Laptop for mobile work (and COH)

[Nightwatch]

Looking for advice on a good work laptop 14” that can also play COH.  I only play COH; no other games.  I don’t want something that looks like a gamer laptop but is solid portable work laptop with a 14” screen and camera for ZOOM meetings on which I can also play COH when I’m travelling.  I like the look of the HP ENVY 14 but am not a computer guy so have no idea whether this will play COH.  in terms of graphics it has : Max-Q Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (4GB GDDR5 RAM). Intel Iris Xe

HELP!

Edited February 6, 2022 by Nightwatch

[PLVRIZR]

You can almost play CoH on a toaster.  I've got a 4 y.o. laptop with an i5 dual core and Intel on-board graphics that I "dual box" with.  Yes, it's too slow when in large groups, with lots of effects, but it is, technically, playable.  ANYTHING with a dedicated graphics card will run CoH at near ultra settings, so yes, the HP you are looking at will run it, no problem.

[arcane]

My understanding is that you can play CoH on a potato so what’s the question here

[Frostbiter]

The laptop specs look good. I noticed its native resolution is 1920x1200 (16:10) so keep that in mind when setting your graphics. The 1650 chipset doesn't do ray tracing but it does support DX12. If you only play COH then its nothing to worry about at all.

[Oklahoman]

55 minutes ago, PLVRIZR said:

ANYTHING with a dedicated graphics card will run CoH at near ultra settings

 

This.

 

Personally, I use an Acer Nitro V (AN515-53 to be specific), and it looks and works fine as a work laptop and for playing COH. I did choose to double the memory on it after several months, once I started looking at multiboxing. The camera is fine, but once I started streaming I bought an external camera for better resolution, though I honestly don't know if that helped anything.

 

Good luck!

[golstat2003]

41 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

 

This.

 

Personally, I use an Acer Nitro V (AN515-53 to be specific), and it looks and works fine as a work laptop and for playing COH. I did choose to double the memory on it after several months, once I started looking at multiboxing. The camera is fine, but once I started streaming I bought an external camera for better resolution, though I honestly don't know if that helped anything.

 

Good luck!

 

Yeah Acer Nitro can pretty much run 99% of the games today. COH should be no issue, since running the game pretty much just needs a potato as others have said. LOL

[Gaymer X]

In case it's helpful, I use an HP Envy x360 for both work and playing CoH.  I have zero issues running the game with High/Very High graphics going.  When I move everything up to Ultra it seems to slow down a bit so, I don't venture there.

[biostem]

As a side note - if you use the -usetexenvcombine option when launching the game, (outlined here), you can greatly expand the number of computers the game will run smoothly on, (at the cost of lower graphics quality).  Still, I bought and refurbished a used 12.5" i5 laptop that I take with me when I travel, and it can run CoH quite well, and it has integrated graphics.  Something like this is also a great option, and offers a great balance of cost and performance, while still having a "dedicated" graphics option, (it's really more of a specialized GPU + CPU setup, but works the same).

 

As a reference, this is basically like the 12" i5 laptop I mentioned...

Edited February 7, 2022 by biostem

[Techwright]

5 hours ago, arcane said:

My understanding is that you can play CoH on a potato so what’s the question here

Would that be an Idaho spud or a good ol' Southern sweet potato?  I'm pretty sure the red-skinned potatoes are too small for the job, unless you're planning on daisy-chaining them, which is tricky.  It's too easy to make a hash of it.

[biostem]

59 minutes ago, Techwright said:

It's too easy to make a hash of it.

And check your voltage, or it'll fry!

[InvaderStych]

17 hours ago, Nightwatch said:

 I like the look of the HP ENVY 14 but am not a computer guy so have no idea whether this will play COH.

 

I haven't kept up with the current offerings, but I have an HP laptop (Spectre 360 with Radeon+Iris) from 2018 and it has been an absolute workhorse.  CoH won't be a problem - although mine does get too hot for my mental comfort level while running games at 4K on the laptop screen, it works a treat running them connected to a 21:9 HD monitor. The one you're considering has much more gfx horsepower than mine and should have no problems with CoH.

 

More importantly (to me) mine has survived the rough treatment that comes along with the type of work (and associated travel, though less of both these days, grrrrrr) that I do. I considered some less expensive options, but I am glad I paid for the metal body over plastic.  I've seen rental/kit laptops on jobs that may as well have disintegrated the moment they came off the plane.  Also, it had the best keyboard of every laptop I tried.  And don't say Macbook to me, my mutant hands haven't fit on an Apple keyboard since they stopped making PowerPCs. 😛

 

I have only had one issue with it where I had to do a bios roll-back then re-update in order for the screen to properly flip when folding it over.  Which, considering I quickly discovered it is too heavy to really use like a "tablet" when folded, was mostly a non-issue.

 

The Envy is probably a solid choice.

[arcane]

11 hours ago, Techwright said:

Would that be an Idaho spud or a good ol' Southern sweet potato?  I'm pretty sure the red-skinned potatoes are too small for the job, unless you're planning on daisy-chaining them, which is tricky.  It's too easy to make a hash of it.

A girthy Yukon Gold will run Ultra graphics with a couple of inexpensive upgrades, no problem.

[Greycat]

Both my current and last notebooks have run COH fine. Last one was an Acer VX15, main quirk with it was convincing it to use the external graphics (and an external monitor would only use the integrated graphics, which rather sucked.) Currently on a Lenovo Legion 5 15", which has no problem with it.

