Cheapo laptop

Mooncazz

Provider
Joined
Jun 24, 2006
Posts
103
Location
Mallorca
Society
Delta Force Elite
Avatar Name
Kiara Moon Kindred
Hello to all you tech minded members of the EU community
I apologise in advance for asking a question I'm sure everyone's bored and fed up of answering but it's slightly different in my defence.
I'm about to try and upgrade my PC that is now struggling to run EU but before I do I was wondering if there might be a CHEAP laptop alternative
When I say cheap I mean CHEAP a few years old, second hand off an auction site!(€200-€300)
I don't use a computer for anything other than EU and would like it to run on high settings.
I've been looking and it's easy enough to see what's I5/I7 and whAts got 4g RAM but Figuring out the graphics is more tricky I AM TOTALLY NOT TECH MINDED so have a headache all ready!
I'm sure it's gonna be a resounding NO there is no cheap solution in which case I'll try and sort out my PC.
Just thought it worth asking as someone might know of an older model that could do it off the top of their heads.
Thanx guys
 
laptops are not good for entropia... not good when you are spamming the keyboard and the motherboard is directly below that keyboard.
 
I'm afraid you're asking a bit too much.... I have a Asus RoG that's knocking on 5 years old. It was a powerful rig at the time I got it, definitely. But I run EU on low settings on it, and sometimes on safe mode if I want to be doing other things.
 
it's possible; for example (acer v5-573g) that I used to have would run EU without much issues. I even bought 3 of them since I had such a good deal on them(not all to myself ofc), all 3 are now in various stages of crap ;) (they are quite old now)

so even if you did find a laptop, chances are that if it ran entropia 2-4 years ago it won't run it smoothly now

that's also a pretty big if since nobody sells a used computer, no money in it
 
Saving money by buying a cheap laptop is, in my opinion, a bad decision. In no more than 3 years it does not make it so good, and you have to buy again a new. A desktop PC you can upgrade, should come cheaper ......
 
If you buy a laptop, buy one with An Nvidia or ATI gfx card inside. Don't go Intel onboard gfx. You Will hate yourself later if you do.
 
If you buy a laptop, buy one with An Nvidia or ATI gfx card inside. Don't go Intel onboard gfx. You Will hate yourself later if you do.

new integrated cards will actually run eu but too little vram is an issue

tbh you could probably find a laptop with a gtx 940 or something for 400 euros on black friday...but I think buying anything "new" that doesn't have a 10 series nvidia card or a newer AMD is crazy (amd would be a cheaper alternative that is only going to get stronger with directx12, more so than nvidia.... but eu isn't even running the directx of this century XD)


too much distance between an older card and 10 series to warrant any new purchase if you are a gamer
 
Ok, thanx guys
That's pretty much what I was expecting, I wasn't looking for a laptop as an option to save money but more to save space lol and for convenience but just don't have the budget to get anything great. I think I'll stick to sorting my PC out for now.
Thank you all for taking the time to reply.
 
there is no cheap laptops for gaming, and their lifetime is limited, usually you dump them in less than 3 years

if you want it cheap, buy some AMD ryzen, and upgrade it over the years (cheap again)

(ps: you said cheap! avoid intel and nvidia like herpes *g*)
 
You can get a one year old gaming laptop and it should be able to run EU fine.

About 1.5 years ago I was on my previous laptop, Acer Predator series, and it worked fine for EU. Am currently using another laptop as my primary EU machine and that works fine as well.

I suggest getting something with 970 nvidia chip and 8 gb ram minimum.

Not sure where you are, but in my area, I can get decent condition 1 year old gaming laptops for about US400-500 onwards.
 
when you post some that you think are fitting and in your price range i can tell which is best and about how smoothly it will run... but better go for the 300 range rather than 200 range and as spawn said, no intel but a real graphics card
 
I built a small form factor PC quite cheap recently.

Motherboard b85m-ds3h-a, £35 off ebay

PSU FSP 300-60 EGA. 300w 80+ Gold PSU for £20 including postage to the UK, bargain from Germany Ebay.

