How powerful a laptop do I need?

[Alram]

I expect to be spending time away from home this year. I'd like to buy a laptop to play while I'm away. Gaming laptops are expensive; I can save hundreds of dollars if I buy a laptop that does not have a video card. But I need to know if I can game on such a laptop. I don't play any new games. Mostly I play mods of Titan Quest Immortal Throne, Skyrim, Fallout Las Vegas, maybe Left For Dead (I got it for free on Steam). I also have a pristine DVD of The Withcher which I have never played, and the last in the Thief series which I'll get around to one of these days. Mostly TQIT mods though -- single and multiplayer.

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

[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.

[Alram]

Thanks very much for your post. I'll put up a couple of machines I'm looking at as soon as I get the chance.

[Alram]

I have some BestBuy gift cards I can use to defray the cost. These look like the best bet at Best Buy. What do you think?

$849.99
MSI - GP60 Leopard 15.6" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 940M - 2 year warranty on parts and labor
click

or maybe the same setup with a larger screen

$899.99
MSI - GP70 Leopard 17.3" Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive
click

[Belix]

This looks satisfactory for your purposes. Unfortunately, the GeForce 940M in it looks roughly half as powerful as the GTX 860M in the Lenovo I linked earlier, so I can't say for sure how well it would run newer games like Skyrim. I would guess it would be playable at worst.

I was able to find a newer version of the Lenovo for sale on Amazon though for only $830: Amazon.com - Lenovo Y50

Unless you have a significant amount of gift cards, this may be cheaper and better equipped specifically for running games. My friend who got the older model of this said it runs Skyrim wonderfully, and it has an 8GB Solid State Drive as a nice bonus. However, this Lenovo has no DVD drive, so you have to buy an external DVD drive to hook up to it if you install games from DVDs. If you use a digital platform like Steam, that may be a non-issue.

Either the MSI or Lenovo should run TQ just fine, but your chances of running newer games on higher settings are a fair bit better with a GeForce 860M or 960M than an 840M or 940M.

It may not hurt to look around a bit more either, but from what I can see poking around, the selection of gaming laptops under $900 still looks very small.

[Alram]

Thanks again for your tips. After reading your comments, I found a website that allows me to compare the 2 cards' performance with different games
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Ga...849.0.html

It looks like I can run the games, including Skyrim, fine on the MSI. The MSI also includes 2 years parts and labor vs. 1 year on the Lenovo. I have to confess that I am also a bit wary of Lenovo since the Lenovo Superfish malware debacle.

Thanks again for your help.

[Belix]

Thanks again for your help.

You're welcome! Hope you enjoy your new laptop.

I have to confess that I am also a bit wary of Lenovo since the Lenovo Superfish malware debacle.

I am embarrassed to admit I forgot about that. But companies don't stay in business by ticking everyone off, so whenever something like this happens you can bet they'll sort that stuff out quickly so they can act like it never happened: "Superfish? What Superfish? "

I think that laptop came out several months before they started releasing new products with that stuff bundled on there, anyway. My buddy hasn't had any issues, and they played the heck out of Skyrim on it.

Hey, when you get your shiny new MSI, I'd be curious to hear how smooth it runs each of your games. My friends replace their laptops every few years and I trust the opinions of other people I can talk to for getting reliable insight into what kind of hardware can run what.

P.S.: Thanks for the link, I didn't know about this site. It may prove very useful.

[bory]

I also recommend the Lenovo Y50, that is the best bet for you

---

Here are some inexpensive laptops : http://gaminglaptopunder1000.org/best-ga...0-dollars/