Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gaming

[swampfox28]

HELP!

I bow to the computer gurus - hopefully someone will be able to help. I don't have the laptop now (it's in the room with my sleeping 13 year old) but suffice it to say it was CHEAP-O. I paid about $250 for this basic Acer laptop that's running windows 7 (I believe). I thought he could use it for word processing, school projects, etc.

NooOooOOOOO!

All he wants is to be able to play online games such as Mabinogi and Vindictus but this poor thing chokes on them, esp. Vindictus. I THINK that if we could update the graphics card and possibly the ram he'd be able to do okay with it, but any and all advice would be appreciated. Obviously *I* have no clue how to deal with it; thought I'd bring it to some local genius to get worked on, but would be happier if I knew WHAT I should look for, suggest, or otherwise know before that happens.

OR would it be better to scrap it all and get another laptop? He'd have to wait awhile for us to save up enough for that! I was hoping we could just upgrade the one he has and voila - semi-decent gaming computer AND school computer at the same time...

What do you guys think?

 

[Trotter]

Re: Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gam

Laptop graphics are not upgradeable, so you would be better off either cutting him off from the games or going with a different laptop.

Actually, if he wants to game you could look into a desktop as it would be cheaper... especially if you already had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (and any other hardware, such as an optical drive out of an old computer[as long as it is a DVD]).

 

[aspire]

Re: Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gam

Upgrading graphics is basically impossible in a laptop, memory is much simpler and a distinct possibility.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Re: Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gam

Memory is possible, but as the others said, upgrading the GPU, is not possible, very few laptops have a true dedicated card, even then, the majority of the time, those cards are as much as a new laptop in cost, and very rarely is there more than two possible cards for that laptop.

 

[ReikokuKo]

Re: Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gam

You can pinpoint the exact reason why the game is not playing properly by looking up the minimum specifications required to run the game and see if the laptop can handle it. The only option you really have is expanding its RAM. Other than that, just make sure its malware free, the cooling fans are working and that there isn't dust building up clogging a vent.

You can check your RAM and CPU speed by right clicking My Computer, for specific information on your graphics card, try Start>Run>dxdiag.

 

[swampfox28]

Re: Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gam

Such great info - and I had no idea about the graphics card not being upgradable... THANK YOU FOR YOUR INSIGHT, everyone!!!! I really appreciate it. I will check out the minimum specs of the game as well as the RAM and CPU speed today... I will also try to get the info on the graphics card by following your instructions, ReikokuKo. You guys ROCK! I hope my question wasn't TOO inane; I used to have brilliant computer geek friends when I was younger and lived in New Orleans, but now that I've moved away and am an old married lady (haha), I'm kind of on my own. I miss my guys - and the computer tech brilliance I could tap into just by being around them (sigh!)

 

[Trotter]

Re: Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gam

Just consider us your new tech friends.

 

[ReikokuKo]

Re: Bought my kid a Black Friday basic Acer laptop for school-but HE wants it for gam

Haha, I'll be your new tech friend.

Hey, let us know what you find out.