Interlude 04: Bereft, Morose, Malcontent: The End of the Potato Days
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I’ve had my HP ProBook 4540s for five years now, and I’ve really enjoyed having it. It’s the first computer I used steam on. It’s the first computer I did some moderately techy shit with - my then-boyfriend and I successfully removed Windows 8 and put Windows 7 on it when I first got it by using Linux somehow and I had to load up all the drivers myself and somehow the frankensteinian shit held together.
It’s run clean and tight and quiet - very much unlike my previous computers - but now the ol’ girl is showing her age. I could stand playing 3D games on potato graphics, I could stand having to fuss and fight with the drivers constantly, and I could even stand the increasingly-worrying screen problems its been developing, probably due to wiring inside just wearing out.
But it can’t play Final Fantasy 12. And I just can’t go it anymore. I think it’s time to let ol’ girl rest.
So I’m coming to you, BLAEO, for some help. I need a good laptop. I prefer good ol’ 15.3”-ers, and I’m used to my laptop having some weight, but I don’t want it much heavier than what I have now (apparently about 5 lbs/2.33-2.47 kg) or much thicker. (Yes, it needs to be a laptop) It doesn’t need to be crazy, it just needs to run Final Fantasy 12 comfortably. I would love to not have to play most 3D games on the lowest of settings. I’m not talking a Far Cry 5 machine, I’m talking What Remains of Edith Finch. A Goldilocks bullseye between maneuverability, performance, and more than however many gigs of ram I have now. 4? Yep, 4 gigs of ram.
Can you help me?
Edit: BLAEO user Formidosolus is the best! Now I just need to bide my time to save up my paychecks for the laptop!
It will all come down to your own preferences and budget ultimately. So start with a wishlist of specs and start comparing reviews and prices
CPU, ideally you’ll want something from the 7000 series or later, an i7 is significantly better than an i5, but with a good enough graphics card, an i5 will be fine.
Graphics card, if you’re not wanting the highest graphics, then a mid range nvidia or amd card will be fine… think GTX 1050 or RX570, with at least 4 gigs of vram. If you’re not wanting to run the latest games in 4k 120 fps plus, this will keep you in the mid range for a while.
Ram, less important than the others as it will be upgradeable down the line, but 8gigs is a bare minimum, and 16 is much better. If the laptop shares ram with the graphics card, then 12 gigs will be a good minimum I think.
Hard drive space / solid state drive, a solid state drive is nice, but it mostly becomes important when you’re playing big games with a lot of in-game streaming taking place, like your big open world games. If you’re using a disc based drive, you’ll notice lag when it loads in new areas. Those aren’t really your jam though, so I think this is of less importance, but it will be nice to have as it makes booting and loading programs a lot quicker. The amount of space depends on you, but again it shouldn’t be a big factor in your initial decision, as you can always add an extension drive for documents and pictures if you need to.
So basically what that all boils down to is an ‘ideal’ machine which is an i7 with 16 gigs of ram and a mid-level graphics card, solid state drive optional. If there comes a choice between similarly priced laptops go for the one with a better graphics card, as long as it’s at least an i5 processor. A machine like that will keep you in mid level gaming for a decent while.
Something like this would tick the boxes: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07111S3RW/ref=sspa_dk_detail_5?pd_rd_i=B0718SQJMD&th=1
but do shop around and find similar specced machines, that was literally the first one I saw. This one is also a bit heavy though, but you get the idea, this will go above and beyond your needs.
Formidolosus, thank you so much. This helps me tremendously! I’ll keep looking, but now that I at least can identify what out of all the (to me) random numbers and letters are the most important, I’ve found one that’s what I like and in a good price range (https://www.amazon.com/HP-3WE66UA-ABA-i7-8750H-15-dc0030nr/dp/B07CZCFGX8/] that weighs about the same as this one, etc. I’m excited! If I don’t find one I like more than this one before my next few paychecks, this will be the one I get. I’ll be playing FF12 come August!
Oh yeah that one will work a treat. I was mostly looking at the 17 inch laptops, but this one reduces the size a little and packs a bit more punch for the money. That will do you well for a good few years.
I had measured my laptop wrong - the 15 inch is the correct measurement for the screen. The 17 inch is a bit too big for me.
I really can’t overstate how much you’ve helped me!
