How powerful a laptop do I need?

[Belix]

Any advice on how much laptop I need would be welcome.

I helped a friend get a laptop capable of running Skyrim smoothly about half a year ago, so I think I can offer a little such advice without having to dig around too much into current products.

I think you have the right idea looking to get a cheap laptop. Laptops are much more failure and accident prone than their desktop cousins, but cost more for equivalent hardware. Proper gaming laptops are more expensive than they seem when you factor in their average lifespan is half that of a desktop - at best. I don't think I'll ever pay more than $1000 for a laptop ever again. Anyway, let's start with the high price end and work down:

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-15-6-Inch-G..._565108_55
This is the laptop I just mentioned and it should run all of those games silky smooth. Perhaps even on their highest settings. But since you offered no ideal price range, the $900+ price may be a bit high for you.

I also have an Asus Laptop I picked up for $600 a couple years back equipped with nothing more than Intel HD 4000 graphics, and if I remember right it runs Titan Quest just fine (some of the mods for it, however, are not very well optimized, so I can't speak for how well those may perform if they add new models/landscapes/spell effects etc. - keep that in mind).

If, on the other hand, you don't care about anything but Titan Quest, even a $300-$400 Windows laptop should be able to run Titan Quest reasonably well if you're willing turn its graphics quality down.


So, if you don't like the idea of turning down graphics quality and resolution, the price range you're probably looking at is around $600 minimum. Up to $1000 if you want all those games you want to be sure will run super smooth. Any laptop you're looking at priced higher than that is probably more than you need, or just not the right configuration for the price for the purpose of a gaming laptop.

In closing, I'll leave you with some information that might help you choose a laptop. If you're aiming around the $600 mark to at least run Titan Quest fairly well, get a laptop with:

-NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GT or better
-Intel HD 4000 or better
-Radeon HD 8670M or better

These should run most or all of these games on Medium settings, at least. Keep in mind that higher numbered models are not necessarily better; just use these to compare performance against to make sure you're not getting something that isn't powerful enough.

Feel free to post any laptops you're considering for us to look over, if you're not sure they have everything you need.