In need of a new windows laptop

[AdorableKitty08]

Hi there
I am in need of a new windows laptop, I will be using this laptop solely to play the sims4 (possibly the sims3 but not 100% sure on this yet) but I am a bit clueless on what the tech specs mean so would appreciate help.

These recommended specifications have come out today

REQUIRED: Internet connection required for product activation.
OS: 64 Bit Windows 7,8, or 8.1
PROCESSOR: Intel core i5 or faster
AMD Athlon X4
MEMORY: 4GB RAM
HARD DRIVE: At least 9 GB of free space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content and saved games
DVD-ROM: DVD ROM drive required for installation only
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 650 or better
SOUND CARD: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DIRECTX: DirectX 9.0c compatible
INPUT: Keyboard and Mouse

I am in the UK and ideally I wouldn't want to pay too much above £500, but I would pay more if this was the best option to guarantee that the machine i got would play the sims 4 and any expansion packs that are due to follow.

I've had the game preordered for a few months now and my current laptop has just died (it has been a nightmare for longer, but i've held out replacing it until i officially died) so i really do need something quick as the game comes out here on the 5th September so I hope someone can help me.

Previously I have only ever used amazon or pcworld, ideally i'd like to buy this from one of them too as i know they are reliable and easy to deal with if anything is wrong.

 

[-RockMan-]

Hi there
I am in need of a new windows laptop, I will be using this laptop solely to play the sims4 (possibly the sims3 but not 100% sure on this yet) but I am a bit clueless on what the tech specs mean so would appreciate help.

These recommended specifications have come out today



I am in the UK and ideally I wouldn't want to pay too much above £500, but I would pay more if this was the best option to guarantee that the machine i got would play the sims 4 and any expansion packs that are due to follow.

I've had the game preordered for a few months now and my current laptop has just died (it has been a nightmare for longer, but i've held out replacing it until i officially died) so i really do need something quick as the game comes out here on the 5th September so I hope someone can help me.

Previously I have only ever used amazon or pcworld, ideally i'd like to buy this from one of them too as i know they are reliable and easy to deal with if anything is wrong.

Thats the best you can hope for and yes it does game well, maybe about 10% slower than average i5 or i7 laptops.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-Sat...e=UTF8&qid=1409138433&sr=1-30&keywords=laptop

If your seeking more power than this laptop, sorry to say but you maybe paying nearly a 1000 bucks for a good intel laptop.

If you want you can find a intel laptop on higher specs and compare them if amazon allows it.
Or do a simple google search comparing both laptops and choose what is more important.

 

[carnageX]

Thats the best you can hope for and yes it does game well, maybe about 10% slower than average i5 or i7 laptops.
Toshiba Satellite S50D-A-10F 15.6-inch Laptop AMD Quad Core 2.90 GHz Processor 6 GB RAM 750 GB HDD Windows 8.1 AMD A10-5745M, AMD Radeon 8550M 1 GB Dedicated Graphics. WiFi, HDMI, Bluetooth 4.0, DVD, 1 Year Warranty: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accesso

If your seeking more power than this laptop, sorry to say but you maybe paying nearly a 1000 bucks for a good intel laptop.

If you want you can find a intel laptop on higher specs and compare them if amazon allows it.
Or do a simple google search comparing both laptops and choose what is more important.

Looking for used laptops is also an alternative. That's how I got both of my gaming laptops. Worth over $1200+ new, got 'em for <$800 each since they were used.

That being said, 500 isn't much to stretch for a gaming laptop at all. 700+ would get you something better for what you need, most likely.

Couldn't find any benchmarks for the laptop or laptop's APU that Rockman posted, unfortunately so not much to compare.

 

[-RockMan-]

Looking for used laptops is also an alternative. That's how I got both of my gaming laptops. Worth over $1200+ new, got 'em for <$800 each since they were used.

That being said, 500 isn't much to stretch for a gaming laptop at all. 700+ would get you something better for what you need, most likely.