2GB RX 550 Graphics £69 new off Ebuyer, similar score to 750Ti,GTX 1050 and RX 460, but runs on 50W maximum.

Haswell Pentium G3258 20th Anniversary Edition, overclocked to 4.2 GHZ, single thread CPU score 2454, Intel Core i7 single thread CPU score 2476, the Pentium is only dual core but is fine for the Crysis 2 Engine. £35 off Ebay, i have 1 for sale for this price if anyone is interested as i bought two as i thought first one was faulty but was Bios problems with Asus motherboard, changing to motherboard above solved this problem and offered 4 DDR3 memory slots instead of two.

16GB Memory,case and SSD drive taken from other computers i had.

This runs Entropia on Medium settings at 1600 x 900 very smoothly.

Eco on Electricity, runs on around 120W while gaming.

Total cost £159 for a nice PC :)

Sold old graphics card £25
Sold old CPU £20
Sold old motherboard £25
Sold old PSU £20

Total cost after selling old parts £69, new system runs on half the Electricity.

Total Electricity Bill saving in 12 months is around £69

Gaining a 50% CPU increase in Passmark score and adding 40% to GPU Passmark score, total cost of upgrades after 12 months with Electricty Bill savings £0
 
Last edited:
Thank you for all the info guys
I've decided to stay away from the laptop option for now and sort my PC out - lots to do as its in a bit of a mess, a good ole spring clean and tidy up is needed.
Then I'm going to upgrade it a little.

I thought the RAM was the 1st thing to look at but it actually shows as 3.50 ( which I think means I've actually got 4 gb already ( I had thought it was only 2) also I took it out to see what it was in case I could get better or faster but it's Kingston which I think is ok ? Again please forgive my ignorance, I'm really not tech minded I'm just looking at the PC and googling so I can give you as much info as possible.

EU requires 4gb max, right? So I'm good?
Chip is old - Intel core 2 quad Q6600 @ 2.4 ghz - not great but should be ok shouldn't it? ( also my weakest link I think)
My graphics card is Ati Radeon sapphire HD 3870 512mb - this I will change and I hope is what will make the difference.

What do you think?
Thanx
 
Thank you for all the info guys
I've decided to stay away from the laptop option for now and sort my PC out - lots to do as its in a bit of a mess, a good ole spring clean and tidy up is needed.
Then I'm going to upgrade it a little.

I thought the RAM was the 1st thing to look at but it actually shows as 3.50 ( which I think means I've actually got 4 gb already ( I had thought it was only 2) also I took it out to see what it was in case I could get better or faster but it's Kingston which I think is ok ? Again please forgive my ignorance, I'm really not tech minded I'm just looking at the PC and googling so I can give you as much info as possible.

EU requires 4gb max, right? So I'm good?
Chip is old - Intel core 2 quad Q6600 @ 2.4 ghz - not great but should be ok shouldn't it? ( also my weakest link I think)
My graphics card is Ati Radeon sapphire HD 3870 512mb - this I will change and I hope is what will make the difference.

What do you think?
Thanx

EU daily driver:

Pentium 4 @ 3.2 Ghz
2GB cheap/slow RAM (motherboard is maxed)
nvidia geforce 210
Win XP

That's right, safe mode FTW. The geforce 210 at least has 1GB RAM though. Upgrading that video card is probably going to give you the most bang for the buck, at least as far as EU is concerned.

Maybe by the end of the year I'll re-join the folks who can actually render grass and textures, too :)

O bought one of these for my room mate a few months ago:

https://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_614937.html

Runs EU pretty nicely seemed able to sustain play in HD and medium graphics ok.
 
Graphics card I guess

Ok so I guess I'm really in the market for a new graphics card
Research mode - on lol
Same cards out there but different brands with wide range of price for the same thing :confused:
 
Ok so I guess I'm really in the market for a new graphics card
Research mode - on lol
Same cards out there but different brands with wide range of price for the same thing :confused:

If your gaming in 1080p then Nvidia 1060 is the value option... if your gaming on higher resolution then you need 1080 or the next gen cards to get great frame rate.

