Laptop help for school work and play

[Gwyrdd Mawr]

I'm looking to buy a laptop for my kids school work. I've picked this asus what I'm asking, is it able to run city of heroes? Thank you 🙂

[Without_Pause]

Run, yes. This biggest difference for me was the graphics card being built-in or not as that imp[acts getting better graphics. CoH doesn't play nice with Intel so using AMD is better right there. Again, not critical, but 16GB RAM is the more ideal these days.

Edited October 24 by Without_Pause

[lemming]

Probably.  I picked up a similar Acemagic laptop, though I then installed linux on it and will note, it's 16GB ram.   It runs CoX fine, though at a lower performance than my desktop.  I consider it great for checking in or while travelling, but not for regular gameplay.

[Gwyrdd Mawr]

That's good to read from the both of you! I'll go ahead and get it. It will mostly be used for school homework and CoH on the side. Thanks both 😄

[tidge]

As was shared in another thread:  the following option in the command line for the launcher has improved the CoX performance of the laptop I have without a dedicated craphics card. That laptop is a 2018-era Dell business model that travels a lot better than my gaming laptop (smaller, lighter, requires smaller power supply, etc).  It's quite a game-changer for that machine, many thanks to @biostem for sharing.

 

-usetexenvcombine

 

 

[Uun]

My daughter (24) has had the AMD version of the Asus Zenbook for several years and is happy with it. She doesn't play CoH but she does game on it.

[Navy Spider]

In my experience with laptops (HP, Asus, & Toshiba): 8GB ram with integrated graphics will give you decent gameplay in "low traffic" areas. When there is a lot going on around you, even with the lowest graphic settings, you'll get jammed up. 16GB ram w/integrated graphics makes a world of difference, however, and the game will flow smoothly, in most instances. 

[Amp Up]

Tuff laptops on Amazon have impressive stats for a fair price.

[Reality Bytes]

I'm an IT guy and I would never consider buying a computer with less than 16GB these days. 8GB just isn't enough any more and you're dooming the laptop to an early obsolescence IMHO. I am a firm believer in buying up, i.e. buying more PC than you think you need right now. That helps future-proof your investment in hardware. This is especially important I think for laptops since they commonly have little to no upgrade capability. Programs of all sorts and even websites and browsers have gotten more and more memory hungry. 8GB just doesn't cut it any more in many circumstances and will become more inadequate over time. You do as you think best and can afford, but that's my advice. 

[tidge]

I don't disagree with the approach of maximizing RAM for PC purchases (laptop and desktop, although desktops are typically easier to service), but as for early obsolescence concerns I'd focus squarely on having a dedicated video card first and foremost(*1). Besides the focus on gaming, there are just a few of the activities I regularly encounter that leverage video resources more than they do RAM (YMMV, I'm only sharing my experiences):

• Video processing, editing, and playback
• Microsoft programs with a graphical component (like Excel, when plotting)... other companies software probably does this too, but Excel is the tool that hits me hardest
• Business systems that rely on a Web interface for display/navigation/functionality

The last one is a real pisser when working for a company that went all-in on some web-based interface for a critical system, but the interface slows to a crawl for typical business machines. that lack dedicated graphics systems (see also CAD, but that isn't my realm). I wish businesses acted as if they were more aware that their bulk-purchase business laptops might not work so well with their new web-based software.

 

(*1) I have a couple of laptops I use regularly of roughly similar age. the 8GB RAM + Video system outperforms the 16GB system in every way except in power consumption and portability.

 

Having written all that... the price difference between 8GB and 16 GB of RAM shouldn't be a deal-breaker, the difference in price will likely come down to availability (especially for laptops and/or slightly older systems).

[Amp Up]

Can always buy an 8 and pop in another 8 later....

[tidge]

9 minutes ago, Amp Up said:

Can always buy an 8 and pop in another 8 later....

 

I'll just write for myself: I often find working inside laptops to be somewhat stressful, so I prefer to have them open as few times as possible. I suppose if someone really knows what they are looking for (in terms of RAM) it may not be too hard to track down the new pieces.

 

One thing I've been really annoyed with (for laptops, especially "business models") is when the model is listed as having a hardware interface (internal) but it turns out that teh spec was just listing potential options... that might have been in the model at some point.... Specifically I've been repeatedly surprised by (lack of) drive interfaces. It wasn't much of a big deal for me when one laptop had two SSD interfaces instead of the 1+1 configuration I was expecting, but I fully expected my recent cheapy Dell to have two drive interfaces but only came with one. It looks like the chipset is there, but Dell being Dell didn't put the connector in place. If I hadn't seen how cheap they were 30 years ago with lack of traces on things like floppy drive connectors, I would have been surprised.