[arcane]

In all seriousness, I play this game on Ultra or double boxed... on a Mac. Nuff said. /thread.

[Nightwatch]

OK.  Just updating.  Have been using DELL XPS 15" and CoH works fine.  Only problem now is that the thing is way too heavy to lug around. 

 

Would DELL XPS 13" work OK with CoH?  Much lighter but without the NVIDIA graphics.

 

Sorry to labour this.  Work is paying for this so keen not to stuff them around too much.  Money not an object but need lightweight, travel friendly, good graphics, looks good for work and not too much like a gamer laptop.

[Astralock]

City of Heroes pretty much needs a Nvidia graphics card to run.  You can play CoH without a graphics card, but it would not run well at all.  You would have to run all graphics settings at minimum settings and use a launch parameter (-usetexenvcombine) to disable shaders to get an acceptable frames per second.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Astralock

[SeraphimKensai]

I cannot in good faith recommend a laptop for gaming that doesn't have a discrete GPU. Can you run CoH on an integrated GPU, possibly but you'll likely suffer from performance issues and latency.

 

Here's a recent article from January that compares lightweight gaming laptops, so maybe the prices are.lower by now....https://www.businessinsider.in/tech-buying-guides/best-lightweight-gaming-laptops/articleshow/83138880.cms

[High_Beam]

The laptop that I use for laptopy stuff and CoH dual boxing is HP DV7T from 2011 with a Core i7 and an Geforce GT 650M.  When you notch down the graphics settings it runs real well but anything above medium actually starts to stress it and it becomes herky jerky.  But it is pretty old and is due for a refresh since the semi-infamous "ballpeen hammer dropped on the keyboard" incident has now rendered seven keys on the right side useless.

 

I probably wont be getting a replacement that will play CoH on cause the big rig I have lets me run two CoH instances with ease.

 

Then again . . . shiny.

[Oubliette_Red]

I blew up two HP laptops running Legacy CoH. Mostly because of HP's poor design back then, little to no heat sinks on CPU or GPU and both chips shared the same fan and channel to cool. The portion of the laptop where my wrist would rest would get so hot that I couldn't touch it. 1st one was still under warranty, which they replaced, the replacement wasn't. This was obviously more than 10 years ago and HP may have altered their design since then.

 

[Astralock]

5 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

I blew up two HP laptops running Legacy CoH. Mostly because of HP's poor design back then, little to no heat sinks on CPU or GPU and both chips shared the same fan and channel to cool. The portion of the laptop where my wrist would rest would get so hot that I couldn't touch it. 1st one was still under warranty, which they replaced, the replacement wasn't. This was obviously more than 10 years ago and HP may have altered their design since then.

 

 

From experience, they haven't.  I bought a HP gaming notebook back in January 2020.  It wasn't top of the line, but it wasn't cheap either.  It pretty much melted in October 2021.  If I tried to game, it overheated and would shut down.  I sent it in for repairs, but it came back with the same problem.

[SeraphimKensai]

7 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

I blew up two HP laptops running Legacy CoH. Mostly because of HP's poor design back then, little to no heat sinks on CPU or GPU and both chips shared the same fan and channel to cool. The portion of the laptop where my wrist would rest would get so hot that I couldn't touch it. 1st one was still under warranty, which they replaced, the replacement wasn't. This was obviously more than 10 years ago and HP may have altered their design since then.

 

I have a year old HP gaming laptop, and can confirm they still use very mediocre thermal paste, so that's one of the first aftermarket modifications I recommend. I really like Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut on my rigs.

[Luminara]

6 hours ago, Astralock said:

City of Heroes pretty much needs a Nvidia graphics card to run.

 

No it doesn't.

[Ironblade]

My girlfriend does iTrials while traveling on a three-year-old Microsoft Surface.

If you're willing to turn your settings down a bit, you can play on pretty much anything.  Some crazy person literally got the game to run on a PHONE.

 

Having said that, a computer with a discrete graphics card is a much better choice.  Anything you can buy today, with a discrete graphics card, will handle the game easily.

 

[Greycat]

7 hours ago, Astralock said:

City of Heroes pretty much needs a Nvidia graphics card to run.  You can play CoH without a graphics card, but it would not run well at all.  You would have to run all graphics settings at minimum settings and use a launch parameter (-usetexenvcombine) to disable shaders to get an acceptable frames per second.

 

Well... no. It's not nVidia bound.

 

Old Intel integrated graphics were awful, granted. (Haven't tried the newer ones.) But that doesn't mean you're stuck with nVidia - AMD's Radeon cards work decently.

For that matter, I've got an "htpc" (well, that's what I say I use it as...) running a Ryzen 5 5600G which runs COH - not all the shinies are up on it, but it does all right, and that's more a limitation of how much of the system RAM it can steal.

 

.. hmm, I should see how it runs on the i5-13600's built in graphics...

[SeraphimKensai]

29 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

Some crazy person literally got the game to run on a PHONE.

That likely might of been me using a Rooted Droid RAZR with Miracast to a TV and a Bluetooth Keyboard/Mouse. I know I did that for Eve Online a few times to go station trading (the Droid RAZR couldn't really handle any kind of fleet battles). I'm guessing I would of tried the same thing with CoH back in the day, but I can't remember the limits of playability.

 

I have played CoH using Virtual Desktop and an Quest 2 though which is interesting playing  on a movie theater style screen, although not as fast fps as I prefer.