Budget gaming laptop with little expectations :)

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martyyn

1296 posts

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# 180678 17-Sep-2015 17:34

I know nothing about laptops for gaming other than my 7 year old playing Animal Jam on my wife's Surface :))

Are there any second hand laptops ~$500 which could play the likes of League of Legends and DOTA ? Low to medium settings are no problem it's only going to be for light use, the odd movie and the internet.

I've checked out the minimum specs online and a few forums have conflicting advice about whether an i5 laptop with an HD3000 or HD4000 would do the job.

Thanks

ludez

903 posts

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# 1389214 17-Sep-2015 17:41

i was going to list my pretty much brand new toshiba tecra r940 with an i7 cpu and 7570m laptop that can play dota 2 and lol no problems

Hammerer

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# 1389245 17-Sep-2015 19:05

martyyn: I've checked out the minimum specs online and a few forums have conflicting advice about whether an i5 laptop with an HD3000 or HD4000 would do the job.

You can definitely get a $500 laptop that will play LOL. A couple of months ago while looking for similar laptops I found at least twenty with dedicated graphics cards and 4GB RAM that would do the job in the range $400 to $600.

As to the issue of whether Intel HD 3000 and 4000 integrated graphics will run LOL and DOTA there are some good reasons why some might and some might not. The GPUs follow the clock speed of the CPU so there can be a wide variance in capability say between a 2 and 3GHz CPU. Likewise the sharing of system memory makes RAM performance more critical than when using a graphics card with its own dedicated memory.

You shouldn't rely on the minimum specs because there are too many reasons why a system can theoretically match them and yet fail to run the game. For example, there's four years difference in the platforms, ie the minimum is about 4 years behind the recommended. The difference in GPU capability between the minimum and recommended for LOL is about 5 times. The difference in the CPUs is probably not that substantial but it will be more than 2 times.

Hammerer

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# 1389255 17-Sep-2015 19:37

I looked at PassMark and that CPU benchmark was almost exactly two times.

Here's an example of the minimum spec, an HP ProBook 4515s [Edit to fix link] running Win XP for $300. I found it at the top of a Trade Me search for "dedicated" 2Ghz laptops so its all upwards and onwards from here:
Compare GPUs
Compare CPUs

http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/laptops/laptops/hp/auction-950255330.htm

ludez

903 posts

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# 1389361 17-Sep-2015 22:17

For playing lol and dota2 you will be wanting to hit minimum 60fps.otherwise experience is pretty poor.
So something with a decent dedicated graphics card will be the way too go.

Batman

Mad Scientist
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# 1389388 18-Sep-2015 00:02

there are minimum specs and then there are minimum specs.

it depends on the resolution you run the game at. at 1280x800 the HD GPUs will suffice ... just.

at 1920x1080 you need a dedicated low-medium GPU (that's what the normal ones are inc the 7570), and that will just about cut it at the lowest detail settings.

but when things get exciting, the GPU requirements will scale up dramatically and the game could grind to a crawl - not good for real-time online stuff ...coz you die faster than you can say swear words.

so get one with a dedicated GPU at least you have a standing chance of running something.

but if he plays day and night your laptop will be fried in no time, laptops cannot run hot for too long.

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

Hatch

539 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1391695 22-Sep-2015 10:01

It might be not the solution you were seeking, but if you have a more powerful desktop you can use Steam's inhome streaming to stream games from the desktop PC to any laptop on the same network. It doesn't matter if LOL is not a steam game either, I've used it recently to successfully stream games to my surface pro.