Cheap laptop to meet my minimal gaming needs?

sammy sung

Estimable
May 5, 2014
37
0
4,610
1. What is your budget?

Roughly $550-600(with taxes included) preferably 500 or below as that'd be my comfort range and I'd be able to get it sooner. But I'm willing to go as high as 600ish give a few extra if it's a legit difference in performance.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

14.1-17.3 preferably. I could go a bit smaller if it meant the difference in price/performance etc.

3. What screen resolution do you want?

Whatever would perform best with the cpu/gpu when playing skyrim & swtor

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

Well obviously portable considering my price range, but I'd like to get as close to a gaming laptop as I can without it actually being one and thus having the price tag of one.

5. How much battery life do you need?

This one I really don't care about tbh

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

Skyrim: low-mid(respectively)

SWTOR: medium settings or better

The only other games I play aren't even in the same league as these in terms of being demanding. EG haloCE, empire total war, civ 3 etc etc etc

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)

Not sure if this qualifies, but I multi-task a little. I like to listen to music/let's plays on youtube while I play halo & swtor. I'm assuming this is a ram & processor thing?

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

Also don't care too much here either. Don't really need 1TB, but if it fits within my price or doesn't push me beyond the comfort range on it's own. I'm fine with 500GB or even 750GB. 320GB is a popular size for some books? I wouldn't want below that, at all. But wouldn't exactly want that size either. 500GB would be my preferred~

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

Don't laugh... But Walmart. Only because I work there and receive a 10% discount. But I'm open to any and all options if the price/performance is right of course.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?

I'm definitely not worried about having a future proof machine, obviously.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc?

Basic, just dvd etc.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

As lame as it sounds, I kind of want something that looks kind of cool almost as much as I want something to meet my hardware needs. I mean, performance is definitely key, but looking nice is good too. I kind of don't like HP all that much, I've had so many in the past that I'm kind of over it. But I'd go with it if it were the best option. Always thought sony vaio's looked cool. But really nothing more so than anything else, performance.

13. What country do you live in?

USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

I like red, purple & blue for colors if that changes anything. But it doesn't matter a lot at all.

Thanks in advance~!
 

fricklesmn

Estimable
Feb 22, 2014
12
0
4,570
Hello,

I would consider something like this for price/style/capabilities (displayed by price - low to high - all $500 or less)

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Regal-Purple-15.6-15-d076nr-Laptop-PC-with-AMD-A6-5200-Quad-Core-Processor-4GB-Memory-500GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8.1/33982395

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Dell-15.6-Inspiron-15-Laptop-PC-with-AMD-A8-5545M-Quad-Core-Processor-6GB-Memory-750GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8-Home/28976173

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Black-15.6-Aspire-V5-552P-X617-Laptop-PC-with-AMD-Quad-Core-A105757M-Processor-6GB-Memory-750GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8/34226823

A notebook with the A8 or A10 processors (APU's) should be able to handle the games you want to use, at the settings you want to run. I would think the A6 would also accomplish it, but for the minor price disparity, I would opt for the A8 (for style) or the A10 (for horsepower)

Hope this helps