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Laptop Recommendations ?

My older desktop computer died few months ago but I just finished building a new desktop.

I would like to get a decent fair priced laptop that is capable of playing games. Not looking to drop a lot of money but a laptop that can run STO and few other games that my 10yr triplets can use for school or entertainment.

I was hoping to community can give me their recommendations or specs I should look for in a laptop machine.

Thanks .. Celtic Fist
Post edited by celticfistcoh on

Comments

  • cdiederichscdiederichs Member Posts: 134 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Really, the Cryptic engine isn't that taxing. I've got a 2 year old Lenovo with Intel integrated graphics that was only $300 new and it's my main STO machine.

    You might not be able to crank the graphics up all the way, but with the lighting/bloom/fx turned to Medium, STO runs at full speed on this hardware.

    Although I'm really tempted to upgrade to a Surface Pro 3 and see how the game runs there.
  • jaguarskxjaguarskx Member Posts: 5,945 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Back in season 8.5 I tested STO on my Dell Latitude 3540 laptop using only the Intel HD 4400 instead of the dedicated Radeon HD 8850m. At 1920x1080 resolution the gameplay was simply unplayable for me. Dropping the resolution down to 1600 x 900 and using a mix of medium and low graphics settings I found the performance to be good enough to play for an extended period of time. Dropping the resolution down to 1366 x 768 would have improved performance even further, but I prefer not to play at such a low resolution.

    Season 9 introduced some graphics performance issues compared to season 8.5. Even when using the more powerful Radeon HD 8850m I noticed a drop in performance. In some case it was small in other cases it was significant to the point where it was almost a slideshow.

    Cryptic has remained silent about fixing the artificially inflated graphics requirements in season 9.

    Since you have 10 yr old kids I would say a 14" laptop would suffice like the following Lenovo Z40 for $599 which has the same Core i5-4200u CPU as my Dell. It has a dedicated nVidia GT 820m, but the performance is only a little better than the Intel HD 4400.

    http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/z-series/z40/

    The following ThinkPad-E545 is more business oriented than the Z40. It is sturdier but heavier as well (5.4lbs vs 4.6lbs). I would upgrade the APU to the quad core A10-5750m for $70 which also includes the Radeon HD 8650G iGPU (integrated graphics core) which is currently the most powerful iGPU in any laptop. Off hand I would say the HD 8650G is roughly 30% more powerful than the Intel HD 4400 and the GT 820m. The price comes out to about $541.

    http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/e-series/e545/


    Both laptops come with only 4GB of RAM. I recommend upgrading that to 8GB (2 sticks of 4GB RAM). It is not imperative that you do so. But it will help improve overall performance since having two stick of RAM in a laptop or PC will mean the RAM is working at full speed (dual channel) instead of half speed (single channel). You can either configure it with the additional 4GB of RAM or you can install them yourself later, thus making the initial purchase price lower.
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