I’m buying a new laptop soon, and just wanted to know if there’s anything I should look for in order to play older games. I’m NOT looking to buy a $3k Alienware gaming laptop that will play all the latest games at highest resolution while heating my house. But if spending an extra $50 makes it more suitable for say 3-5 year old games or older from Steam, I’m all for it. Thanks!
“3-5 year old games” is pretty broad. Are there some specific titles you could give us as a guideline? And your budget?
Budget - cheap. Not $250, but not over $1k either. Say around $700?
I just pulled the 3-5 year number out of thin air. I’ve got a 14 year old Windows XP machine, complete with 25 lb CRT monitor, that I fired up and have been playing some 10-15 year old games on, and still enjoying them. So I guess I was making an assumption that if you need a top-of-the line $2.5k+ gaming laptop to play recent AAA games, maybe you could play 5 year old AAA games on a significantly cheaper laptop. If that assumption is wrong, that’s fine.
I guess I’m just looking for “Oh yeah, make sure you get 16 GB ram instead of 8 / this kind of video card instead of that / some other thing” that significantly expands the list of games that would run well on the laptop, without breaking the budget.
I’m not an expert, but just what I learned from my own shopping experience, you should be looking for:
CPU: Intel i5 or i7, or AMD A8 or A10
RAM: 8GB
GPU: The newest Intel and AMD mobile CPUs have integrated graphics that are actually serviceable. However, ideally you’ll want a discrete GPU with at least 2GB memory, something in the flavor of an Nvidia GT 40M is the lowest I’d go ( = a series number from 6-9), or whatever the equivalent AMD GPU would be (Radeon 8750m?).
For you, I like the Acer Aspire V3-572G-54L9, just from some cursory searching. That should be able to handle anything at decent settings from up to a few years ago, and some newer games at lower settings. Any significant improvement from that will cost you at least a couple hundred bucks more.
My advice is to read a lot of consumer and media reviews of any model your going to buy and avoid any models that have consistent comments that they run hot. If you game a lot on a PC you’ll likely shorten its lifespan a bit. If it has heat issues and you game on it a lot, even five year old games, you’ll likely shorten its lifespan more than a bit.
I’d also read reviews about the specific processor and GPU. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ This site can be usefulin trying to figure out the bang for your buck.