ram (was wanting 8GB ideally, but can upgrade at a later date), and 500GB HDD (ideally wanted 1TB), but again could still live with it, and I'm relying more on cloud storage after getting fibre broadband.

Also should have said a DVD drive is a must, also screen size no bigger than 15.6 inches.

You wont 'need' 8gb ram for another 2 years, only 1 game is coming out this year that wont run on 4gb. By the time 6gb is insufficient to run games, the gpu in the laptop will be unable to play at a decent frame rate anyway.