Laptop for old games

[Flibb]

I fancy getting an new old laptop, mainly for playing older games such as dawn of War, xcom, maybe some old RTS games etc. I currently have a rather old 17" Dell , fitted with an ssd it runs office stuff OK, but fails to load even some of the ancient stuff on steam. I will sell the Dell, should get £150 for that, and would chuck in another £100. So the budget is £250.
Spotted this
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/acer-home-...item417ecbb6dd
Processor Speed:
2.40GHz
Brand:
Acer
Hard Drive Capacity:
500GB
Product Line:
Aspire
Operating System:
Windows 7
Model:
V3-731G
Operating System Edition:
Home
Screen Size:
17.3
Graphics Processing Type:
intel (R) HD graphics and NIVIDIA GEFORCE GT 630M
Memory:
4GB
Release Year:
2012 11 02
Processor Type:
Pentium B980


I would prefer to have something a bit smaller, maybe 15" but any general thoughts on older games capable kit? Or Argos sell of loads of refurb laptops, but most seem to be very underpowered.

Cheers

[LenMargaux]

Hi Flibb, I suggest you get a gaming laptop with a GT 700M series graphics processor. the GT630M is quite old and may not be able to play the latest games.

[scaryjim]

Hi Flibb, I suggest you get a gaming laptop with a GT 700M series graphics processor. the GT630M is quite old and may not be able to play the latest games.

Afaik the GT700M series is split between some new Maxwell GPUs and some rebadged GT600M ones. Either way, GT600M is the same architecture - Kepler - as the current gen desktop cards. It's certainly not old, and will "play" pretty much any game you throw at it - although I make no guarantee about frame-rates and IQ levels

... mainly for playing older games such as dawn of War, xcom, maybe some old RTS games etc. ...

Is that the new XCom? If so I can confirm that an A6 3670K handles it pretty nicely, and I think the GT630M is probably about the same performance (will have to hunt out some Firestrike scores ). If you're going to play any newer games you might find that the CPU is a bit weak - I recently upgraded the wife from a B980 (although she was using the HD graphics which are pretty poor).

I notice that listing's ended now - did you get it? If not I'd look for something similar (although ideally try to hunt out an i3 or i5 processor for the Hyperthreading, even if it means going back a gen or two) or an AMD A8/A10-based laptop - although tbh a Sandy Bridge or later i3 or i5 with HD graphics would probably do (the i3/5s use HD3000 graphics or better, while the Pentiums use the cut down HD2000). £250 is a pretty tight budget though...

[Rob_B]

I recently bought a laptop with an i5 2410m/GT540M, the 630M is a rebadged 540M, the thing plays crysis 2 at 30fps and BF3 decently.
You can pick up this spec for around your budget and looking for 540M cards might save a few quid over a 630 due to the assumption it's a higher spec card.

[TheDutyPaid]

Not sure how old you want to go on games, but http://www.gog.com/ is very good for classic games that work on modern Windows and some on MAC

[Flibb]

Cheers for the info and suggestions, still on the hunt. Will stretch to £300 if I can find something that takes my fancy.

[Flibb]

Any thoughts on this Sony?



Sony
Model VAIO VPCSB3N9E
MPN VPCSB3N9ESCEK
EAN 4905524814323

Processor
Processor Intel Core i3 2nd Gen. 2330M (2.2 GHz)
Memory Cache 3072 KB

Memory
Installed Memory 4 MB
RAM Max Supported Size 8 GB



Display
Display Size 13.3"
Video Card AMD Radeon HD 6470M
Video Card Memory 512 MB

[Rob_B]

How much? small screen if you want to game and that GPU isn't as fast as the 540m/630m. You'll likely be paying extra for the Vaio brand with that one.

Setup a saved search on ebay for buy-it-now, filter by price/CPU etc then sort by newly listed. Keep checking (or get the notifications) and you'll often find under-priced decent machines come up now and again, buy it before anyone else does

[Flibb]

Have done a bit more reading on the Sony and have discounted it. The search continues!!

[Flibb]

This acer looks interesting, its up for £220, has linux but I have a spare win7 and an ssd

Screen 15.6 inch Glossy HD LED 1366 x 768
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M
Processor 2nd Generation Intel Core i5 Hyper Threading 2450M @ 2.50 ( Turbos to 3.1 ) GHz
Memory 4GB
Hard disk 100GB
Battery Battery has been checked and holds roughly 45 Mins charge.
Optical drive DVD/RW
Operating system Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64bit
Webcam Yes
Card reader Yes
WiFi Yes
Extras Power Supply
Ports 2xUSB, USB3, LAN, VGA, HDMI

[Rob_B]

Looks alright for the price, pressure mark on the screen (but no pic of that)

Perfect sort of spec though.