Buying a budget laptop - what specs should I be looking for?

[Deleted]

Hello

I'm currently looking for a laptop that I can use to play when I'm on the road. I'm not looking for super duper grafics however, as good as possible for my budget.

My budget is about 4000 SEK. (Around 450 euro I think it is)

And when I've been looking around on the internet... I've found that most of the computer at that budget comes with a i5 and 620-630m GPU.


However! I found a used (1month old) computer with a i3 and a 640M that was within my budget.



So my question is;
Should I aim for a computer with a i5 and a 620-630M card? or go for the i3 with 640M card?

[Aleksej89]

Honestly try to look for better configurations.
I got an old Nvidia GTX460 and, according to Nvidia's website, it is better than anything below GTX650.
If you are gonna play just old games, you can go with i3 - but anything newer (like starcraft 2 or diablo 3 or battlefield 3) would definitely run much better on a i5.

Either way for 450 euroes you can't make a great gaming machine, but i would recommend trying to find a laptop with a GTX650 and an i3 - that way you could probably play even the latest titles on lowish graphics..

[Deleted]

Well, it's kinda not possible to find a computer with 650 and below 450 euro. So thats out of the question.

I'll try my question once more:

So my question is;
Should I aim for a computer with a i5 and a 620-630M card? or go for the i3 with 640M card?

[Rafax]

For gaming nothing short of a high end laptop will be good, but you can get average performance from some cheap laptops aslong as they have a decent non gigantic resolution that the GPU can actually drive.
For the scenario you presented i would probably go for the i3 plus 640m, do look out for the resolution on the laptop, I would try and get something that isnt 1080p since the 640 will probably struggle with that.

[Aleksej89]

For gaming nothing short of a high end laptop will be good, but you can get average performance from some cheap laptops aslong as they have a decent non gigantic resolution that the GPU can actually drive.
For the scenario you presented i would probably go for the i3 plus 640m, do look out for the resolution on the laptop, I would try and get something that isnt 1080p since the 640 will probably struggle with that.

640 will most definitely die with 1080p in most of modern games; also watch out for overheating issues - look for a good casing that has many exhaust ports, you will probably also need that cooling chair most laptops sit on

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Don't get a resolution higher than 768p unless you are prepared to spend over 1000 euros on the laptop.