I don't think AMD has anything proven or worth looking at right now.
 
Thank you for all the info guys
I've decided to stay away from the laptop option for now and sort my PC out - lots to do as its in a bit of a mess, a good ole spring clean and tidy up is needed.
Then I'm going to upgrade it a little.

I thought the RAM was the 1st thing to look at but it actually shows as 3.50 ( which I think means I've actually got 4 gb already ( I had thought it was only 2) also I took it out to see what it was in case I could get better or faster but it's Kingston which I think is ok ? Again please forgive my ignorance, I'm really not tech minded I'm just looking at the PC and googling so I can give you as much info as possible.

EU requires 4gb max, right? So I'm good?
Chip is old - Intel core 2 quad Q6600 @ 2.4 ghz - not great but should be ok shouldn't it? ( also my weakest link I think)
My graphics card is Ati Radeon sapphire HD 3870 512mb - this I will change and I hope is what will make the difference.

What do you think?
Thanx


The fact that you have 4GB but it's only showing 3.5 sounds like you are running a 32bit version of Windows, that's the first thing you want to change.

Then you want to at least double your RAM, memory is very cheap these days and memory is your CPUs "work space". Increasing memory helps with everything across the board.

Your CPU is indeed old and slow, but probably fine for just EU.

Lastly you'll want to upgrade the video card. A 2-year-old model should only be around $50-100 or so and should play EU on reasonably good settings. As for make and model, I'm partial to nVidia but for playing EU it really doesn't matter, and AMD is usually cheaper. Just look at what's available in your price range and then look at a GPU comparison chart to see which one will give you the best bang for your buck.

If you spend the 200-300 euro you were going to spend on a laptop upgrading the memory and GPU, you should see good results -- but again, you need to update your O/S to 64bit before adding any more memory.
 
Yes indeed, I am running Windows XP!!
I googled my motherboard and it is maxed out at 4gb RAM (2x2) so I can't do anything about that. I did manage to find out that it's PC2 6400 400 MHz so I don't know if it would help to get faster or better RAM?
Other than that I am going to try to get a graphics card with a fair bit of RAM itself as someone suggested.
 
Last edited:
Yes indeed, I am running Windows XP!!
I googled my motherboard and it is maxed out at 4gb RAM (2x2) so I can't do anything about that. I did manage to find out that it's 400 MHz so I don't know if it would help to get faster or better RAM?
Other than that I am going to try to get a graphics card with a fair bit of RAM itself as someone suggested.

If it's 32 bit XP you're going to run into some trouble with that, don't get a graphics card with more than 2gb RAM.

The reason that was hinted at above, 32 bit can only map 4GB of RAM and the reason you're seeing 3.5 gb in your software is because in order to try and address the video ram directly it's mapped in over some of the system ram.

So the more video card ram you add the less system ram it will be able to address. I'm not sure what happens with drivers and whatnot if you try to put in a modern 6GB video card but it's easy to forget XP is so old that cards that size may not even have 32 bit drivers for it.
 
AAHHHHHH I understand now, nice save there from trouble I think
Sounds like I really do need a newer Windows too then to make this work.
 
PC2 6400 400 MHz

:eyecrazy:

i suggest to buy:
new mainboard (50$)
new cpu (50$)
new ram (100$)
new gpu (200$)

and you'll play EU like you've never done before.

keep an eye on GPU power connectors, you maybe need a new PSU too. and keep price-performance in mind! (intel/nvidia sucks balls imo)

ps: 16GB of ram is the absolute minimum i suggest
 
Maybe by the end of the year I'll re-join the folks who can actually render grass and textures, too :)

Grass is overrated, no grass = easy to see fruit :D
 
I bought a Cheapie HP laptop last year, paid AUD600 for it, brand new.

It can run EU, not any spectacular settings, but it runs and is playable.

Has an AMD A6-7310 with 8GB RAM, built in R4 (I think) graphics. Can run with a mixture of low/medium stuff at 1366x768. Get's a bit sluggish around big events. But for solo play is just fine.
 
Back
Top