Oh boy, I have the same exact laptop but I only use it when I travel, have Linux on it so I can get some more RAM out of it and an SSD instead of a hard drive. It has been a pain in the ass to use it that way, I can’t even imagine how would it be to use it in its original state for all my gaming D:
I am not sure why did you use Linux to install Windows 7 on it tho. I had 0 problems with just formatting the drive and installing Windows 7 on it. No issues with loading any drivers either till AMD drivers decided to bluescreen loop the laptop (but that is another story).
I can’t really help you on the hunt for a new one as I have stopped paying attention at new hardware when I built my last PC and other people already gave a bunch of info, but I hope whatever you end up getting will serve you good for many years to come ^^ fingers crossed
Yeah… I… I feel like I’m a walking personification of the ‘damn, bitch, you live like this?’ meme but for PC gaming. Also we probably were doing it in a cockeyed way that I can’t recount bc it was so long ago (but it did take a solid 24 hrs to finally get it set up)
BUT! I got a very solid lead and I’m SO excited! The only sad part is having to re-get some software… and leave my stickers on my laptop behind.
Thank you for your well wishes!
It the end it doesn’t matter how you got it to work, the important part is that it did work :D
Yay! \o/ And you can not mention stickers without posting a picture of such stickers :D
Sorry it’s been late! I’m going to do what I can to salvage some of these. I’ll probably want to cover the hardxcore gamerrr aesthetic as much as I can with as much obnoxious cute girl nerd shit as I can.
Oh my god I need those Sailor Moon Stickers :D Sounds like a plan ^^
Most of those stickers I got off of Redbubble!
Most of those stickers I got off of Redbubble!
If you know you need a laptop for the portability, then the price you suggested is okay, but if by any chance you would be okay with a PC, know that you can get away with half the cost (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Whatever you get, make sure it has a SSD. Btw I obviously only play visual novels with the occasional 3d game and I currently have G4560/GTX1050/8GB ram, and they are exaggerated for what I play. Anything more would be a waste of money for me!
Giselle I haven’t seen you around in a while and I missed you terribly.
I am a laptop-for-lyfe gal, though I get it has a lot of constraints. I’m hoping to slowly play some more high-end games - Yakuza’s on Steam now, and with Tales of Vesperia getting a PC port, and… I’ve done lo-fi for the past several years, and I’m looking to bump it up some.
I’m sorry I know I haven’t been around, the reason is the summer heat is killing me and unmotivating me to play games (￣︿￣) At least I have been reading a lot, so my books tbr pile is decreasing btw ebi-hime is putting Lynne on steam in a few days, check that out!
Before this PC, I had been using the same laptop for 10 years!! Making the jump from laptop to PC has been AMAZING and I could have never afforded to buy a laptop with the same specifics with the low budget I had.
But as long as your laptop will have a SSD and a GPU (not intel integrated graphics), it’s gonna be a HUGE improvement on anything.
Don’t apologize! I’m just glad to hear for you, and that you’re okay. I definitely will!
Jeez, I can’t imagine using the same one for 10 years! My average right now has been about 5 or 6 - luckily, the last two I’ve upgraded because I chose to, not because I’ve had to.
I’m excited to see the improvement!!
Yeah what Formidolosus is what you should go after
Don’t look on laptops with U processors. But H / HQ. U are low voltage, good for battery time, bad for performance. (It’s about letter at the end of processor name).
1050, 1050Ti and 1060 will work more than fine. Sure, the higher the longer it will be able too keep on medium details with acceptable FPS.
I don’t think you will need 4K or >60Hz display. So going for cheaper, standard 60Hz 1080p screen will be more than fine. 15 - 17’ screens are way too tiny for 4K. And high FPS is for people that focused on shooters and dynamic combat ;P
Right now it’d be ok to have laptop with 8 GB if it’s not soldered into motherboard. If laptop has soldered RAM you need to pick one you want from the start as it’s impossible to change it later. Otherwise you can add 8GB stick later.
SSD doesn’t change much in terms of gaming, as it’s only loading times. So if you don’t care to load W3 level in 10s instead of 30s you should just pick SSD for system and maybe 1 - 2 games.
I did see laptop you linked above and it does look more than fine. I’d only search for reviews where they mention hinges stability and solidity. As they do look like they can be broken easily.
Thank you so much! That’s another good overview of what matters for what and why. I’ll do some more sleuthing, but I’m seeing good reviews. I might take a run out to a local BestBuy when I have the time to see if I can see one in person and ask there.
