Low End Gaming Laptop for Older Games

[decado]

Hey all,

I have a monster rig at home, but I travel a lot. Right now my mobile gaming fix is satisfied with an Nvidia Shield Tablet which, even though it is pretty cool, has suffered from connectivity issues with Nvidia's streaming service. It is really not reliable.

This is especially silly since I tend to play older games when I travel, or games that have lower system requirements (think Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, or any of the newer Kickstarted games that are not FPSs). The rest of the games I play are oldies off of GoG. Perhaps the most graphic intensive game I will play is the first Dark Souls.

So, anyone have any recommendations? Do I need to worry about what kind of mobile graphics card is stuffed under the hood? I'd like to spend $500 USD or less.

 

[jaguarskx]

For $520 you can buy an Acer Aspire E E5-573G-52G3. It has a dedicated nvidia 940m, Core i5-5200u and a 1080p screen. However, it has Windows 10 which could be a problem for older games since new OS can break game compatibility. But it should be okay with more recent games.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315131&cm_re=940m-_-34-315-131-_-Product


It was $500 a few days ago, but it is still the least expensive laptop you can buy with a dedicated GPU and a 1080p screen. For under $500 you will need to contend with the Intel HD 5500. It's not bad considering how Intel graphic cores performed back in the old days (good 'ol GMA) when they really didn't bother with any type of performance. The 940m is not considered a "gaming" GPU, but it is a lot more powerful than the Intel HD 5500.