Looking at a new laptop

[mrnascar]

My old dual core Dell Studio is at the end of its tether running FS13 on medium settings, and the casing is coming apart, so I'm considering a new laptop.

I've narrowed down to two choices - both HP:

1: Hp pavilion Touchsmart 17-e147ca (I assume the ca means for Canadian market...)

17" screen
2gig AMD quad A65200 processor
AMD Radeon HD8400 graphics card with 4078 mb total graphics memory
Windows 8.1
6GB DDR3L 2DIMM memory system

2: HP Pavilion Touchsmart 15-n267ca

15"screen
2.1 gig amd quad A10 5745M processor
amd radeon HD8610G graphics card with up to 6499 mb total graphics memory
windows 8.1
8GB DDR3L, 1 DIMM system memory

Not even sure what all that means....My preference is the 17 inch unit, but the 15 incher looks to have stronger graphics capability.

With an eye to upcoming FS15, will these both run the game ok on high graphics settings?

thanks in advance for any input!

[bassaddict]

Both just have integrated GPUs, so both are bad if it comes down to gaming. They should run FS13 on low to medium, but with the higher requirements for FS15 I highly doubt you would get a decent performance with one of these laptops.

Do you really need a laptop? Won't a desktop do it? Because with a desktop you get way better performance for the same money.
Desktop (custom build, including everything like monitor, OK, mouse, keyboard etc) to run FS on very high: about 800bucks.
Laptop with comparable performance: about 1500bucks

[leifege640]

mrnascar, if you are really looking for a laptop, I have an Acer Aspire V3-571G-6407.

- Intel Core i5 3210M @ 2.5GHz quad core (boosts up to 3.1Ghz if needed)
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M with 1GB vram
- 4GB DDR3 memory
- 500GB hard drive
- 15.6" screen
- Windows 8 (but you can upgrade to Windows 8.1 easily)

Runs FS13 on medium settings with the game choosing the setting for you. Don't know about FS15 (bassaddict, will my system do okay you think?). I bought a year ago for $550 USD from Amazon, but all you can find now would used computers.

I would suggest you consider buying a desktop. I went with this laptop thinking about mobility at first, then we moved into an RV in an RV park full time so a desktop is sort of out of the question for the moment.

Anyways, hope this helps you decide.

leifege640

[mrnascar]

Thanks, guys.... Mobility is a strong consideration. We split time between our home and cottage, and I use the game on my current laptop in both places.

Here's the spec of my current Dell Studio. It runs ok on medium settings with a lot of mods, but lag is often noticeable.

Main System
Cpu Name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5800 @ 2.00GHz
Cpu Core(s): 2 @ 2.0 GHZ
OS: Windows NT 6.0 32-bit
Physics System
Driver: NVIDIA PhysX Runtime
Version: 2.8.4
Thread(s): 1
Input System
Keyboard enabled
Mouse enabled
Gamepad/Joystick disabled
Force Feedback disabled
Sound System
Driver: OpenAL
Version: 1.1
Device: Generic Software
Max. sources: 256
Render System
Driver: OpenGL
Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Renderer: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650
Version: 2.1.7769 Release

How do you think the ones I'm looking at would compare to it?

[bassaddict]

@leifege640:
I guess that should run FS15 also on medium settings. According to the minimum requirements it's mostly the VRAM requirements which has increased. If you have a not very old dedicated GPU, you don't have to worry much. It's the integrated GPUs which are gonna be a problem, because they use the regular RAM as VRAM, which is much slower than dedicated VRAM.


@mrnascar:
A little better, but definitely not worth the money. If you know that you're gonna play FS15, go for a dedicated GPU. Or if it really has to be an integrated GPU (for whatever reasons I won't and don't want to understand), make sure you go for the strongest one available and make sure you have high clocked RAM (ideally 1866MHz or more) running in dual channel mode. All things that are really rare on low end laptops, especially the dual channel mode and clock speed is often just at 1333MHz.
A while back I had some trouble with my desktop and I happen to try the integrated GPU (Intel HD 4000) in FS13. It's really amazing how much difference 1333MHz and 1600MHz RAM makes (difference up to 30fps). And I didn't even check the difference between single/dual channel mode (just ran dual channel mode).

[leifege640]

Bassaddict,

Thank you for the reply. The whole system that I have is only a year old, so I shouldn't have any problems just yet.

leifege640