The hinges are similar to my laptop’s hinges now (in that they’re two smaller ones rather than one larger one) and it’s only within the past few months that they’ve started to have occasional issues. I’ll keep looking!
The GPU is the most important part in a laptop build. Laptop makers tend to cheap out on that to offer a cheaper laptop.
CPU is not that important for gaming compared to the GPU. i5 Or i7 should be fine if you’re going for mid-range gaming.
8GB of RAM is more than enough, even for high end gaming, you’ll notice little to none improvement if you get 16GB instead. Most games don’t even utilize more than 8 RAM. You’ll get relatively small gains from 16GB on high end games.
As Mskotor said don’t get 4K on a 15” screen it will make everything look super small and is a total waste on such a small screen.
In the end the only thing to really look out for is your GPU which will be the biggest factor in how good your games will look and play, No laptop manufacturer would combine a high end GPU with a terrible CPU so there’s no need to pay a lot of attention to that. 8GB will play all games very well, even high end games, 16GB will give you small gains but don’t expect a huge difference.
Gotcha! Thank you so much. I didn’t realize the difference between GPU and CPU.
If you have the time, the one I’m pretty much set to buy is this. How does it look?
Looks to be decent offer, I’m not sure if it’s the best deal but it looks like a pretty good gaming laptop. It should run FarCry 5 quite comfortably so FF12 shouldn’t be any problem. Something I always do is look up reviews once I decide on something, there’s a lot of technical information in them but the conclusions basically tell you what you need to know. Another thing that’s super important is customer reviews they tend to be more honest and bring to light things you may only notice when using it for a while.
The GPU is the most important part which will bring the most noticeable change for gaming. As long as you have 8GB of RAM, you’ll not notice much improvement by adding more RAM, as long as you have somewhat decent CPU you’ll not notice much (if any) improvement either. They become important when you’re running several programs at once or are doing specific tasks, but if you’re main focus is gaming they’re not that relevant. An SSD will make your OS boot faster and slightly reduce loading times in games.
I’ve been using it for a few days and I LOVE it. Oh my god, it’s several fucking galaxies of difference. FF12 runs like a dream, and I noticed that even my friggin VNs run faster. Boot time is literally 8 seconds.
It’s crazy!!
Didn’t know you were getting it so quickly, but glad you’re enjoying it. Must be a big improvement from your previous one. Final Fantasy XII is actually the game that made me stop playing Final Fantasy games, strange to see someone who enjoys it :D
Once I started looking for it, I got too excited and just bought it right away. I’ve already paid half of it off - the other half will get paid next Saturday.
Ha! For me it’s strange to see the opposite!
Having replayed FF10/10-2 a little while back and now playing FF12 again, it’s cemented as my favorite Final Fantasy game (with FF10/10-2 being a close second). I love the worldbuilding, the architecture design, the character design, the ‘oh man this is VERY Star Wars influenced, isn’t it?’-ness, how real and lived in everything looks and feels. I even like the combat! The same guy who translated FF10 translated FF12, and the extreme constraints he was under for the former don’t apply to the later, so I SUPER appreciate how he was able to absolutely hogwild with the translations. Vaan and Penelo speak rather plainly, being common folk, but Ashe and Balthier and Basch all speak all knightly and fancy and shit - and it works for me.
Is the license board system kind of dumb? Yea. Could the pacing in different scenes be improved? Sure, I’d love it if there were more room to breathe and most scenes went a bit slower and more thoughtful. But I adored this game as a young teenager and I adore playing it again now. It’s one of a handful of games that just feels like I’m coming home when I play.
…. AAAND that’s my review preview for today, lol.
Haha, well that’s ok too.
It’s been a long time since I’ve played FF XII probably around the time of release, I had played FF VII, VIII, IX, X before (not X-2 though). But I remember not liking the new combat system much, but it was ok enough for me to continue at first. The story was really weird and confusing and didn’t grip me at all, characters seemed really bland and boring, overall I was mostly confused to what was going on. I also remember grinding a bunch at the start, because I was doing some sort of bounties in the first city which I think I was supposed to leave until later? Continued the story a bit past that but because I spend so much time grinding I couldn’t remember anything of the story so I hadn’t any clue of what I was doing or trying to do. Somewhere around that point I kind of stopped playing it and never got back to it. Never got very far into the game, but everything I did at the start felt very boring and the story made no sense. Honestly there was nothing I liked about the part that I played. Never got to the license board system I think? Look forward if you ever do a full review.
