New Laptop Buying

[Martin Prchal]

Hello everyone, I currently am using a Dell Inspiron 15 3537 laptop, with which I have to use minimum settings with this game. I am interested in buying a new laptop to get better quality in TLD, and gaming in general. To be honest, I am pretty clueless about gaming laptops and computers. Can someone put me in a good direction for buying a gaming laptop, preferably under about $1200. I know everyone is going to tell me to build a PC, but I still enjoy being able to lie down on the couch to play games and the mobility of a laptop in general. Thanks.

 

[EfoDom]

Just searching best budget gaming laptop in google will show you a lot of great recommendations on various websites. I'd recommend to at least a get one with a gtx 1060 graphics card if you'll be playing on a 1080p display. Or you could go with an AMD graphics card. A quad-core CPU is a must-have nowadays. At least 16 gb of RAM and an SSD is also very nice on a laptop. The SSD will make it much faster. Before I built my first gaming pc I did a lot of research on the internet and my build turned out very well. I advise you to do the same, browse websites, forums and reviews. You can get a pretty nice laptop under $1200.

[ajb1978]

If you don't have a need to take your laptop around with you, like if you're going to just be using it around the house and don't need it for school or work or whatever, I always recommend a desktop over a laptop.  For a number of reasons.

• Incremental upgrades--replace or upgrade individual components as the system ages
• Better airflow--less likelihood of overheating
• Modular design--if one part fails, just replace that one part.
• Tends to be less expensive than a laptop of comparable power

Edit: And if you're technically inclined, you can basically set up as a household server, with multiple monitors in various areas of the house, set to duplicate the display.  Use a wireless keyboard and mouse, you can start playing in the bedroom, then pack up and play from the TV in the living room instead all without stopping the game.

Edited June 19, 2019 by ajb1978

[Guest jeffpeng]

It's really important to know where you are coming from to give a good recommendation where you want to go. There are several configurations for the 3537 out there I could find, some have a dedicated GPU, some do not. If you are coming from a model with an intel iGPU getting a 7-800$ Ryzen Laptop will already be a breeze for you. If you are coming from a model with one of those 88x0M Radeons even a 1060/1660 might feel underwhelming for the money you are paying.

But considering an 8850M should run TLD at 1080p no problems asked with decent settings I guess you are coming from an iGPU model. And there you pretty much have to decide if you want to spend 1200 bucks for an actually really nice model or if you are fine with a 6-800 bucks 3700U model without dedicated graphics.

If you want to spend your money the ASUS GA502 made a lot of good press as a compact and affordable midrange gaming laptop for around 1100 bucks that ticks pretty much all the boxes (except lacking a webcam and having a so-so touchpad). 

If you just want a decent upgrade in the "twice as fast" range you can pick pretty much any recent 3700U model, and you can go as little as 600 bucks if you are content with 8 GiB of ram, which is enough for TLD, but might fall short for other titles.

Also: buyapcgoshdarnit*runsaway

[Guest kristaok]

I am using an Asus Rog Gaming Laptop, I HIGHLY recommend checking out their Gaming Laptops! 

[peteloud]

My desktop with Radeon R7 360 graphics runs TLD well enough for me.

If I wanted the cheapest laptop that will give me equivalent performance to R7 360, what specification should I be looking for?

Edited June 21, 2019 by peteloud

[Martin Prchal]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'm going to look around on the Internet some more to see what I can find. If I get the time, I might still consider building a PC.

[Guest jeffpeng]

On 6/21/2019 at 10:34 AM, peteloud said:

My desktop with Radeon R7 360 graphics runs TLD well enough for me.

If I wanted the cheapest laptop that will give me equivalent performance to R7 360, what specification should I be looking for?

Probably one with a GTX 1050 or an RX560. Both should be slightly (10-20%) above the 360.

Looking below the next best option would be a Ryzen 3700U with an integrated Vega 10 GPU. But that's a good bit (30%?) slower than a 360.

The gap between the best iGPU (Vega 10) and cheapest dGPUs is quite large.