We take a low-end laptop and see how far we can push it to get the best gaming experience possible out of a budget notebook.
Getting The Most Out Of A Low-End Laptop : Read more
Getting The Most Out Of A Low-End Laptop : Read more
This is actually what I did, I purchased a Lenovo Z50 earlier this year, has an A10 7300 in it and works very nicely. I don't play any AAA titles so it does what I want very well. The most intensive game I played on it was TERA and it would run 20-30 fps in most cases with medium settings at 720p. 90% of the steam games I play with it run flawlessly and video playback is great.For a turnkey solution, a cheap gaming laptop is one of the very few places AMD still does well. An A8 or A10 laptop has a very strong GPU for the price and the quad-core CPU portion is adequate.
The one place such machines come up short is the rarity of higher resolution screens offered. 720p-ish displays are pretty much the rule for these products. Though I did find yesterday that my old A6 laptop does just fine driving a 1080p HDTV through its HDMI Out port. Despite having it for nearly four years, I'd never had a reason to connect a monitor before. I needed to demonstrate Windows 10 to a group of people and there was a 50" screen handy...
I actually considered doing this and spent considerable amount of time researching into it. The reason I didn't go through with it is that I couldn't find a panel that was a perfect fit for this system. It seems Samsung doesn't sell a 1080p for another laptop of the exact same size. Although I could find others that were close, just a few millimeters off in size, I didn't want to risk it.Why not replace the lcd screen with a 1080p IPS panel? They are easy enough to find, cost around $100, and you can probably sell the old one for $75-80. I did this on my HP ENVY laptop and don't regret it for a second.
If you think about it, you could probably buy a laptop display designed for a higher end sku of the same model, and just buy it off ebay. You could probably get a 1080p panel for less than $100. That'd be a pretty solid upgrade. I'd have to do my research first though.For a turnkey solution, a cheap gaming laptop is one of the very few places AMD still does well. An A8 or A10 laptop has a very strong GPU for the price and the quad-core CPU portion is adequate.
The one place such machines come up short is the rarity of higher resolution screens offered. 720p-ish displays are pretty much the rule for these products. Though I did find yesterday that my old A6 laptop does just fine driving a 1080p HDTV through its HDMI Out port. Despite having it for nearly four years, I'd never had a reason to connect a monitor before. I needed to demonstrate Windows 10 to a group of people and there was a 50" screen handy...
I'm shocked that the article didn't mention this (or maybe I missed it), but surely a freaking great clean would be the first thing that you should do to ensure that all your bits are working well enough before you swap out the first part even. It's amazing how much dust works against performance.Well, when your laptop cpu hits 85 degrees Celsius on idle, and throttles when you check your email, there's only so much that you can do.
I'm shocked that the article didn't mention this (or maybe I missed it), but surely a freaking great clean would be the first thing that you should do to ensure that all your bits are working well enough before you swap out the first part even. It's amazing how much dust works against performance.Well, when your laptop cpu hits 85 degrees Celsius on idle, and throttles when you check your email, there's only so much that you can do.
I'm shocked that the article didn't mention this (or maybe I missed it), but surely a freaking great clean would be the first thing that you should do to ensure that all your bits are working well enough before you swap out the first part even. It's amazing how much dust works against performance.Well, when your laptop cpu hits 85 degrees Celsius on idle, and throttles when you check your email, there's only so much that you can do.
I'm shocked that the article didn't mention this (or maybe I missed it), but surely a freaking great clean would be the first thing that you should do to ensure that all your bits are working well enough before you swap out the first part even. It's amazing how much dust works against performance.Well, when your laptop cpu hits 85 degrees Celsius on idle, and throttles when you check your email, there's only so much that you can do.