You forgot to mention one very important detail: What’s your budget?
Also are you going to use it for something else than gaming (besides the obvious like web browsing/steam).
And any preferences? Nowadays you can have laptops with 4k@60hz, 1080p@144hz, mechanical keyboards etc.
Yeeeaaah, budget… I obviously don’t want to pay for a bunch of shit just to pay for a bunch of shit, but I want to see what the options are out there sans price before I narrow down. I think this one was 1,100 when I got it. I’m not looking to spend more than 1,700, probably.
The heaviest shit I’d use it for would the playing 3D games - I’m not expecting to be rendering anything or doing video editing on it, though I have to imagine that if I could fuck around in Maya on my current laptop, I could do it on a newer one.
And… I… don’t know what those things are. :D I know for folks hard in the paint w/r/t computer specs there’s a whole bunch of… preferences… but I’m a simple lass with simple tastes. I want it to run good without being heavy enough to injure me if I drop it on myself?
EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot, about a year ago I was doing research on this exact subject and found this. Howsit? Other than the, uh, ‘black and red gamerrrr’ aesthetic, it seems to be what I want
Not sure if you’re kidding with that link but something like that would probably even run Far cry 5 providing the mobile chipset didn’t mess with the drivers too much.
Oh word? Guys, I know so little about hardware, I’m a software bitch.
So I can dial it back a little to save on… weight, price, and, uh… ‘gamer-ness’? Where would that be?
Well go for the best specs you can afford honestly. More money now will mean you get a lot more life out of the machine in the long run, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a pretty game on high settings.
Something like this would probably do the job just fine though: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C5L1NBP/ref=sspa_dk_detail_7?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07C5L1NBP
I think the only thing it’s slightly lacking in is the ram, which you will be able to upgrade at a later stage. But it has a decent mid range card, a decent cpu and includes a small SSD to make the operating system run nice and fast. It is HP though, so you may find a cheaper, non-brand laptop with similar specs.
Sorry for responding after so long. IMO the one you linked is fine. GPU is great and it should handle something like FarCry 5 on high settings on 1080p@60fps according to benchmarks I quickly looked at (tho it’s been PC benchmarks, but going by description on amazon it’s not some worse version of 1060 for laptops/moblile so it should be similar). It should be ok for rendering in Maya, I read a little and Maya seems to support GPU rendering and OpenGL/DirectX.
CPU like this for gaming is more than enough. 16gb RAM is great for now and future-proofing.
You don’t really need SSD for gaming unless you really want to play ARMA 3 :p That game is the only one I know that can have serious stutters and FPS drops due to loading world textures on fly. SSD can eliminate texture poping on some other open-world games like GTA 5 but you shouldn’t experience any stutters or freezes if you play those on HDD, it will mostly just greatly reduce loading times.
Thank you for getting back to me! I ended up getting one similar to this. I was trying to be modest, but tbh I’m really excited about getting to play BIG games looking amazingly. The laptop should arrive tomorrow, and I’m hoping I can spend Friday evening getting it set up so I can dissolve the weekend into playing FF12 and/or Black Mesa on amazing settings.
I’m very, very excited c:
Nice, what did you get? :) And if possible try to wait for XEN update in Black Mesa, it should come out later this year :D I can’t wait for it, I played the original mod years ago and was blown away how amazing it was and the new Xen looks absolutely amazing though they only showed little bits for now.
the HP Omen 2018 version, 15.something inch screen, rainbow keyboard, SSD hard drive, i7 processor… this one. It’s actually about as much as I spent on the laptop I have right now (I think) so I think I got a hell of a deal for the power it has. I’m hoping I’ll be able to use it for several years. It’ll take about one paycheck to cover, which really isn’t bad for something I use literally all day, nearly every day.
We’re up to ‘Blast Pit’ in Black Mesa so we’re p much set for finishing up the game as it stands during the summer - but I’d definitely like to come back to it to play the Xen levels. (Though I heard in the original they had very… mixed… reactions) I’m so pumped to play it on anything other than ‘please please please run’ settings. The character models mouths didn’t even open, and their fingers were all like solid points. The flashlight just didn’t work. It was a struggle.