Couldn't find any benchmarks for the laptop or laptop's APU that Rockman posted, unfortunately so not much to compare.

Well I'm at a lost here then if you really don't mind look over on amazon and ebay usa/uk today.
Locate a core i5 dell laptop like this one:
Amazon.com : Dell Latitude E6410 Notebook - Core i5 i5-520M 2.40 GHz - 14.1" - Silver 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM - 250 GB HDD - DVD-Writer - Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth - Windows 7 Professional : Laptop Computers : Computers & Accessories

If any sellers are willing to sell to the uk adorablekitten would be better off with this.
More than what she needs for standard gaming
I got a chance to fix that laptop 2 weeks ago very sweet for 899 retail price laptop.
If money weren't a issue I would sell my hp laptop and take that instead. :/

The laptop I chose in my last post that would do her fine as well, but comparing both by desktop power performance.
The amd apu would be a bit slower and would suffer some just like its desktop cpu counterpart.
It would still do perfectly fine for office/business or general work and very well on gaming.

 

[carnageX]

This is a pretty good deal on a Lenovo Y580 (only 1 left since it's a 3rd party seller/used):
Lenovo Ideapad Y580 15.6 inch laptop - Dawn Grey (Intel Core i7 3630QM 2.4GHz, 8Gb RAM, 1Tb HDD, Blu-ray, Nvidia Graphics, Windows 8): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
Benchmarks for the GPU it is has: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

Edit: nvm, it got sold...too bad too. Was a damn good deal.

Well I'm at a lost here then if you really don't mind look over on amazon and ebay usa/uk today.
Locate a core i5 dell laptop like this one:
Amazon.com : Dell Latitude E6410 Notebook - Core i5 i5-520M 2.40 GHz - 14.1" - Silver 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM - 250 GB HDD - DVD-Writer - Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth - Windows 7 Professional : Laptop Computers : Computers & Accessories

Had to deal with Latitude 6510's at my last job... no thank you. Ran into tons of issues with them all the time. I'd expect the 6410's to not be much different.

 

[AdorableKitty08]

Just out of interest can those who said I would be better off upping my spend limit suggest some that would do what I am looking for between £500-£1000 least then I will know how much I am looking to spend, cheaper the better, say if I could get an adequate laptop for 700 I would happily pay this but just need to know that I am getting one that will run the sims 4 and future sims4 games as I don't want to spend say 700 then find out later I should have spent 800 for example

 

[-RockMan-]

This is a pretty good deal on a Lenovo Y580 (only 1 left since it's a 3rd party seller/used):
Lenovo Ideapad Y580 15.6 inch laptop - Dawn Grey (Intel Core i7 3630QM 2.4GHz, 8Gb RAM, 1Tb HDD, Blu-ray, Nvidia Graphics, Windows 8): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
Benchmarks for the GPU it is has: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - NotebookCheck.net Tech



Had to deal with Latitude 6510's at my last job... no thank you. Ran into tons of issues with them all the time. I'd expect the 6410's to not be much different.

Care to explain I like to hear your story of it just in case I run into these with someone else this year or next.
It'll pay off to have exp, but when I work with that dell, my clients problem..
She didn't have anyway to block ads, try having over 400 programs worth of junk there.
Try dealing with a rootkit infection that was about to ruin the poor machine.
Still though with all the crap on it the cpu spike was 60% and still ran ok.
It took me 2 days to bring down everything, update the software and finally windows.
By the time it was said and done with that dell was secure and perfectly quite.
Keep in mind it wasn't hers to keep personally but the business she works for gave it to her to use on the road.

Given my brief story I still would use that dell and the price tg 250.00 bucks ?
As long as I know how to fix something and keep it from going off the chain daily heck yea I'll use it.

 

[carnageX]

Just out of interest can those who said I would be better off upping my spend limit suggest some that would do what I am looking for between £500-£1000 least then I will know how much I am looking to spend, cheaper the better, say if I could get an adequate laptop for 700 I would happily pay this but just need to know that I am getting one that will run the sims 4 and future sims4 games as I don't want to spend say 700 then find out later I should have spent 800 for example

1-2 month wait time for this (because the nVidia 8xx series isn't out yet) but looks like a nice machine: Gigabyte P15F V2-CF1 15.6-inch Gaming Notebook (Intel Core i7 4710MQ 2.5GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 850M 2GB Graphics Card, DVD-RW, USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, eS-ATA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HD Webcam, Windows 8.1): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accesso

This one is good for the money as well:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Generic-i5-...46?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1409149974&sr=1-46
Link to benchmarks for the card: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-765M.92907.0.html

May also be worthwhile to check out your local Craigslist to see if there's anything on there.

Care to explain I like to hear your story of it just in case I run into these with someone else this year or next.
It'll pay off to have exp, but when I work with that dell, my clients problem..
She didn't have anyway to block ads, try having over 400 programs worth of junk there.
Try dealing with a rootkit infection that was about to ruin the poor machine.
Still though with all the crap on it the cpu spike was 60% and still ran ok.
It took me 2 days to bring down everything, update the software and finally windows.
By the time it was said and done with that dell was secure and perfectly quite.
Keep in mind it wasn't hers to keep personally but the business she works for gave it to her to use on the road.

Given my brief story I still would use that dell and the price tg 250.00 bucks ?
As long as I know how to fix something and keep it from going off the chain daily heck yea I'll use it.

It was hardware issues we usually dealt with for the 6510's. Mobos crapping out that required our service tech to come in and replace it, GPU being quite hot, driver issues with wifi, touchpad, and video (required getting them from the manufacturer's sites and not Dell's site, if they even worked after that). When they worked they were fairly nice (albeit bulky)...but they were iffy most of the time for a lot of people that had 'em.

 

[-RockMan-]

Mobos crapping out that required our service tech to come in and replace it, GPU being quite hot, driver issues with wifi, touchpad, and video (required getting them from the manufacturer's sites and not Dell's site, if they even worked after that). When they worked they were fairly nice (albeit bulky)...but they were iffy most of the time for a lot of people that had 'em.

Maybe this sounds redundant, but why not disable the touch pad, disable the internal wifi in bios ?
I think with both of those disabled and using belkins wireless usb nic adapter, a wireless ihome mouse.
Both of those combined online would be about 35 bucks a pair.
That should atleast eliminate some hassle, is th graphics interchangable ?
If dell allowed that, I would just opt in for gt600 or gt700m card and use it.
Less heat issues, good with media work and low or midrange gaming.
Thats just my suggestion though, if I find that dell for 300 bucks on october I may get it on my birthday.

 

[carnageX]

Maybe this sounds redundant, but why not disable the touch pad, disable the internal wifi in bios ?
I think with both of those disabled and using belkins wireless usb nic adapter, a wireless ihome mouse.
Both of those combined online would be about 35 bucks a pair.
That should atleast eliminate some hassle, is th graphics interchangable ?
If dell allowed that, I would just opt in for gt600 or gt700m card and use it.
Less heat issues, good with media work and low or midrange gaming.
Thats just my suggestion though, if I find that dell for 300 bucks on october I may get it on my birthday.

It was a corporate environment bro . We weren't going to buy several hundred wifi adapters or replacement wireless cards for people. We had a contract with Dell, and a Dell tech came onsite for any work that needed to be done.

People did have their laptops on docking stations with wifi off most of the time. But when they had to take their laptops to meetings, wifi needed to be on to get network resources.

The problem with the graphics was with the board/GPU both. They were Quadro workstation cards as well.

You can't really just "drop in" another GPU either. vBIOS will be different and in some cases won't work properly with the motherboard BIOS without modifying the vBOIS and/or mobo BIOS. I've looked at upgrading my laptop's GPU - and decided it wasn't worth it because of the price of a new card that would benefit me ($500-600 minimum), and possible issues like certain features not working right (or work at all) if I didn't flash to a different vBIOS.